Romantic ideals, mate preferences, and anticipation of future difficulties in marital life: a comparative study of young adults in India and America

This article has been made available through open access by the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Previous studies have established that Indians tend to be greater in collectivism and gender role traditionalism than Americans. The purpose of the present study was to examine whether these differences explained further cultural differences in romantic beliefs, traditional mate preferences, and anticipation of future difficulties in marital life. Results revealed that Indians reported greater collectivism than Americans and, in turn, held stronger romantic beliefs. Additionally, Indians’ greater collectivism and endorsement of more traditional gender roles in part predicted their preferences for a marital partner possessing traditional characteristics, and fully accounted for their heightened concerns about encountering future difficulties in marital life. These results shed light on the processes underlying cultural differences in relationship attitudes and preferences, and point to culture-specific therapies to enhance marital functioning

Impact of August 2017 British Columbia Pyrocumulonimbus Injection Events on Lower Stratospheric Composition

On August 12-13, 2017 large wildfires in the Cariboo region of British Columbia, Canada sparked a series of pyrocumulonimbus events lifting carbonaceous aerosol and other trace gases to the tropopause region (~10-11 km). Over the subsequent days, this plume of trace gas and aerosol species was observed from numerous NASA satellite instruments to rise to over 22 km due to the strong shortwave heating of the carbonaceous aerosol. We will show observations of CO and H2O from the Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) instrument on Aura satellite demonstrating the clear rise and spread of the plume which can be coherently tracked for at least 2 months. Enhancements in HCN, CH3CN, and methanol (CH3OH) are also evident in MLS measurements with the former two having low vertical resolution. We have also detected a significantly lower concentration of O3 and HNO3 in the plume compared to the surrounding environment, which is consistent with a dynamical perturbation from the rapid diabatic rise of the heated plume from the tropopause through the lower stratosphere. In the weeks and months that followed this plume spread over much of the Northern Hemisphere and the aerosol was observed to be slowly removed by transport back into the troposphere. We will compare and contrast the Aug. 2017 event with the other large event in the MLS record, the Feb. 2009 Australian "Black Saturday" event, and use the Goddard Earth Observing System Chemistry-Climate Model (GEOSCCM) replayed to observed meteorology to understand the effect of the British Columbia event on trace gas species. GEOSCCM helps us to separate the relative roles of dynamics and chemistry on lower stratospheric trace gas composition changes, not only in the rising plume but also the impact of its eventual spread over the Northern Hemisphere during fall and winter of 2017-2018

Hagfish genome elucidates vertebrate whole-genome duplication events and their evolutionary consequences.

Polyploidy or whole-genome duplication (WGD) is a major event that drastically reshapes genome architecture and is often assumed to be causally associated with organismal innovations and radiations. The 2R hypothesis suggests that two WGD events (1R and 2R) occurred during early vertebrate evolution. However, the timing of the 2R event relative to the divergence of gnathostomes (jawed vertebrates) and cyclostomes (jawless hagfishes and lampreys) is unresolved and whether these WGD events underlie vertebrate phenotypic diversification remains elusive. Here we present the genome of the inshore hagfish, Eptatretus burgeri. Through comparative analysis with lamprey and gnathostome genomes, we reconstruct the early events in cyclostome genome evolution, leveraging insights into the ancestral vertebrate genome. Genome-wide synteny and phylogenetic analyses support a scenario in which 1R occurred in the vertebrate stem-lineage during the early Cambrian, and 2R occurred in the gnathostome stem-lineage, maximally in the late Cambrian-earliest Ordovician, after its divergence from cyclostomes. We find that the genome of stem-cyclostomes experienced an additional independent genome triplication. Functional genomic and morphospace analyses demonstrate that WGD events generally contribute to developmental evolution with similar changes in the regulatory genome of both vertebrate groups. However, appreciable morphological diversification occurred only in the gnathostome but not in the cyclostome lineage, calling into question the general expectation that WGDs lead to leaps of bodyplan complexity

Graphene Schottky diodes: an experimental review of the rectifying graphene/semiconductor heterojunction

In the past decade graphene has been one of the most studied material for several unique and excellent properties. Due to its two dimensional nature, physical and chemical properties and ease of manipulation, graphene offers the possibility of integration with the exiting semiconductor technology for next-generation electronic and sensing devices. In this context, the understanding of the graphene/semiconductor interface is of great importance since it can constitute a versatile standalone device as well as the building-block of more advanced electronic systems. Since graphene was brought to the attention of the scientific community in 2004, the device research has been focused on the more complex graphene transistors, while the graphene/semiconductor junction, despite its importance, has started to be the subject of systematic investigation only recently. As a result, a thorough understanding of the physics and the potentialities of this device is still missing. The studies of the past few years have demonstrated that graphene can form junctions with 3D or 2D semiconducting materials which have rectifying characteristics and behave as excellent Schottky diodes. The main novelty of these devices is the tunable Schottky barrier height, a feature which makes the graphene/semiconductor junction a great platform for the study of interface transport mechanisms as well as for applications in photo-detection, high-speed communications, solar cells, chemical and biological sensing, etc. In this paper, we review the state-of-the art of the research on graphene/semiconductor junctions, the attempts towards a modeling and the most promising applications.Comment: 85 pages. Review articl

The endothelial glycocalyx: composition, functions, and visualization

This review aims at presenting state-of-the-art knowledge on the composition and functions of the endothelial glycocalyx. The endothelial glycocalyx is a network of membrane-bound proteoglycans and glycoproteins, covering the endothelium luminally. Both endothelium- and plasma-derived soluble molecules integrate into this mesh. Over the past decade, insight has been gained into the role of the glycocalyx in vascular physiology and pathology, including mechanotransduction, hemostasis, signaling, and blood cell–vessel wall interactions. The contribution of the glycocalyx to diabetes, ischemia/reperfusion, and atherosclerosis is also reviewed. Experimental data from the micro- and macrocirculation alludes at a vasculoprotective role for the glycocalyx. Assessing this possible role of the endothelial glycocalyx requires reliable visualization of this delicate layer, which is a great challenge. An overview is given of the various ways in which the endothelial glycocalyx has been visualized up to now, including first data from two-photon microscopic imaging