Facial expressions depicting compassionate and critical emotions: the development and validation of a new emotional face stimulus set

Attachment with altruistic others requires the ability to appropriately process affiliative and kind facial cues. Yet there is no stimulus set available to investigate such processes. Here, we developed a stimulus set depicting compassionate and critical facial expressions, and validated its effectiveness using well-established visual-probe methodology. In Study 1, 62 participants rated photographs of actors displaying compassionate/kind and critical faces on strength of emotion type. This produced a new stimulus set based on N = 31 actors, whose facial expressions were reliably distinguished as compassionate, critical and neutral. In Study 2, 70 participants completed a visual-probe task measuring attentional orientation to critical and compassionate/kind faces. This revealed that participants lower in self-criticism demonstrated enhanced attention to compassionate/kind faces whereas those higher in self-criticism showed no bias. To sum, the new stimulus set produced interpretable findings using visual-probe methodology and is the first to include higher order, complex positive affect displays

The utility of statoliths and bell size to elucidate age and condition of a scyphomedusa (Cassiopea sp.)

Scyphomedusae play important roles in marine ecosystems and are of economic significance. However, no reliable techniques for estimating scyphomedusa age have been documented. This study focused on the utility of Cassiopea sp. (Cnidaria: Scyphozoa) statoliths, statocysts, and body size as proxies for age of medusae. Reared medusae of known age and a manipulative experiment were used to assess the accuracy and reliability of four measures of age: number of statoliths, size (diameter) of statoliths, area of statocyst (housing statoliths), and bell diameter. Bell diameter provided the most accurate measure of age under constant conditions, but was increasingly inaccurate under varying environmental conditions. In contrast, the average number of statoliths per medusa reflected age with relatively low accuracy, but did not vary with changes in food availability and salinity. Only temperature influenced the average number of statoliths. Comparisons of bell diameter to the number of statoliths in medusae under low food availability to those fed well showed that the ratio of medusa size to the number of statoliths can be used to recognise medusae that are relatively poorly conditioned. Statoliths, therefore, provide a tool for studying both population ecology and the influence of environmental variation on medusa growth

The dynamics of a pre-mRNA splicing factor in living cells

Pre-mRNA splicing is a predominantly co-transcriptional event which involves a large number of essential splicing factors. Within the mammalian cell nucleus, most splicing factors are concentrated in 20-40 distinct domains called speckles. The function of speckles and the organization of cellular transcription and pre-mRNA splicing in vivo are not well understood. We have investigated the dynamic properties of splicing factors in nuclei of living cells. Here we show that speckles are highly dynamic structures that respond specifically to activation of nearby genes. These dynamic events are dependent on RNA polymerase II transcription, and are sensitive to inhibitors of protein kinases and Ser/Thr phosphatases. When single genes are transcriptionally activated in living cells, splicing factors leave speckles in peripheral extensions and accumulate at the new sites of transcription. We conclude that one function of speckles is to supply splicing factors to active genes. Our observations demonstrate that the interphase nucleus is far more dynamic in nature than previously assumed