Social representations and the politics of participation

Recent work has called for the integration of different perspectives into the field of political psychology (Haste, 2012). This chapter suggests that one possible direction that such efforts can take is studying the role that social representations theory (SRT) can play in understanding political participation and social change. Social representations are systems of common-sense knowledge and social practice; they provide the lens through which to view and create social and political realities, mediate people's relations with these sociopolitical worlds and defend cultural and political identities. Social representations are therefore key for conceptualising participation as the activity that locates individuals and social groups in their sociopolitical world. Political participation is generally seen as conditional to membership of sociopolitical groups and therefore is often linked to citizenship. To be a citizen of a society or a member of any social group one has to participate as such. Often political participation is defined as the ability to communicate one's views to the political elite or to the political establishment (Uhlaner, 2001), or simply explicit involvement in politics and electoral processes (Milbrath, 1965). However, following scholars on ideology (Eagleton, 1991; Thompson, 1990) and social knowledge (Jovchelovitch, 2007), we extend our understanding of political participation to all social relations and also develop a more agentic model where individuals and groups construct, develop and resist their own views, ideas and beliefs. We thus adopt a broader approach to participation in comparison to other political-psychological approaches, such as personality approaches (e.g. Mondak and Halperin, 2008) and cognitive approaches or, more recently, neuropsychological approaches (Hatemi and McDermott, 2012). We move away from a focus on the individual's political behaviour and its antecedents and outline an approach that focuses on the interaction between psychological and political phenomena (Deutsch and Kinnvall, 2002) through examining the politics of social knowledge

Event-related alpha suppression in response to facial motion

This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.While biological motion refers to both face and body movements, little is known about the visual perception of facial motion. We therefore examined alpha wave suppression as a reduction in power is thought to reflect visual activity, in addition to attentional reorienting and memory processes. Nineteen neurologically healthy adults were tested on their ability to discriminate between successive facial motion captures. These animations exhibited both rigid and non-rigid facial motion, as well as speech expressions. The structural and surface appearance of these facial animations did not differ, thus participants decisions were based solely on differences in facial movements. Upright, orientation-inverted and luminance-inverted facial stimuli were compared. At occipital and parieto-occipital regions, upright facial motion evoked a transient increase in alpha which was then followed by a significant reduction. This finding is discussed in terms of neural efficiency, gating mechanisms and neural synchronization. Moreover, there was no difference in the amount of alpha suppression evoked by each facial stimulus at occipital regions, suggesting early visual processing remains unaffected by manipulation paradigms. However, upright facial motion evoked greater suppression at parieto-occipital sites, and did so in the shortest latency. Increased activity within this region may reflect higher attentional reorienting to natural facial motion but also involvement of areas associated with the visual control of body effectors. © 2014 Girges et al

Evolutionary connectionism: algorithmic principles underlying the evolution of biological organisation in evo-devo, evo-eco and evolutionary transitions

The mechanisms of variation, selection and inheritance, on which evolution by natural selection depends, are not fixed over evolutionary time. Current evolutionary biology is increasingly focussed on understanding how the evolution of developmental organisations modifies the distribution of phenotypic variation, the evolution of ecological relationships modifies the selective environment, and the evolution of reproductive relationships modifies the heritability of the evolutionary unit. The major transitions in evolution, in particular, involve radical changes in developmental, ecological and reproductive organisations that instantiate variation, selection and inheritance at a higher level of biological organisation. However, current evolutionary theory is poorly equipped to describe how these organisations change over evolutionary time and especially how that results in adaptive complexes at successive scales of organisation (the key problem is that evolution is self-referential, i.e. the products of evolution change the parameters of the evolutionary process). Here we first reinterpret the central open questions in these domains from a perspective that emphasises the common underlying themes. We then synthesise the findings from a developing body of work that is building a new theoretical approach to these questions by converting well-understood theory and results from models of cognitive learning. Specifically, connectionist models of memory and learning demonstrate how simple incremental mechanisms, adjusting the relationships between individually-simple components, can produce organisations that exhibit complex system-level behaviours and improve the adaptive capabilities of the system. We use the term “evolutionary connectionism” to recognise that, by functionally equivalent processes, natural selection acting on the relationships within and between evolutionary entities can result in organisations that produce complex system-level behaviours in evolutionary systems and modify the adaptive capabilities of natural selection over time. We review the evidence supporting the functional equivalences between the domains of learning and of evolution, and discuss the potential for this to resolve conceptual problems in our understanding of the evolution of developmental, ecological and reproductive organisations and, in particular, the major evolutionary transitions

Salmonella enterica biofilm-mediated dispersal by nitric oxide donors in association with cellulose nanocrystal hydrogels

Protected by extracellular polymers, microbes within biofilms are significantly more resistant to disinfectants. Current research has been instrumental in identifying nitric oxide donors and hydrogels as potential disinfectant additives. Nitric oxide (NO) donors are considered a very promising molecule as biofilm dispersal agents and hydrogels have recently attracted a lot of interest due to their biocompatible properties and ability to form stable thin films. When the NO donor MAHMA NONOate was dissolved in phosphate saline buffer, it was able to reduce the biomass of well-established biofilms up to 15% for at least 24 h of contact time. Encapsulation of MAHMA NONOate and molsidomine within a hydrogel composed of cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) has shown a synergistic effect in dispersing well-established biofilms: after 2 h of exposure, moderate but significant dispersion was measured. After 6 h of exposure, the number of cells transitioning from the biofilm to the planktonic state was up to 0.6 log higher when compared with non-treated biofilms. To further explore the transport processes of NO donors within hydrogels, we measured the nitric oxide flux from gels, at 25°C for a composite of 0.1 µM MAHMA NONOate–CNC. Nitric oxide diffuses up to 500 µm from the hydrogel surface, with flux decreasing according to Fick’s law. 60% of NO was released from the hydrogel composite during the first 23 min. These data suggest that the combined treatments with nitric oxide donor and hydrogels may allow for new sustainable cleaning strategies

Problems recruiting and retaining postnatal women to a pilot randomised controlled trial of a web-delivered weight loss intervention ISRCTN48086713 ISRCTN

Abstract Objective This paper highlights recruitment and retention problems identified during a pilot randomised controlled trial and process evaluation. The pilot trial aimed to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of a web-delivered weight loss intervention for postnatal women and associated trial protocol. Results General practice database searches revealed low rates of eligible postnatal women per practice. 16 (10%) of the 168 identified women were recruited and randomised, seven to the intervention and nine to the control. 57% (4/7) of the intervention women completed 3 month follow-up measurements in comparison to 56% (5/9) in the control group. By 12 months, retention in the intervention group was 43% (3/7), with 2/7 women active on the website, in comparison to 44% (4/9) of the control group. Interview findings revealed the web as an acceptable method for delivery of the intervention, with the suggestion of an addition of a mobile application. Alternative recruitment strategies, using health visitor appointments, midwifery departments or mother and baby/toddler groups, should be explored. Greater involvement of potential users should enable better recruitment methods to be developed. Trial registration ISRCTN: ISRCTN48086713, Registered 26 October 201

Total 18F-dopa PET tumour uptake reflects metabolic endocrine tumour activity in patients with a carcinoid tumour

Positron emission tomography (PET) using 6-[(18)F]fluoro-L-dihydroxyphenylalanine ((18)F-dopa) has an excellent sensitivity to detect carcinoid tumour lesions. (18)F-dopa tumour uptake and the levels of biochemical tumour markers are mediated by tumour endocrine metabolic activity. We evaluated whether total (18)F-dopa tumour uptake on PET, defined as whole-body metabolic tumour burden (WBMTB), reflects tumour load per patient, as measured with tumour markers. Seventy-seven consecutive carcinoid patients who underwent an (18)F-dopa PET scan in two previously published studies were analysed. For all tumour lesions mean standardised uptake values (SUVs) at 40% of the maximal SUV and tumour volume on (18)F-dopa PET were determined and multiplied to calculate a metabolic burden per lesion. WBMTB was the sum of the metabolic burden of all individual lesions per patient. The 24-h urinary serotonin, urine and plasma 5-hydroxindoleacetic acid (5-HIAA), catecholamines (nor)epinephrine, dopamine and their metabolites, measured in urine and plasma, and serum chromogranin A served as tumour markers. All but 1 were evaluable for WBMTB; 74 patients had metastatic disease. (18)F-dopa PET detected 979 lesions. SUV(max) on (18)F-dopa PET varied up to 29-fold between individual lesions within the same patients. WBMTB correlated with urinary serotonin (r = 0.51) and urinary and plasma 5-HIAA (r = 0.78 and 0.66). WBMTB also correlated with urinary norepinephrine, epinephrine, dopamine and plasma dopamine, but not with serum chromogranin A. Tumour load per patient measured with (18)F-dopa PET correlates with tumour markers of the serotonin and catecholamine pathway in urine and plasma in carcinoid patients, reflecting metabolic tumour activity

Insulin/IGF and Sex Hormone Axes in Human Endometrium and Associations with Endometrial Cancer Risk Factors

Given an ordered set of points and an ordered set of geometric objects in the plane, we are interested in finding a non-crossing matching between point-object pairs. In this paper, we address the algorithmic problem of determining whether a non-crossing matching exists between a given point-object pair. We show that when the objects we match the points to are finite point sets, the problem is NP-complete in general, and polynomial when the objects are on a line or when their size is at most 2. When the objects are line segments, we show that the problem is NP-complete in general, and polynomial when the segments form a convex polygon or are all on a line. Finally, for objects that are straight lines, we show that the problem of finding a min-max non-crossing matching is NP-complete. © 2012 Elsevier B.V.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Decoding a cancer-relevant splicing decision in the RON proto-oncogene using high-throughput mutagenesis

Mutations causing aberrant splicing are frequently implicated in human diseases including cancer. Here, we establish a high-throughput screen of randomly mutated minigenes to decode the cis-regulatory landscape that determines alternative splicing of exon 11 in the proto-oncogene MST1R (RON). Mathematical modelling of splicing kinetics enables us to identify more than 1000 mutations affecting RON exon 11 skipping, which corresponds to the pathological isoform RON Delta 165. Importantly, the effects correlate with RON alternative splicing in cancer patients bearing the same mutations. Moreover, we highlight heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein H (HNRNPH) as a key regulator of RON splicing in healthy tissues and cancer. Using iCLIP and synergy analysis, we pinpoint the functionally most relevant HNRNPH binding sites and demonstrate how cooperative HNRNPH binding facilitates a splicing switch of RON exon 11. Our results thereby offer insights into splicing regulation and the impact of mutations on alternative splicing in cancer.Institute of Molecular Biology Core Facilities; DFG [ZA 881/2-1, KO 4566/4-1, LE 3473/2-1]; LOEWE program Ubiquitin Networks (Ub-Net) of the State of Hesse (Germany); Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [SFB902 B13]; EMBO [3057]; Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia, Portugal (FCT Investigator Starting Grant) [IF/00595/2014]; German Federal Ministry of Research (BMBF; e:bio junior group program) [FKZ: 0316196]; Boehringer Ingelheim Foundation; [INST 47/870-1 FUGG

The Ecology of Antibiotic Use in the ICU: Homogeneous Prescribing of Cefepime but Not Tazocin Selects for Antibiotic Resistant Infection

Background: Antibiotic homogeneity is thought to drive resistance but in vivo data are lacking. In this study, we determined the impact of antibiotic homogeneity per se, and of cefepime versus antipseudomonal penicillin/beta-lactamase inhibitor combinations (APP-beta), on the likelihood of infection or colonisation with antibiotic resistant bacteria and/or two commonly resistant nosocomial pathogens (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa). A secondary question was whether antibiotic cycling was associated with adverse outcomes including mortality, length of stay, and antibiotic resistance