COVIDiSTRESS diverse dataset on psychological and behavioural outcomes one year into the COVID-19 pandemic

During the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the COVIDiSTRESS Consortium launched an open-access global survey to understand and improve individuals’ experiences related to the crisis. A year later, we extended this line of research by launching a new survey to address the dynamic landscape of the pandemic. This survey was released with the goal of addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion by working with over 150 researchers across the globe who collected data in 48 languages and dialects across 137 countries. The resulting cleaned dataset described here includes 15,740 of over 20,000 responses. The dataset allows cross-cultural study of psychological wellbeing and behaviours a year into the pandemic. It includes measures of stress, resilience, vaccine attitudes, trust in government and scientists, compliance, and information acquisition and misperceptions regarding COVID-19. Open-access raw and cleaned datasets with computed scores are available. Just as our initial COVIDiSTRESS dataset has facilitated government policy decisions regarding health crises, this dataset can be used by researchers and policy makers to inform research, decisions, and policy. © 2022, The Author(s).U.S. Department of Education, ED: P031S190304; Texas A and M International University, TAMIU; National Research University Higher School of Economics, ВШЭThe COVIDiSTRESS Consortium would like to acknowledge the contributions of friends and collaborators in translating and sharing the COVIDiSTRESS survey, as well as the study participants. Data analysis was supported by Texas A&M International University (TAMIU) Research Grant, TAMIU Act on Ideas, and the TAMIU Advancing Research and Curriculum Initiative (TAMIU ARC) awarded by the US Department of Education Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program (Award # P031S190304). Data collection by Dmitrii Dubrov was supported within the framework of the Basic Research Program at HSE University, RF

POLYMORPHISMS IN THE ALPHA-AMY1 GENE OF WILD AND CULTIVATED BARLEY REVEALED BY THE POLYMERASE CHAIN-REACTION

α-Amylases are the key enzymes involved in the hydrolysis of starch in plants. The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used to detect polymorphisms in the length of amplified sequences between the annealing sites of two primers derived from published α-amy1 gene sequences in barley. These two primers (Bsw1 and Bsw7), flanking the promoter region and the first exon, amplified two PCR fragments in barley. One of the amplified products, with the expected length of 820 bp, appeared together with another shorter PCR band of around 750 bp. This 750-bp fragment seems to be derived from an α-amylase gene not reported previously. Both of the PCR products could be amplified from the two-rowed barley varieties tested, including cv Himalaya from which the sequence information was obtained. Five of the six-rowed barley varieties also have the two PCR fragments whereas another two have only the long fragment. These two fragments seem to be unique to barley, neither of them could be amplified from other cereals; for example, wheat, rye or sorghum. These two α-amylase fragments were mapped to the long arm of 6H, the location of the α-amy1 genes, using wheat-barley addition lines. Amplification of genomic DNA from wild barley accessions with primers Bsw1 and Bsw7 indicated that both of the fragments could be present, or the long and short fragments could be present alone. The results also demonstrated that the genes specifying these two fragments could be independent from each other in barley. The conserved banding pattern of these two fragments in the two-rowed barley varieties implies that artificial selection from these genes may have played an important role in the evolution of cultivated barley from wild barley