Sociomoral Reasoning in Children and Adolescents from Two Collectivist Cultures

This study compared the sociomoral reasoning of 7-, 9-, 12-, and 15-year-old children and adolescents of two collectivistic cultures in the 1990s: Spain (horizontal collectivism; N = 208) and Russia (vertical collectivism; N = 247). Participants reasoned about choices and moral justifications of a protagonist in a sociomoral dilemma where participants can focus on different moral and non-moral concerns (e.g., going with their best friend, going with a new classmate or trying to do something with both). Results support previous research in western societies: Participants tend to choose the option “visiting the best friend”, and self-interest tends to decrease with age whereas altruism tends to increase. Moreover, Spanish participants tended to consider all parties involved in the dilemma (i.e., old friend and new classmate), whereas Russian participants did not. These results are discussed in light of their differences as horizontal and vertical collectivistic societies. Overall, the results open an avenue for new studies when comparing the effects of culture on children’s and adolescents’ development

Methodological issues of research on the relationship between mental health and quality of life

The methodology and methodological approaches to research on mental health in relation to quality of life and data of subjective health status assessment are presented. The research was performed over a period of 2004-2011. Medical social monitoring data were obtained for a total of 3975 people living in the protective actions zones of chemical weapons storage and destruction facilities in three administrative regions. Qualitative assessment of satisfaction with various aspects of life, taking into account the specificity of potentially facilities was performed. Correlations of the quality of life and the self-rating of health with the factors affecting human health are established. Almost half of the population under study (47.1 %) wasfound to require supervision and treatment by specialists in boundary psychiatry and mental medicine. It was found that negative effects of human health are multifactorial, and the contribution of each individual factor in the immediate and delayed the deterioration of somatic and mental health, associated with the quality of life, is quite difficult to quantify

4U 0115+63 from RXTE and INTEGRAL Data: Pulse Profile and Cyclotron Line Energy

We analyze the observations of the transient X-ray pulsar 4U 0115+63 with the RXTE and INTEGRAL observatories in a wide X-ray (3-100 keV) energy band during its intense outbursts in 1999 and 2004. The energy of the fundamental harmonic of the cyclotron resonance absorption line near the maximum of the X-ray flux from the source (luminosity range 5x10^{37} - 2x10^{38} erg/s) is ~11 keV. When the pulsar luminosity falls below ~5x10^{37} erg/s, the energy of the fundamental harmonic is displaced sharply toward the high energies, up to ~16 keV. Under the assumption of a dipole magnetic field configuration, this change in cyclotron harmonic energy corresponds to a decrease in the height of the emitting region by ~2 km, while other spectral parameters, in particular, the cutoff energy, remain essentially constant. At a luminosity ~7x10^{37} erg/s, four almost equidistant cyclotron line harmonics are clearly seen in the spectrum. This suggests that either the region where the emission originates is compact or the emergent spectrum from different (in height) segments of the accretion column is uniform. We have found significant pulse profile variations with energy, luminosity, and time. In particular, we show that the profile variations from pulse to pulse are not reduced to a simple modulation of the accretion rate specified by external conditions.Comment: 30 pages, 13 figures, Astronomy Letters, 33, 368 (2007

Loss of Maternal CTCF Is Associated with Peri-Implantation Lethality of Ctcf Null Embryos

CTCF is a highly conserved, multifunctional zinc finger protein involved in critical aspects of gene regulation including transcription regulation, chromatin insulation, genomic imprinting, X-chromosome inactivation, and higher order chromatin organization. Such multifunctional properties of CTCF suggest an essential role in development. Indeed, a previous report on maternal depletion of CTCF suggested that CTCF is essential for pre-implantation development. To distinguish between the effects of maternal and zygotic expression of CTCF, we studied pre-implantation development in mice harboring a complete loss of function Ctcf knockout allele. Although we demonstrated that homozygous deletion of Ctcf is early embryonically lethal, in contrast to previous observations, we showed that the Ctcf nullizygous embryos developed up to the blastocyst stage (E3.5) followed by peri-implantation lethality (E4.5–E5.5). Moreover, one-cell stage Ctcf nullizygous embryos cultured ex vivo developed to the 16–32 cell stage with no obvious abnormalities. Using a single embryo assay that allowed both genotype and mRNA expression analyses of the same embryo, we demonstrated that pre-implantation development of the Ctcf nullizygous embryos was associated with the retention of the maternal wild type Ctcf mRNA. Loss of this stable maternal transcript was temporally associated with loss of CTCF protein expression, apoptosis of the developing embryo, and failure to further develop an inner cell mass and trophoectoderm ex vivo. This indicates that CTCF expression is critical to early embryogenesis and loss of its expression rapidly leads to apoptosis at a very early developmental stage. This is the first study documenting the presence of the stable maternal Ctcf transcript in the blastocyst stage embryos. Furthermore, in the presence of maternal CTCF, zygotic CTCF expression does not seem to be required for pre-implantation development

Emerging landscape of oncogenic signatures across human cancers.

Cancer therapy is challenged by the diversity of molecular implementations of oncogenic processes and by the resulting variation in therapeutic responses. Projects such as The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) provide molecular tumor maps in unprecedented detail. The interpretation of these maps remains a major challenge. Here we distilled thousands of genetic and epigenetic features altered in cancers to ∼500 selected functional events (SFEs). Using this simplified description, we derived a hierarchical classification of 3,299 TCGA tumors from 12 cancer types. The top classes are dominated by either mutations (M class) or copy number changes (C class). This distinction is clearest at the extremes of genomic instability, indicating the presence of different oncogenic processes. The full hierarchy shows functional event patterns characteristic of multiple cross-tissue groups of tumors, termed oncogenic signature classes. Targetable functional events in a tumor class are suggestive of class-specific combination therapy. These results may assist in the definition of clinical trials to match actionable oncogenic signatures with personalized therapies

The Insulator Binding Protein CTCF Positions 20 Nucleosomes around Its Binding Sites across the Human Genome

Chromatin structure plays an important role in modulating the accessibility of genomic DNA to regulatory proteins in eukaryotic cells. We performed an integrative analysis on dozens of recent datasets generated by deep-sequencing and high-density tiling arrays, and we discovered an array of well-positioned nucleosomes flanking sites occupied by the insulator binding protein CTCF across the human genome. These nucleosomes are highly enriched for the histone variant H2A.Z and 11 histone modifications. The distances between the center positions of the neighboring nucleosomes are largely invariant, and we estimate them to be 185 bp on average. Surprisingly, subsets of nucleosomes that are enriched in different histone modifications vary greatly in the lengths of DNA protected from micrococcal nuclease cleavage (106–164 bp). The nucleosomes enriched in those histone modifications previously implicated to be correlated with active transcription tend to contain less protected DNA, indicating that these modifications are correlated with greater DNA accessibility. Another striking result obtained from our analysis is that nucleosomes flanking CTCF sites are much better positioned than those downstream of transcription start sites, the only genomic feature previously known to position nucleosomes genome-wide. This nucleosome-positioning phenomenon is not observed for other transcriptional factors for which we had genome-wide binding data. We suggest that binding of CTCF provides an anchor point for positioning nucleosomes, and chromatin remodeling is an important component of CTCF function

DNA fragments binding CTCF in vitro and in vivo are capable of blocking enhancer activity

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Earlier we identified ten 100-300-bp long CTCF-binding DNA fragments selected earlier from a 1-Mb human chromosome 19 region. Here the positive-negative selection technique was used to check the ability of CTCF-binding human genomic fragments to block enhancer-promoter interaction when inserted into the genome.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Ten CTCF-binding DNA fragments were inserted between the CMV enhancer and CMV minimal promoter driving the herpes simplex virus thymidine kinase (HSV<it>-tk</it>) gene in a vector expressing also the <it>neo</it>^Rgene under a separate promoter. The constructs were then integrated into the genome of CHO cells, and the cells resistant to neomycin and ganciclovir (positive-negative selection) were picked up, and their DNAs were PCR analyzed to confirm the presence of the fragments between the enhancer and promoter in both orientations.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We demonstrated that all sequences identified by their CTCF binding both <it>in vitro </it>and <it>in vivo </it>had enhancer-blocking activity when inserted between the CMV minimal promoter and enhancer in stably transfected CHO cells.</p

Lattice Boltzmann simulations of soft matter systems

This article concerns numerical simulations of the dynamics of particles immersed in a continuum solvent. As prototypical systems, we consider colloidal dispersions of spherical particles and solutions of uncharged polymers. After a brief explanation of the concept of hydrodynamic interactions, we give a general overview over the various simulation methods that have been developed to cope with the resulting computational problems. We then focus on the approach we have developed, which couples a system of particles to a lattice Boltzmann model representing the solvent degrees of freedom. The standard D3Q19 lattice Boltzmann model is derived and explained in depth, followed by a detailed discussion of complementary methods for the coupling of solvent and solute. Colloidal dispersions are best described in terms of extended particles with appropriate boundary conditions at the surfaces, while particles with internal degrees of freedom are easier to simulate as an arrangement of mass points with frictional coupling to the solvent. In both cases, particular care has been taken to simulate thermal fluctuations in a consistent way. The usefulness of this methodology is illustrated by studies from our own research, where the dynamics of colloidal and polymeric systems has been investigated in both equilibrium and nonequilibrium situations.Comment: Review article, submitted to Advances in Polymer Science. 16 figures, 76 page

Development of the social brain from age three to twelve years

Human adults recruit distinct networks of brain regions to think about the bodies and minds of others. This study characterizes the development of these networks, and tests for relationships between neural development and behavioral changes in reasoning about others' minds ('theory of mind', ToM). A large sample of children (n = 122, 3-12 years), and adults (n = 33), watched a short movie while undergoing fMRI. The movie highlights the characters' bodily sensations (often pain) and mental states (beliefs, desires, emotions), and is a feasible experiment for young children. Here we report three main findings: (1) ToM and pain networks are functionally distinct by age 3 years, (2) functional specialization increases throughout childhood, and (3) functional maturity of each network is related to increasingly anti-correlated responses between the networks. Furthermore, the most studied milestone in ToM development, passing explicit false-belief tasks, does not correspond to discontinuities in the development of the social brain.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Award 1122374)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Award 095518)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Award R01-MH096914-05