American Affection and Ecuadorian Expression: Cultural Differences in Romantic Relationships

Though people express affection in a wide variety of ways, empirical investigations have yet to converge on one appropriate conceptualization of this construct. Furthermore, investigators have yet to explore what may predict these differences in preferences for different affection expressions. Because belief systems range both across the world and within cultures, we explored expressions of affection across and within cultures to understand how affection expressions may look and be predicted differently. To do this, we recruited 141 Ecuadorian participants through snowballing techniques in Ecuador and 182 United States participants through online snowballing techniques and through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. All participants completed a variety of measures including an original scale assessing preferences for expressing affection, the Romantic Beliefs Scale (Sprecher & Metts, 1989), The Implicit Theories of Romantic Relationships Scale (Knee, 1998), and a within-group measure of culture (Triandis & Gelfand, 1998). First, we conducted exploratory factor analyses within each sample to determine the best factor structure for affection preferences. Results suggest that a 2-Factor solution may best describe affection preferences in Ecuador, whereas a 4-Factor solution may be best in the United States. We then conducted correlational analyses and path analyses to determine how cultural beliefs, romantic relationship beliefs, and affection preferences related in both samples, respectively. Results reveal that different cultural and romantic relationship beliefs relate differently to preferences for different expressions of affection in different cultures. We discuss implications and future directions for this work

In-depth characterization of denitrifier communities across different soil ecosystems in the tundra

Background In contrast to earlier assumptions, there is now mounting evidence for the role of tundra soils as important sources of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N2O). However, the microorganisms involved in the cycling of N2O in this system remain largely uncharacterized. Since tundra soils are variable sources and sinks of N2O, we aimed at investigating differences in community structure across different soil ecosystems in the tundra. Results We analysed 1.4 Tb of metagenomic data from soils in northern Finland covering a range of ecosystems from dry upland soils to water-logged fens and obtained 796 manually binned and curated metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs). We then searched for MAGs harbouring genes involved in denitrification, an important process driving N2O emissions. Communities of potential denitrifiers were dominated by microorganisms with truncated denitrification pathways (i.e., lacking one or more denitrification genes) and differed across soil ecosystems. Upland soils showed a strong N2O sink potential and were dominated by members of the Alphaproteobacteria such as Bradyrhizobium and Reyranella. Fens, which had in general net-zero N2O fluxes, had a high abundance of poorly characterized taxa affiliated with the Chloroflexota lineage Ellin6529 and the Acidobacteriota subdivision Gp23. Conclusions By coupling an in-depth characterization of microbial communities with in situ measurements of N2O fluxes, our results suggest that the observed spatial patterns of N2O fluxes in the tundra are related to differences in the composition of denitrifier communities.Peer reviewe

Measurement report : The influence of traffic and new particle formation on the size distribution of 1–800 nm particles in Helsinki – a street canyon and an urban background station comparison

Peer reviewe

Sugar, Spice, & Everything Nice: Food Flavors, Attraction, and Romantic Interest

The current study is looking at the effects of sweet and spicy taste on women's ratings of men's physical attractiveness as well as their romantic interest levels

Appendix A. Map of the study area in Finland with the studied drainage basins.

Map of the study area in Finland with the studied drainage basins

Appendix C. Modeling results for phytoplankton when only the cladocerans (seven species) were used as zooplankton grazers for phytoplankton.

Modeling results for phytoplankton when only the cladocerans (seven species) were used as zooplankton grazers for phytoplankton

Appendix F. Response shapes (partial dependency plots) for the zooplankton Daphnia galeata based on GBM models.

Response shapes (partial dependency plots) for the zooplankton Daphnia galeata based on GBM models

Appendix D. The intercorrelations between all physicochemical and geographical variables.

The intercorrelations between all physicochemical and geographical variables