Intercultural New Media Studies: The Next Frontier in intercultural Communication

New media (ICT\u27s) are transforming communication across cultures. Despite this revolution in cross cultural contact, communication researchers have largely ignored the impact of new media on intercultural communication. This groundbreaking article defines the parameters of a new field of inquiry called Intercultural New Media Studies (INMS), which explores the intersection between ICT\u27s and intercultural communication. Composed of two research areas—(1) new media and intercultural communication theory and (2) culture and new media—INMS investigates new digital theories of intercultural contact as well as refines and expands twentieth-century intercultural communication theories, examining their salience in a digital world. INMS promises to increase our understanding of intercultural communication in a new media age and is the next frontier in intercultural communication

The nation and the family: the impact of national identification and perceived importance of family values on homophobic attitudes in Lithuania and Scotland

The meanings attached to the nation can be consequential for group members’ attitudes and beliefs. We examined how national identity definition can influence the extent of individuals’ homophobia with 159 Lithuanian and 176 Scottish university students who completed a questionnaire which measured their national identification, homophobia, and the extent to which they felt traditional family values were central to their nation’s identity. Consistent with nation-wide differences in the significance given to the family, Lithuanian participants perceived family values to be more important for their national identity and expressed higher levels of homophobia than did Scottish participants. Moreover, the relationship between level of national identification and homophobia was stronger in Lithuania than in Scotland. Analyses revealed that the perceived importance of family values helped explain the difference between homophobia levels in Lithuania and Scotland. In both sites we found an indirect effect of national identification on homophobia via the perceived importance of family values, but this effect was significantly stronger for Lithuanian participants. These findings illustrate the ways in which identification with the nation is relevant to attitudes concerning sexuality, and how this varies according to national context. Our work indicates that LGBT rights campaigns should be informed by the knowledge that homophobia may be perpetuated by national valorisation of the family

Does maternal exposure to an environmental stressor affect offspring response to predators?

There is growing recognition of the ways in which maternal effects can influence offspring size, physiological performance, and survival. Additionally, environmental contaminants increasingly act as stressors in maternal environments, possibly leading to maternal effects on subsequent offspring. Thus, it is important to determine whether contaminants and other stressors can contribute to maternal effects, particularly under varied ecological conditions that encompass the range under which offspring develop. We used aquatic mesocosms to determine whether maternal effects of mercury (Hg) exposure shape offspring phenotype in the American toad (Bufo americanus) in the presence or absence of larval predators (dragonfly naiads). We found significant maternal effects of Hg exposure and significant effects of predators on several offspring traits, but there was little evidence that maternal effects altered offspring interactions with predators. Offspring from Hg-exposed mothers were 18% smaller than those of reference mothers. Offspring reared with predators were 23% smaller at metamorphosis than those reared without predators. There was also evidence of reduced larval survival when larvae were reared with predators, but this was independent of maternal effects. Additionally, 5 times more larvae had spinal malformations when reared without predators, suggesting selective predation of malformed larvae by predators. Lastly, we found a significant negative correlation between offspring survival and algal density in mesocosms, indicating a role for top-down effects of predators on periphyton communities. Our results demonstrate that maternal exposure to an environmental stressor can induce phenotypic responses in offspring in a direction similar to that produced by direct exposure of offspring to predators

Population tobacco control interventions and their effects on social inequalities in smoking: placing an equity lens on existing systematic reviews

BACKGROUND: With smoking increasingly confined to lower socio-economic groups, the tobacco control community has been urged to identify which population-level tobacco control interventions work in order to help tackle smoking-related health inequalities. Systematic reviews have a crucial role to play in this task. This overview was therefore carried out in order to (i) summarise the evidence from existing systematic reviews of population-level tobacco control interventions, and (ii) assess the need for a new systematic review of primary studies, with the aim of assessing the differential effects of such interventions. METHODS: Systematic review methods were used to evaluate existing systematic reviews that assessed a population-level tobacco control intervention and which reported characteristics of included participants in terms of at least one socio-demographic or socio-economic factor. RESULTS: Nineteen systematic reviews were included. Four reviews assessed interventions aimed at the population level alone, whilst fifteen included at least one primary study that examined this type of intervention. Four reviews assessed youth access restrictions, one assessed the effects of increasing the unit price of tobacco, and six assessed smoking bans or restrictions. Of the eight remaining reviews, six assessed multi-component community based interventions, in which the population-level interventions were part of a wider tobacco control programme, and two assessed the impact of smoking bans or restrictions in reducing exposure to environmental tobacco smoke. We found tentative evidence that the effect of increasing the unit price of tobacco products may vary between ethnic and socio-economic groups, and between males and females. However, differences in the context and the results of different reviews made it difficult to draw any firm conclusions. Few identified reviews explicitly attempted to examine differences in intervention effects between socio-demographic groups. Therefore on the basis of these reviews the potential for smoking bans, and youth access restrictions to decrease social inequalities in smoking remains unknown. CONCLUSION: There is preliminary evidence that increases in the unit price of tobacco may have the potential to reduce smoking related health inequalities. There is a need for equity effects to be explicitly evaluated in future systematic reviews and in primary research assessing the effects of population tobacco control interventions

The Evolution of Bat Vestibular Systems in the Face of Potential Antagonistic Selection Pressures for Flight and Echolocation

PMCID: PMC3634842This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

Topography of the Chimpanzee Corpus Callosum

The corpus callosum (CC) is the largest commissural white matter tract in mammalian brains, connecting homotopic and heterotopic regions of the cerebral cortex. Knowledge of the distribution of callosal fibers projecting into specific cortical regions has important implications for understanding the evolution of lateralized structures and functions of the cerebral cortex. No comparisons of CC topography in humans and great apes have yet been conducted. We investigated the topography of the CC in 21 chimpanzees using high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Tractography was conducted based on fiber assignment by continuous tracking (FACT) algorithm. We expected chimpanzees to display topographical organization similar to humans, especially concerning projections into the frontal cortical regions. Similar to recent studies in humans, tractography identified five clusters of CC fibers projecting into defined cortical regions: prefrontal; premotor and supplementary motor; motor; sensory; parietal, temporal and occipital. Significant differences in fractional anisotropy (FA) were found in callosal regions, with highest FA values in regions projecting to higher-association areas of posterior cortical (including parietal, temporal and occipital cortices) and prefrontal cortical regions (p<0.001). The lowest FA values were seen in regions projecting into motor and sensory cortical areas. Our results indicate chimpanzees display similar topography of the CC as humans, in terms of distribution of callosal projections and microstructure of fibers as determined by anisotropy measures

Biodiversity Loss and the Taxonomic Bottleneck: Emerging Biodiversity Science

Human domination of the Earth has resulted in dramatic changes to global and local patterns of biodiversity. Biodiversity is critical to human sustainability because it drives the ecosystem services that provide the core of our life-support system. As we, the human species, are the primary factor leading to the decline in biodiversity, we need detailed information about the biodiversity and species composition of specific locations in order to understand how different species contribute to ecosystem services and how humans can sustainably conserve and manage biodiversity. Taxonomy and ecology, two fundamental sciences that generate the knowledge about biodiversity, are associated with a number of limitations that prevent them from providing the information needed to fully understand the relevance of biodiversity in its entirety for human sustainability: (1) biodiversity conservation strategies that tend to be overly focused on research and policy on a global scale with little impact on local biodiversity; (2) the small knowledge base of extant global biodiversity; (3) a lack of much-needed site-specific data on the species composition of communities in human-dominated landscapes, which hinders ecosystem management and biodiversity conservation; (4) biodiversity studies with a lack of taxonomic precision; (5) a lack of taxonomic expertise and trained taxonomists; (6) a taxonomic bottleneck in biodiversity inventory and assessment; and (7) neglect of taxonomic resources and a lack of taxonomic service infrastructure for biodiversity science. These limitations are directly related to contemporary trends in research, conservation strategies, environmental stewardship, environmental education, sustainable development, and local site-specific conservation. Today’s biological knowledge is built on the known global biodiversity, which represents barely 20% of what is currently extant (commonly accepted estimate of 10 million species) on planet Earth. Much remains unexplored and unknown, particularly in hotspots regions of Africa, South Eastern Asia, and South and Central America, including many developing or underdeveloped countries, where localized biodiversity is scarcely studied or described. ‘‘Backyard biodiversity’’, defined as local biodiversity near human habitation, refers to the natural resources and capital for ecosystem services at the grassroots level, which urgently needs to be explored, documented, and conserved as it is the backbone of sustainable economic development in these countries. Beginning with early identification and documentation of local flora and fauna, taxonomy has documented global biodiversity and natural history based on the collection of ‘‘backyard biodiversity’’ specimens worldwide. However, this branch of science suffered a continuous decline in the latter half of the twentieth century, and has now reached a point of potential demise. At present there are very few professional taxonomists and trained local parataxonomists worldwide, while the need for, and demands on, taxonomic services by conservation and resource management communities are rapidly increasing. Systematic collections, the material basis of biodiversity information, have been neglected and abandoned, particularly at institutions of higher learning. Considering the rapid increase in the human population and urbanization, human sustainability requires new conceptual and practical approaches to refocusing and energizing the study of the biodiversity that is the core of natural resources for sustainable development and biotic capital for sustaining our life-support system. In this paper we aim to document and extrapolate the essence of biodiversity, discuss the state and nature of taxonomic demise, the trends of recent biodiversity studies, and suggest reasonable approaches to a biodiversity science to facilitate the expansion of global biodiversity knowledge and to create useful data on backyard biodiversity worldwide towards human sustainability

PeanutMap: an online genome database for comparative molecular maps of peanut

BACKGROUND: Molecular maps have been developed for many species, and are of particular importance for varietal development and comparative genomics. However, despite the existence of multiple sets of linkage maps, databases of these data are lacking for many species, including peanut. DESCRIPTION: PeanutMap provides a web-based interface for viewing specific linkage groups of a map set. PeanutMap can display and compare multiple maps of a set based upon marker or trait correspondences, which is particularly important as cultivated peanut is a disomic tetraploid. The database can also compare linkage groups among multiple map sets, allowing identification of corresponding linkage groups from results of different research projects. Data from the two published peanut genome map sets, and also from three maps sets of phenotypic traits are present in the database. Data from PeanutMap have been incorporated into the Legume Information System website to allow peanut map data to be used for cross-species comparisons. CONCLUSION: The utility of the database is expected to increase as several SSR-based maps are being developed currently, and expanded efforts for comparative mapping of legumes are underway. Optimal use of these data will benefit from the development of tools to facilitate comparative analysis

The effectiveness of interventions to change six health behaviours: a review of reviews

Background: Several World Health Organisation reports over recent years have highlighted the high incidence of chronic diseases such as diabetes, coronary heart disease and cancer. Contributory factors include unhealthy diets, alcohol and tobacco use and sedentary lifestyles. This paper reports the findings of a review of reviews of behavioural change interventions to reduce unhealthy behaviours or promote healthy behaviours. We included six different health-related behaviours in the review: healthy eating, physical exercise, smoking, alcohol misuse, sexual risk taking (in young people) and illicit drug use. We excluded reviews which focussed on pharmacological treatments or those which required intensive treatments (e. g. for drug or alcohol dependency). Methods: The Cochrane Library, Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effectiveness (DARE) and several Ovid databases were searched for systematic reviews of interventions for the six behaviours (updated search 2008). Two reviewers applied the inclusion criteria, extracted data and assessed the quality of the reviews. The results were discussed in a narrative synthesis. Results: We included 103 reviews published between 1995 and 2008. The focus of interventions varied, but those targeting specific individuals were generally designed to change an existing behaviour (e. g. cigarette smoking, alcohol misuse), whilst those aimed at the general population or groups such as school children were designed to promote positive behaviours (e. g. healthy eating). Almost 50% (n = 48) of the reviews focussed on smoking (either prevention or cessation). Interventions that were most effective across a range of health behaviours included physician advice or individual counselling, and workplace- and school-based activities. Mass media campaigns and legislative interventions also showed small to moderate effects in changing health behaviours. Generally, the evidence related to short-term effects rather than sustained/longer-term impact and there was a relative lack of evidence on how best to address inequalities. Conclusions: Despite limitations of the review of reviews approach, it is encouraging that there are interventions that are effective in achieving behavioural change. Further emphasis in both primary studies and secondary analysis (e.g. systematic reviews) should be placed on assessing the differential effectiveness of interventions across different population subgroups to ensure that health inequalities are addressed.</p

Histone deacetylase inhibitors strongly sensitise neuroblastoma cells to TRAIL-induced apoptosis by a caspases-dependent increase of the pro- to anti-apoptotic proteins ratio

BACKGROUND: Neuroblastoma (NB) is the second most common solid childhood tumour, an aggressive disease for which new therapeutic strategies are strongly needed. Tumour necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) selectively induces apoptosis in most tumour cells, but not in normal tissues and therefore represents a valuable candidate in apoptosis-inducing therapies. Caspase-8 is silenced in a subset of highly malignant NB cells, which results in full TRAIL resistance. In addition, despite constitutive caspase-8 expression, or its possible restoration by different strategies, NB cells remain weakly sensitive to TRAIL indicating a need to develop strategies to sensitise NB cells to TRAIL. Histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACIs) are a new class of anti-cancer agent inducing apoptosis or cell cycle arrest in tumour cells with very low toxicity toward normal cells. Although HDACIs were recently shown to increase death induced by TRAIL in weakly TRAIL-sensitive tumour cells, the precise involved sensitisation mechanisms have not been fully identified. METHODS: NB cell lines were treated with various doses of HDACIs and TRAIL, then cytotoxicity was analysed by MTS/PMS proliferation assays, apoptosis was measured by the Propidium staining method, caspases activity by colorimetric protease assays, and (in)activation of apoptotic proteins by immunoblotting. RESULTS: Sub-toxic doses of HDACIs strongly sensitised caspase-8 positive NB cell lines to TRAIL induced apoptosis in a caspases dependent manner. Combined treatments increased the activation of caspases and Bid, and the inactivation of the anti-apoptotic proteins XIAP, Bcl-x, RIP, and survivin, thereby increasing the pro- to anti-apoptotic protein ratio. It also enhanced the activation of the mitochondrial pathway. Interestingly, the kinetics of caspases activation and inactivation of anti-apoptotic proteins is accelerated by combined treatment with TRAIL and HDACIs compared to TRAIL alone. In contrast, cell surface expression of TRAIL-receptors or TRAIL is not affected by sub-toxic doses of HDACIs. CONCLUSION: HDACIs were shown to activate the mitochondrial pathway and to sensitise NB cells to TRAIL by enhancing the amplitude of the apoptotic cascade and by restoring an apoptosis-prone ratio of pro- to anti-apoptotic proteins. Combining HDACIs and TRAIL could therefore represent a weakly toxic and promising strategy to target TRAIL-resistant tumours such as neuroblastomas