The Role of Personal Agency and Dissatisfaction in Predicting Support for Donald Trump

In his bid for the Presidency, Donald Trump marketed himself as the true voice of the people and as the sole leader who could restore America’s greatness. This approach is reminiscent of reactionary populist movements, which have been shown historically to attract “authoritarians”, that is, the dissatisfied and personally insecure who look to a powerful leader to vicariously fulfill their desires. More recent psychological research suggests, however, that another group of supporters may also be drawn to such movements. This “dominance-seeking” group is instead characterized by strong desires to attain status and power for themselves and their ingroups. In two studies conducted in the lead up to 2016 Presidential election, I measured White male, American participants’ levels of personal agency and satisfaction with social issues as predictors of support for Donald Trump’s campaign. My findings show that high agency and low satisfaction predicted the strongest support for Trump, suggesting that his most ardent supporters fit the profile of the dominance-seeking group as opposed to the more historically identified authoritarian group. These findings highlight the importance of considering multiple perspectives when it comes to characterizing political movements and their motivations

Lay Theories and Self-Perceptions of Maturity in Young Adulthood

There is concern that maturity is becoming more and more of an elusive goal for contemporary young adults. Cultural definitions of maturity often emphasize timely achievement of traditional adult goals such as buying a house, launching a successful career, and starting a family. Changing economic and social conditions as well as recent financial crises, however, place these goals increasingly out of reach for many young adults. Another prominent cultural definition of maturity exists, however, one focused on the possession and development of character traits such as wisdom, responsibility, and prosociality. This character-based definition may provide an alternative basis for young adults to ground their sense of maturity when the more traditional adult goals are unattainable. The availability of both achievement-based and character-based definitions raises the question of how people define maturity. In this dissertation, I seek to explore young adults’ lay theories of what it means to be mature in terms of personality, cognitive style, formative experiences, and phenomenology (Study 1). Building on these findings, I explore whether young adults apply these same theories to their own self-perceptions of maturity (Study 2). Next, using data from a nationally-representative, longitudinal study, I test whether some of the earlier explored indicators of self-perceived maturity are unique to young adults as well as what downstream consequences self-perceptions of maturity in young adulthood have for well-being in midlife (Study 3). Next, I study self-perceptions of maturity in the context of facing the on-going hardships of the COVID-19 pandemic (Study 4) and finally apply these findings in an intervention, attempting to induce greater feelings of maturity in participants as they go through the pandemic (Study 5). My findings show that young adults endorse both achievement-based and character-based conceptualizations of maturity; however, the character-based definition may provide the flexibility that is needed to ground one’s sense of maturity even when traditional adult goals are unattainable. These findings provide important insights, directions for future research, and implications for supporting young adults’ development of a mature identity as they navigate the challenges of modern adulthood

Isolation of fungi from Sabah that produce Bioactive compounds which effect signal transduction

Filamentous micro-fungal strains were isolated from various environments in Sabah especially from the soil of the rain forest.' Sabah with its unique natural resources provides the means for the discovery of new micro-fungal strains with the potential to produce novel bioactive secondary metabolite compounds which affect signal transduction. This is the main focus of this research. A total of 364 fungal strains were isolated. Extracts from the aerobic liquid fermentation of these fungal strains were screened for inhibitory effect on Signal transduction of both yeast and bacterial strains. In the course of this research, soil samples have been collected in the expeditions that were carried out by this university to remote locations of Sabah. These expeditions include the primary forest of the Imbak Valley, limestone hill forest of Tabin Wildlife Reserve, the the lower montane heath forest forest of Maliau Basin Conservation Area and the montane forest of Mount Trus Madi. The soil samples were mostly collected from leaf litter under trees and other plants that were identified to species or genus level. A number for fungal strains were also isolated from explants and from fungal airborne spores of plates and in around the laboratory. The characteristics of the micro-fungi strains on the PDA agar were observed and this includes colour of the aerial and substrate mycelia, difussed pigmentation and growth rate on the' PDA plates. Microscopic identification was done on the strains which showed activity on screening tests performed. All the micro-fungal strains isolated were grown in aerobic condition in liquid fermentation. It was these extracts that were used for,the screening for specific molecular targets involve in signal transduction, such as, serinelthreonine phosphatase, MAPK Kinase, MAP Kinase phosphatase, Ras/Raf protein interaction, and serinelthreonine,kinase. All the screening systems mention are base on the eukaryotic signalling pathways of yeast except for the serinelthreonine kinase screen which is base on the prokaryotic signalling pathway of Streptomyces griseus which shares high similarity with eukaryotic signalling pathway. In this research, there were fungal strains which showed inhibitory effect to the serinelthreonine phosphatase type 1 homolog, Glc7p especially the strains H9318 and H9307 from Maliau Basin. These two strains were latter found to inhibit dephosphorylation of phosphorylase catalyse by the mammalian serineltheronine phosphatase, Protein Phosphatase type 1 gam a (PP1y) as well. The effect on PP1y as well as Glc7p is not supprising as both these protein shares more than 75% homology in its catalytic domain. Three strains which showed positive activity in the MAPK Kinase screening system are H9013, H9014 and H9019. No fungal strains were found to be affecting the MAP Kinase Phosphatase (MSG 5) and the RaslRaf protein interaction which would indicate a positive result. There were numerous extracts from fungal strains which inhibit the growth of Streptomyces griseus and two strains which showed potential to be inhibitors of serinelthreonine kinase (AfsK) of Streptomyces griseus. These two strains were H9016 and H9123. There were also two fungal strains H9341 and H9346 which showed toxicity in all the screens performed except for the serineltheronine kinase test of S.griseus. This would indicate these strains are toxic to at least Scharomycetes cerevisiae cells. The fungal strains isolated .from soil and from other environment showed some specificity in the types of strains isolated and the secondary metabolites produced. The microfungi from Sabah proved to be prolific producers of diverse secondary metabolites which effect signal transduction and growth of cell

Discovering Novel Small Molecule Compound for Prevention of Monoclonal Antibody Self-Association

Designing an antibody with the desired affinity to the antigen is challenging, often achieved by lengthening the hydrophobic CDRs, which can lead to aggregation and cause major hindrance to the development of successful biopharmaceutical products. Aggregation can cause immunogenicity, viscosity and stability issues affecting both the safety and quality of the product. As the hydrophobic residues on the CDR are required for direct binding to antigens, it is not always possible to substitute these residues for aggregation-reduction purposes. Therefore, discovery of specific excipients to prevent aggregation is highly desirable for formulation development. Here, we used a combination of in silico screening methods to identify aggregation-prone regions on an aggregation-prone therapeutic antibody. The most aggregation-prone region on the antibody was selected to conduct virtual screening of compounds that can bind to such regions and act as an aggregation breaker. The most promising excipient candidate was further studied alongside plain buffer formulations and formulations with trehalose using coarse-grained molecular dynamics (CGMD) simulations with MARTINI force field. Mean interaction value between two antibody molecules in each formulation was calculated based on 1024 replicates of 512 ns of such CGMD simulations. Corresponding formulations with an excipient:antibody ratio of 1:5 were compared experimentally by measuring the diffusion interaction parameter kD and accelerated stability studies. Although the compound with the highest affinity score did not show any additional protective effects compared with trehalose, this study proved using a combination of in silico tools can aid excipient design and formulation development

Draft Genome Sequence of a Phytopathogenic Ganoderma sp. Strain That Causes Basal Stem Rot Disease on Oil Palm in Sabah, Malaysia

Basal stem rot (BSR) disease on Elaeis guineens is known to be caused by members of the pathogenic fungal genus Ganoderma, especially the species Ganoderma boninense. This species affects oil palm plantation in Sabah, Malaysia. The genome sequence (52.28 Mbp) will add to the representation of this genus, especially in regard to BSR disease

Seismic tremor reveals slow fracture propagation prior to the 2018 eruption at Sierra Negra volcano, Galápagos

Seismic tremor observed near active volcanoes is an important tool for volcano monitoring as it often appears shortly before eruptions. Although tremor can be generated by a variety of physical processes it is usually interpreted as direct evidence for flowing magma in the sub-surface. These interpretations typically feed into risk assessments for potential eruptions. Using the temporal evolution of tremor amplitude and spectral data from a distributed seismic network that captured the 2018 eruption at Sierra Negra in Galapagos, we determine that tremor is not directly related to sub-surface fluid movement. Instead at Sierra Negra tremor likely indicates a slowly propagating fracture, which is later exploited as a pathway for silent magma flow. Distinct differences in the source migration and the spectral character of pre-eruptive and co-eruptive tremor allow both a location estimate of the future eruption site and a precise timing of the eruption onset

Towards quantum enhanced adversarial robustness in machine learning

Machine learning algorithms are powerful tools for data driven tasks such as image classification and feature detection, however their vulnerability to adversarial examples - input samples manipulated to fool the algorithm - remains a serious challenge. The integration of machine learning with quantum computing has the potential to yield tools offering not only better accuracy and computational efficiency, but also superior robustness against adversarial attacks. Indeed, recent work has employed quantum mechanical phenomena to defend against adversarial attacks, spurring the rapid development of the field of quantum adversarial machine learning (QAML) and potentially yielding a new source of quantum advantage. Despite promising early results, there remain challenges towards building robust real-world QAML tools. In this review we discuss recent progress in QAML and identify key challenges. We also suggest future research directions which could determine the route to practicality for QAML approaches as quantum computing hardware scales up and noise levels are reduced.Comment: 10 Pages, 4 Figure

Molecular characteristics of infection and colonization isolates of community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA)

Staphylococcus aureus is a gram-positive coccus that colonizes the skin and mucous membranes, particularly the anterior nares. Recently, community-acquired MRSA (CA-MRSA) has emerged as a cause of skin and soft-tissue infections in healthy individuals. These strains are sensitive to antimicrobials, carry genes for Panton-Valentine leukocidin (PVL) toxin, and feature the staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) type IV or V. The suspected mode of transmission involves close contact with carriers, leading to skin or nasal colonization that results in subsequent active infection. This study was undertaken to determine the molecular characteristics of CA-MRSA isolates in children presenting with wound infections at Likas Hospital, Sabah, Malaysia, and the possible mode of transmission. The results showed that the majority of CA-MRSA infection isolates were from scalp abscesses (49%) in 1–5-year-old children (70%) in the Filipino (54%) community. The presence of the mec gene was detected in all isolates and the PVL virulence factor was found in 92% of the isolates. SCCmec typing revealed that 57% of the isolates were untypable, 35% harbored the SCCmecIVa element, and one each had SCCmecIVc, SCCmecV, or SCCmecII. Sixteen S. aureus strains were isolated from nasal swabs in 19 family members of index patients. Fourteen of these cultures were positive for catalase, coagulase, and DNAase. All of the colonization isolates carried the mecA gene and only a third were positive for the PVL toxin. SCCmec typing showed that 79% of the isolates were untypable and two had SCCmecIVa element and one had SCCmecV element. When five pairs of infection and colonizing isolates were compared by spa typing, only two pairs showed identical spa type with possible transmission between the patient and family contact. Further studies are necessary to establish CA-MRSA transmission by performing multiple-site cultures multiple times instead of one-time naresonly sample collection