Beyond Politics: Opposition to Marriage Equality Predicts Negative Reactions Toward LGBT Individuals

Past research has examined various factors that predict heterosexual individuals’ attitudes toward marriage equality, including gender, age, religion/religiosity, political ideology, and sexual prejudice (Herek, 2011). To our knowledge, no studies have examined the possibility that such attitudes predict consequential behaviors directed at LGBT individuals. Thus, the current work examined the role of opposition to marriage equality in predicting negative behavioral intentions and reactions to antigay hate crimes. Given the importance of gender in sexual prejudice and opposition to marriage equality (Herek, 2000a), these relationships were examined after including gender in the model. Fifty-nine heterosexual students participated in this study. Separate hierarchical regressions revealed that opposition to marriage equality significantly predicted greater negative behavioral intentions (β = .46, p \u3c .001), reduced recognition of a hate crime (β = -.30, p \u3c .05), and marginally increased perpetrator justification (β = -.23, p = .09) above and beyond the influence of gender. Moreover, a two-way interaction indicated that opposition to marriage equality predicted negative behavioral intentions to a greater degree for men than women (β = -.55, p \u3c .05). These results suggested that marriage equality attitudes are not merely political, but rather, predict influential behavioral intentions and reactions toward LGBT individuals

Slow learning about inhibitors in human contingency learning

Conditioned inhibition is observed after training in which a stimulus signals the absence of an otherwise expected outcome. For example, in Pavlov’s (1927) procedure for conditioned inhibition, A+ trials are interspersed with AX- trials, where (+) indicates reinforcement and (-) notes non-reinforcement. Most models of learning assume that the surprisingness of the outcome is important for learning. Such models predict weaker terminal responding to a previous inhibitor than to a previously neutral stimulus after cue-outcome pairings. Such models also predict that learning about the inhibitor will be faster than learning about the neutral stimulus because the inhibitor is more surprising. To empirically test these different predictions, a 2 (Inhibitor vs. Neutral stimulus) X 3 (Number of Trials [Zero vs. One vs. Two] mixed design was conducted in a human contingency learning procedure. Our experiment revealed faster excitatory learning for a previously neutral stimulus than for a previous inhibitory stimulus, which is inconsistent with the view that surprise drives learning

Accessing Justice with Zoom: Experiences and Outcomes in Online Civil Courts

The global COVID-19 pandemic brought significant change to our civil justice system, particularly in the rapid shift from in-person to remote court proceedings. Courts across the country, facing the unprecedented challenge of a global health emergency, embraced rapid innovation and the adoption of remote proceeding platforms, such as Zoom and Webex. State courts did so across case types, including within high-volume civil dockets containing evictions, debt collections, small claims, and family law cases, where millions of self-represented and unrepresented litigants encounter the U.S. civil justice system each year. Amid the pandemic, voices converged to encourage these justice innovations, including the voices of Supreme Court justices, state court administrators, and access to justice reformers who reimagined judicial administration with these new technologies. Concurrently, given this rapid national experiment, challenges ensued, complicated by inexperience with these platforms prior to the pandemic and vexing digital divides. This report enters the national conversation at an especially crucial time: state supreme courts and court administrators are actively deliberating on what the new normal will entail post-pandemic

A single Streptomyces symbiont makes multiple antifungals to support the fungus farming ant Acromyrmex octospinosus

Attine ants are dependent on a cultivated fungus for food and use antibiotics produced by symbiotic Actinobacteria as weedkillers in their fungus gardens. Actinobacterial species belonging to the genera Pseudonocardia, Streptomyces and Amycolatopsis have been isolated from attine ant nests and shown to confer protection against a range of microfungal weeds. In previous work on the higher attine Acromyrmex octospinosus we isolated a Streptomyces strain that produces candicidin, consistent with another report that attine ants use Streptomyces-produced candicidin in their fungiculture. Here we report the genome analysis of this Streptomyces strain and identify multiple antibiotic biosynthetic pathways. We demonstrate, using gene disruptions and mass spectrometry, that this single strain has the capacity to make candicidin and multiple antimycin compounds. Although antimycins have been known for > 60 years we report the sequence of the biosynthetic gene cluster for the first time. Crucially, disrupting the candicidin and antimycin gene clusters in the same strain had no effect on bioactivity against a co-evolved nest pathogen called Escovopsis that has been identified in similar to 30% of attine ant nests. Since the Streptomyces strain has strong bioactivity against Escovopsis we conclude that it must make additional antifungal(s) to inhibit Escovopsis. However, candicidin and antimycins likely offer protection against other microfungal weeds that infect the attine fungal gardens. Thus, we propose that the selection of this biosynthetically prolific strain from the natural environment provides A. octospinosus with broad spectrum activity against Escovopsis and other microfungal weeds.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Retrieval cues fail to influence contextualized evaluations.

Initial evaluations generalise to new contexts, whereas counter-attitudinal evaluations are context-specific. Counter-attitudinal information may not change evaluations in new contexts because perceivers fail to retrieve counter-attitudinal cue-evaluation associations from memory outside the counter-attitudinal learning context. The current work examines whether an additional, counter-attitudinal retrieval cue can enhance the generalizability of counter-attitudinal evaluations. In four experiments, participants learned positive information about a target person, Bob, in one context, and then learned negative information about Bob in a different context. While learning the negative information, participants wore a wristband as a retrieval cue for counter-attitudinal Bob-negative associations. Participants then made speeded as well as deliberate evaluations of Bob while wearing or not wearing the wristband. Internal meta-analysis failed to find a reliable effect of the counter-attitudinal retrieval cue on speeded or deliberate evaluations, whereas the context cues influenced speeded and deliberate evaluations. Counter to predictions, counter-attitudinal retrieval cues did not disrupt the generalisation of first-learned evaluations or the context-specificity of second-learned evaluations (Experiments 2-4), but the counter-attitudinal retrieval cue did influence evaluations in the absence of context cues (Experiment 1). The current work provides initial evidence that additional counter-attitudinal retrieval cues fail to disrupt the renewal and generalizability of first-learned evaluations

Religious Art: two cases of Iconography

For a conspectus of religious art in Australia one need only look into Sister Rosemary Crumlin's Images of Religion in Australian Art which must be for a considerable time to come the definitive text. For news about religious art in Australia one looks about, for confirmation or denial of the rumours that the Blake Prize for religious art - founded in 1951 - is to become extinct.Asked for a short note on religious art in Australia we decided not to attempt a summary of the current scene but to take two cases. There are cases from different thought systems, art systems, and iconographic systems: and their mutual relationship will be, necessarily problematic

The conserved actinobacterial two-component system MtrAB coordinates chloramphenicol production with sporulation in Streptomyces venezuelae NRRL B-65442

Streptomyces bacteria make numerous secondary metabolites, including half of all known antibiotics. Production of antibiotics is usually coordinated with the onset of sporulation but the cross regulation of these processes is not fully understood. This is important because most Streptomyces antibiotics are produced at low levels or not at all under laboratory conditions and this makes large scale production of these compounds very challenging. Here we characterise the highly conserved actinobacterial two-component system MtrAB in the model organism Streptomyces venezuelae and provide evidence that it coordinates production of the antibiotic chloramphenicol with sporulation. MtrAB are known to coordinate DNA replication and cell division in Mycobacterium tuberculosis where TB-MtrA is essential for viability. We were unable to delete mtrA in S. venezuelae unless another copy was present in trans but deletion of mtrB resulted in a global shift in the metabolome, including constitutive, high-level production of chloramphenicol. We found that chloramphenicol is detectable in the wild type strain, but only at very low levels and only after it has sporulated. ChIP-seq showed that MtrA binds upstream of DNA replication and cell division genes and genes required for chloramphenicol production. dnaA, dnaN, oriC and wblE (whiB1) appear to be targets for MtrA in both M. tuberculosis and S. venezuelae. Intriguingly, over-expression of TB-MtrA and gain of function TB- and Sv-MtrA proteins in S. venezuelae also switched on high level production of chloramphenicol. Given the conservation of MtrAB, these constructs might be useful tools for manipulating antibiotic production in other filamentous actinomycetes

Four quasars above redshift 6 discovered by the Canada-France High-z Quasar Survey

The Canada-France High-z Quasar Survey (CFHQS) is an optical survey designed to locate quasars during the epoch of reionization. In this paper we present the discovery of the first four CFHQS quasars at redshift greater than 6, including the most distant known quasar, CFHQS J2329-0301 at z=6.43. We describe the observational method used to identify the quasars and present optical, infrared, and millimeter photometry and optical and near-infrared spectroscopy. We investigate the dust properties of these quasars finding an unusual dust extinction curve for one quasar and a high far-infrared luminosity due to dust emission for another. The mean millimeter continuum flux for CFHQS quasars is substantially lower than that for SDSS quasars at the same redshift, likely due to a correlation with quasar UV luminosity. For two quasars with sufficiently high signal-to-noise optical spectra, we use the spectra to investigate the ionization state of hydrogen at z>5. For CFHQS J1509-1749 at z=6.12, we find significant evolution (beyond a simple extrapolation of lower redshift data) in the Gunn-Peterson optical depth at z>5.4. The line-of-sight to this quasar has one of the highest known optical depths at z~5.8. An analysis of the sizes of the highly-ionized near-zones in the spectra of two quasars at z=6.12 and z=6.43 suggest the IGM surrounding these quasars was substantially ionized before these quasars turned on. Together, these observations point towards an extended reionization process, but we caution that cosmic variance is still a major limitation in z>6 quasar observations.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures, AJ, in press, minor changes to previous versio

The Direct Synthesis of H ₂ O ₂ Using TS-1 Supported Catalysts

In this study we show that using gold palladium nanoparticles supported on a commercial titanium silicate (TS‐1) prepared using a wet co‐impregnation method it is possible to produce hydrogen peroxide from molecular H2 and O2 via the direct synthesis reaction. The effect of Au: Pd ratio and calcination temperature is evaluated as well as the role of platinum addition to the AuPd supported catalysts. The effect of platinum addition to gold‐palladium nanoparticles is observed to result in a significant improvement in catalytic activity and selectivity to hydrogen peroxide with detailed characterisation indicating this is a result of selectively tuning the ratio of palladium oxidation states