The size-brightness correspondence:evidence for crosstalk among aligned conceptual feature dimensions

The same core set of cross-sensory correspondences connecting stimulus features across different sensory channels are observed regardless of the modality of the stimulus with which the correspondences are probed. This observation suggests that correspondences involve modality-independent representations of aligned conceptual feature dimensions, and predicts a size-brightness correspondence, in which smaller is aligned with brighter. This suggestion accommodates cross-sensory congruity effects where contrasting feature values are specified verbally rather than perceptually (e.g., where the words WHITE and BLACK interact with the classification of high and low pitch sounds). Experiment 1 brings these two issues together in assessing a conceptual basis for correspondences. The names of bright/white and dark/black substances were presented in a speeded brightness classification task in which the two alternative response keys differed in size. A size-brightness congruity effect was confirmed, with substance names classified more quickly when the relative size of the response key needing to be pressed was congruent with the brightness of the named substance (e.g., when yoghurt was classified as a bright substance by pressing the smaller of two keys). Experiment 2 assesses the proposed conceptual basis for this congruity effect by requiring the same named substances to be classified according to their edibility (with all of the bright/dark substances having been selected for their edibility/inedibility, respectively). The predicted absence of a size-brightness congruity effect, along with other aspects of the results, supports the proposed conceptual basis for correspondences and speaks against accounts in which modality-specific perceptuomotor representations are entirely responsible for correspondence-induced congruity effects

Male Responses to Conspecific Advertisement Signals in the Field Cricket Gryllus rubens (Orthoptera: Gryllidae)

In many species males aggregate and produce long-range advertisement signals to attract conspecific females. The majority of the receivers of these signals are probably other males most of the time, and male responses to competitors' signals can structure the spatial and temporal organization of the breeding aggregation and affect male mating tactics. I quantified male responses to a conspecific advertisement stimulus repeatedly over three age classes in Gryllus rubens (Orthoptera: Gryllidae) in order to estimate the type and frequency of male responses to the broadcast stimulus and to determine the factors affecting them. Factors tested included body size, wing dimorphism, age, and intensity of the broadcast stimulus. Overall, males employed acoustic response more often than positive phonotactic response. As males aged, the frequency of positive phonotactic response decreased but that of the acoustic response increased. That is, males may use positive phonotaxis in the early stages of their adult lives, possibly to find suitable calling sites or parasitize calling males, and then later in life switch to acoustic responses in response to conspecific advertisement signals. Males with smaller body size more frequently exhibited acoustic responses. This study suggests that individual variation, more than any factors measured, is critical for age-dependent male responses to conspecific advertisement signals

Do self-reported intentions predict clinicians behaviour: a systematic review.

Background: Implementation research is the scientific study of methods to promote the systematic uptake of clinical research findings into routine clinical practice. Several interventions have been shown to be effective in changing health care professionals' behaviour, but heterogeneity within interventions, targeted behaviours, and study settings make generalisation difficult. Therefore, it is necessary to identify the 'active ingredients' in professional behaviour change strategies. Theories of human behaviour that feature an individual's "intention" to do something as the most immediate predictor of their behaviour have proved to be useful in non-clinical populations. As clinical practice is a form of human behaviour such theories may offer a basis for developing a scientific rationale for the choice of intervention to use in the implementation of new practice. The aim of this review was to explore the relationship between intention and behaviour in clinicians and how this compares to the intention-behaviour relationship in studies of non-clinicians. Methods: We searched: PsycINFO, MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Science/Social science citation index, Current contents (social & behavioural med/clinical med), ISI conference proceedings, and Index to Theses. The reference lists of all included papers were checked manually. Studies were eligible for inclusion if they had: examined a clinical behaviour within a clinical context, included measures of both intention and behaviour, measured behaviour after intention, and explored this relationship quantitatively. All titles and abstracts retrieved by electronic searching were screened independently by two reviewers, with disagreements resolved by discussion. Discussion: Ten studies were found that examined the relationship between intention and clinical behaviours in 1623 health professionals. The proportion of variance in behaviour explained by intention was of a similar magnitude to that found in the literature relating to non-health professionals. This was more consistently the case for studies in which intention-behaviour correspondence was good and behaviour was self-reported. Though firm conclusions are limited by a smaller literature, our findings are consistent with that of the non-health professional literature. This review, viewed in the context of the larger populations of studies, provides encouragement for the contention that there is a predictable relationship between the intentions of a health professional and their subsequent behaviour. However, there remain significant methodological challenges

Red blood cell glutathione peroxidase activity in female nulligravid and pregnant rats

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The alterations of the glutathione peroxidase enzyme complex system occur in physiological conditions such as aging and oxidative stress consequent to strenuous exercise.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Authors optimize the spectrophotometric method to measure glutathione peroxidase activity in rat red blood cell membranes.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The optimization, when applied to age paired rats, both nulligravid and pregnant, shows that pregnancy induces, at seventeen d of pregnancy, an increase of both reactive oxygen substance concentration in red blood cells and membrane glutathione peroxidase activity.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The glutathione peroxidase increase in erythrocyte membranes is induced by systemic oxidative stress long lasting rat pregnancy.</p

Degeneracy: a link between evolvability, robustness and complexity in biological systems

A full accounting of biological robustness remains elusive; both in terms of the mechanisms by which robustness is achieved and the forces that have caused robustness to grow over evolutionary time. Although its importance to topics such as ecosystem services and resilience is well recognized, the broader relationship between robustness and evolution is only starting to be fully appreciated. A renewed interest in this relationship has been prompted by evidence that mutational robustness can play a positive role in the discovery of adaptive innovations (evolvability) and evidence of an intimate relationship between robustness and complexity in biology. This paper offers a new perspective on the mechanics of evolution and the origins of complexity, robustness, and evolvability. Here we explore the hypothesis that degeneracy, a partial overlap in the functioning of multi-functional components, plays a central role in the evolution and robustness of complex forms. In support of this hypothesis, we present evidence that degeneracy is a fundamental source of robustness, it is intimately tied to multi-scaled complexity, and it establishes conditions that are necessary for system evolvability

Garden and landscape-scale correlates of moths of differing conservation status: significant effects of urbanization and habitat diversity

Moths are abundant and ubiquitous in vegetated terrestrial environments and are pollinators, important herbivores of wild plants, and food for birds, bats and rodents. In recent years, many once abundant and widespread species have shown sharp declines that have been cited by some as indicative of a widespread insect biodiversity crisis. Likely causes of these declines include agricultural intensification, light pollution, climate change, and urbanization; however, the real underlying cause(s) is still open to conjecture. We used data collected from the citizen science Garden Moth Scheme (GMS) to explore the spatial association between the abundance of 195 widespread British species of moth, and garden habitat and landscape features, to see if spatial habitat and landscape associations varied for species of differing conservation status. We found that associations with habitat and landscape composition were species-specific, but that there were consistent trends in species richness and total moth abundance. Gardens with more diverse and extensive microhabitats were associated with higher species richness and moth abundance; gardens near to the coast were associated with higher richness and moth abundance; and gardens in more urbanized locations were associated with lower species richness and moth abundance. The same trends were also found for species classified as increasing, declining and vulnerable under IUCN (World Conservation Union) criteria

Novel epigenetic clock for fetal brain development predicts prenatal age for cellular stem cell models and derived neurons

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and their differentiated neurons (iPSC-neurons) are a widely used cellular model in the research of the central nervous system. However, it is unknown how well they capture age-associated processes, particularly given that pluripotent cells are only present during the earliest stages of mammalian development. Epigenetic clocks utilize coordinated age-associated changes in DNA methylation to make predictions that correlate strongly with chronological age. It has been shown that the induction of pluripotency rejuvenates predicted epigenetic age. As existing clocks are not optimized for the study of brain development, we developed the fetal brain clock (FBC), a bespoke epigenetic clock trained in human prenatal brain samples in order to investigate more precisely the epigenetic age of iPSCs and iPSC-neurons. The FBC was tested in two independent validation cohorts across a total of 194 samples, confirming that the FBC outperforms other established epigenetic clocks in fetal brain cohorts. We applied the FBC to DNA methylation data from iPSCs and embryonic stem cells and their derived neuronal precursor cells and neurons, finding that these cell types are epigenetically characterized as having an early fetal age. Furthermore, while differentiation from iPSCs to neurons significantly increases epigenetic age, iPSC-neurons are still predicted as being fetal. Together our findings reiterate the need to better understand the limitations of existing epigenetic clocks for answering biological research questions and highlight a limitation of iPSC-neurons as a cellular model of age-related diseases

The Importance of Context and Cognitive Agency in Developing Police Knowledge: Going Beyond the Police Science Discourse

This paper argues the current exposition of police knowledge through the discourses of police science and evidenced based policing (EBP) leads to exaggerated claims about what is, and can be, known in policing. This new orthodoxy underestimates the challenges of applying knowledge within culturally-mediated police practice. The paper draws upon virtue epistemology highlighting the role cognitive agency plays in establishing knowledge claims. We challenge the assumption that it is possible to derive what works in all instances of certain aspects of policing and suggest it would be more apt to speak about what worked within a specific police context