Cognitive and psychological science insights to improve climate change data visualization

Visualization of climate data plays an integral role in the communication of climate change findings to both expert and non-expert audiences. The cognitive and psychological sciences can provide valuable insights into how to improve visualization of climate data based on knowledge of how the human brain processes visual and linguistic information. We review four key research areas to demonstrate their potential to make data more accessible to diverse audiences: directing visual attention, visual complexity, making inferences from visuals, and the mapping between visuals and language. We present evidence-informed guidelines to help climate scientists increase the accessibility of graphics to non-experts, and illustrate how the guidelines can work in practice in the context of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change graphics

Engineered Toxins “Zymoxins” Are Activated by the HCV NS3 Protease by Removal of an Inhibitory Protein Domain

The synthesis of inactive enzyme precursors, also known as “zymogens,” serves as a mechanism for regulating the execution of selected catalytic activities in a desirable time and/or site. Zymogens are usually activated by proteolytic cleavage. Many viruses encode proteases that execute key proteolytic steps of the viral life cycle. Here, we describe a proof of concept for a therapeutic approach to fighting viral infections through eradication of virally infected cells exclusively, thus limiting virus production and spread. Using the hepatitis C virus (HCV) as a model, we designed two HCV NS3 protease-activated “zymogenized” chimeric toxins (which we denote “zymoxins”). In these recombinant constructs, the bacterial and plant toxins diphtheria toxin A (DTA) and Ricin A chain (RTA), respectively, were fused to rationally designed inhibitor peptides/domains via an HCV NS3 protease-cleavable linker. The above toxins were then fused to the binding and translocation domains of Pseudomonas exotoxin A in order to enable translocation into the mammalian cells cytoplasm. We show that these toxins exhibit NS3 cleavage dependent increase in enzymatic activity upon NS3 protease cleavage in vitro. Moreover, a higher level of cytotoxicity was observed when zymoxins were applied to NS3 expressing cells or to HCV infected cells, demonstrating a potential therapeutic window. The increase in toxin activity correlated with NS3 protease activity in the treated cells, thus the therapeutic window was larger in cells expressing recombinant NS3 than in HCV infected cells. This suggests that the “zymoxin” approach may be most appropriate for application to life-threatening acute infections where much higher levels of the activating protease would be expected

Evaluation of antiemetic effect of metabolic, aesthetic and aqueous extracts of Citrus aurantium L. on chicken

Background and Objective: The flowers of Citrus aurantium L. are traditionally used in the treatment of neurological disorders such as seizures, epilepsy and neurasthenia. With regard to the importance of nausea and vomiting and effects of strengthening the stomach of Citrus aurantium L. extract, this study, was done to determine the antiemetic effect of the metabolic, aesthetic and aqueous extract of flowers of Citrus aurantium L. in young chickens. Methods: In this experimental study, induction of emesis was performed in 138 young chickens (23 groups, n=6) using copper sulfate (60 mg/kg, orally) and ipecac (600 mg/kg, orally). The aqueous, methanolic and acetonic extract at doses of 50, 100 and 250 mg/kg/bw were injected intraperitoneally (i.p.) and metoclopramide (as positive control). The number of nausea was recorded 50 and 20 minutes after copper sulfate and ipecac administration, respectively. Results: Our results showed that all kind of extract at doses of 100 and 250 mg/kg significantly inhibited copper sulfate and ipecac induced–emesis that showed better effect than metoclopramide. Also, comparison of antiemetic effect of different extract revealed that methanolic, aqueous and acetonic had better effect on prevention of nausea, respectively in comparision with metoclopramide. Conclusion: All kinds of Citrus aurantium (Methanolic, Aesthetic and Aqueous) showed antiemetic effect due to copper sulfate and ipecac dose dependly in Young chickenin in comparision with metoclopramide

Multiple spatial representations of number: evidence for co-existing compressive and linear scales

Although the spatial representation of number (mental number line) is well documented, the scaling associated with this representation is less clear. Sometimes people appear to rely on compressive scaling, and sometimes on linear scaling. Here we provide evidence for both compressive and linear representations on the same numerical bisection task, in which adult participants estimate (without calculating) the midpoint between two numbers. The same leftward bias (pseudoneglect) shown on physical line bisection appears on this task, and was previously shown to increase with the magnitude of bisected numbers, consistent with compressive scaling (Longo and Lourenco in Neuropsychologia 45:1400–1407, 2007). In the present study, participants held either small (1–9) or large (101–109) number primes in memory during bisection. When participants remembered small primes, bisection responses were consistent with compressive scaling. However, when they remembered large primes, responses were more consistent with linear scaling. These results show that compressive and linear representations may be accessed flexibly on the same task, depending on the numerical context

Semantic congruity affects numerical judgments similarly in monkeys and humans

Monkeys (Macaca mulatta) were trained to order visual arrays based on their number of elements and to conditionally choose the array with the larger or smaller number of elements dependent on a color cue. When the screen background was red, monkeys were reinforced for choosing the smaller numerical value first. When the screen background was blue, monkeys were reinforced for choosing the larger numerical value first. Monkeys showed a semantic congruity effect analogous to that reported for human comparison judgments. Specifically, decision time was systematically influenced by the semantic congruity between the cue (“choose smaller” or “choose larger”) and the magnitude of the choice stimuli (small or large numbers of dots). This finding demonstrates a semantic congruity effect in a nonlinguistic animal and provides strong evidence for an evolutionarily primitive magnitude-comparison algorithm common to humans and monkeys