Assets at risk:menstrual cycle variation in the envisioned formidability of a potential sexual assailant reveals a component of threat assessment

Abstract Situations of potential agonistic conflict demand rapid and effective deci-sion-making. The process of threat assessment includes assessments of relative fighting capacity, assessments of the likelihood of attack, and assessments of the extent to which one′s assets are at risk. The dimensions of physical size and strength appear to serve as key parameters in a cognitive representation summarizing multiple constituents of threat assessment. Here, we examine the thesis that this same representation summa-rizes asset risk. The fitness costs of sexual assault are in part a function of conception risk, as pregnancy due to assault compromises female choice and imperils existing and subsequent male investment. Prior research indicates that women′s attitudes and behaviors vary systematically across the menstrual cycle in a manner that would have reduced the likelihood of sexual assault during periods of greatest fertility in ancestral women. If the envisioned size and strength of a potential antagonist is used to represent asset risk, and if the threat that sexual assault poses to a woman′s reproductive assets is in part a product of her fertility, then the conceptualized size and strength of a potential sexual assailant should be a function of conception risk. We find support for thi

Testing the affiliation hypothesis of homoerotic motivation in humans:the effects of progesterone and priming

The frequency of homoerotic behavior among individuals who do not identify as having an exclusively homosexual sexual orientation suggests that such behavior potentially has adaptive value. Here, we define homoerotic behavior as intimate erotic contact between members of the same sex and affiliation as the motivation to make and maintain social bonds. Among both male and female nonhuman primates, affiliation is one of the main drivers of homoerotic behavior. Correspondingly, in humans, both across cultures and across historical periods, homoerotic behavior appears to play a role in promoting social bonds. However, to date, the affiliation explanation of human homoerotic behavior has not been adequately tested experimentally. We developed a measure of homoerotic motivation with a sample of 244 men and women. Next, we found that, in women (n = 92), homoerotic motivation was positively associated with progesterone, a hormone that has been shown to promote affiliative bonding. Lastly, we explored the effects of affiliative contexts on homoerotic motivation in men (n = 59), finding that men in an affiliative priming condition were more likely to endorse engaging in homoerotic behavior compared to those primed with neutral or sexual concepts, and this effect was more pronounced in men with high progesterone. These findings constitute the first experimental support for the affiliation account of the evolution of homoerotic motivation in humans

Near-Optimal Signal Detection for Finite-State Markov Signals with Application to Magnetic Resonance Force Microscopy

Detection of a finite-state Markov signal in additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) can be done in an intuitive manner by applying an appropriate filter and using an energy detector. One might not expect this heuristic approach to signal detection to be optimal. However, in this paper, we show that for a certain type of finite-state Markov signal, namely, the discrete-time (DT) random telegraph, this filtered energy detector is approximately optimal under the following conditions of: symmetric transition probabilities, low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), long observation time, and small probability of transition between two consecutive time instances. When these last three conditions hold, but the transition probabilities are not symmetric, we show that a variant of the filtered energy detector is approximately optimal. It is also shown, under low SNR conditions, that the likelihood ratio test (LRT) for a finite-state DT Markov signal in AWGN reduces to the matched filter statistic with the minimum mean-squared-error (MMSE) predictor signal values used in place of the known signal values. Using this result, we propose a general methodology for obtaining an approximation to the LRT of a finite-state DT Markov signal in AWGN. Specifically, instead of the conditional mean (also MMSE) estimators, affine estimators with lowest mean squared error are used. This work is relevant to magnetic resonance force microscopy, an emerging technology that uses ultrasensitive force sensing to detect magnetic resonance. Sensitivity down to the single spin level was demonstrated in a recent experiment.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/85833/1/Fessler44.pd

p53 and NF- B Coregulate Proinflammatory Gene Responses in Human Macrophages

Macrophages are sentinel immune cells that survey the tissue microenvironment, releasing cytokines in response to both exogenous insults and endogenous events such as tumorigenesis. Macrophages mediate tumor surveillance and therapy-induced tumor regression; however, tumor-associated macrophages (TAM) and their products may also promote tumor progression. Whereas NF-κB is prominent in macrophage-initiated inflammatory responses, little is known about the role of p53 in macrophage responses to environmental challenge, including chemotherapy or in TAMs. Here, we report that NF-κB and p53, which generally have opposing effects in cancer cells, coregulate induction of proinflammatory genes in primary human monocytes and macrophages. Using Nutlin-3 as a tool, we demonstrate that p53 and NF-κB rapidly and highly induce interleukin ( IL )- 6 by binding to its promoter. Transcriptome analysis revealed global p53/NF-κB co-regulation of immune response genes, including several chemokines, which effectively induced human neutrophil migration. In addition, we show that p53, activated by tumor cell paracrine factors, induces high basal levels of macrophage IL-6 in a TAM model system [tumor-conditioned macrophages (TCM)]. Compared with normal macrophages, TCMs exhibited higher p53 levels, enhanced p53 binding to the IL-6 promoter, and reduced IL-6 levels upon p53 inhibition. Taken together, we describe a mechanism by which human macrophages integrate signals through p53 and NF-κB to drive proinflammatory cytokine induction. Our results implicate a novel role for macrophage p53 in conditioning the tumor microenvironment and suggest a potential mechanism by which p53-activating chemotherapeutics, acting upon p53-sufficient macrophages and precursor monocytes, may indirectly impact tumors lacking functional p53. Cancer Res; 74(8); 2182–92. ©2014 AACR

Sizing up Helen Nonviolent physical risk-taking enhances the envisioned bodily formidability of women.

Abstract Men are more prone than women to both commit physical violence and engage in nonviolent activities entailing the risk of injury or death. The Crazy Bastard Hypothesi

Small-scale societies exhibit fundamental variation in the role of intentions in moral judgment

Intent and mitigating circumstances play a central role in moral and legal assessments in large-scale industrialized societies. Although these features of moral assessment are widely assumed to be universal, to date, they have only been studied in a narrow range of societies. We show that there is substantial cross-cultural variation among eight traditional small-scale societies (ranging from hunter-gatherer to pastoralist to horticulturalist) and two Western societies (one urban, one rural) in the extent to which intent and mitigating circumstances influence moral judgments. Although participants in all societies took such factors into account to some degree, they did so to very different extents, varying in both the types of considerations taken into account and the types of violations to which such considerations were applied. The particular patterns of assessment characteristic of large-scale industrialized societies may thus reflect relatively recently culturally evolved norms rather than inherent features of human moral judgment