Acroneuria lycorias (Boreal Stonefly, Plecoptera: Perlidae) Emergence Behaviors Discovered in Pinus strobus Canopy

Species of Plecoptera, or stoneflies, are known to use vertical emergence supports, and researchers believe many species of Plecoptera exploit arboreal habitats during emergence. However, the exact nature of these arboreal behaviors has largely remained a mystery. While exploring the habitat potential of Pinus strobus (L.) (Eastern White Pine) canopies in northern Wisconsin we observed Acroneuria lycorias (Newman) (Boreal Stonefly, Plecoptera: Perlidae) exuviae at heights as high as 12m (observations at 6.6, 9, 9.5, and 12m). Most A. lycorias exuviae appeared to have a strong preference for emergence sites at the underside or base of branches similar to some Odonate species. We also observed A. lycorias, adults climbing upwards along the main stem, post-emergence, to heights up to 22m. To our knowledge, these heights represent the greatest heights ever documented for A. lycorias adults and exuviae, or any Plecopteran species. While other researchers have speculated that A. lycorias uses arboreal habitats during emergence, these behaviors were considered almost impossible to describe. Our observations provide us with new insights into Plecopteran emergence behaviors, especially for this species. We propose three alternative hypotheses that may explain these unique emergence behaviors

Ambivalence and Pregnancy: The Effect of Adolescents' Attitudes on Contraception and Pregnancy

It has been argued that adolescents who get pregnant often do not sufficiently appreciate its unfavorable consequences, and that prevention programs should target participants' attitudes towards pregnancy. This study tests whether the nature and certainty of sexually active adolescent girls' attitudes towards pregnancy influence their contraceptive consistency and risk of pregnancy. It also tests whether attitudes towards contraception influence contraceptive consistency. Data are drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a nationwide prospective study of adolescents in grades 7-12. Attitudes towards pregnancy, attitudes towards contraception, knowledge about fertility and other individual characteristics are included in a multivariate model of contraceptive consistency. Those variables, as well as contraceptive consistency itself, are then included in a multivariate model of pregnancy. Net of other factors, girls' attitudes towards getting pregnant did not affect whether they actually became pregnant. However, ambivalence about pregnancy made girls less likely to use contraception. Girls who were most opposed to pregnancy did not differ in contraceptive consistency from those least opposed. Implications for pregnancy prevention efforts are discussed

Ambivalence and Pregnancy: The Effect of Adolescents' Attitudes on Contraception and Pregnancy

It has been argued that adolescents who get pregnant often do not sufficiently appreciate its unfavorable consequences, and that prevention programs should target participants' attitudes towards pregnancy. This study tests whether the nature and certainty of sexually active adolescent girls' attitudes towards pregnancy influence their contraceptive consistency and risk of pregnancy. It also tests whether attitudes towards contraception influence contraceptive consistency. Data are drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a nationwide prospective study of adolescents in grades 7-12. Attitudes towards pregnancy, attitudes towards contraception, knowledge about fertility and other individual characteristics are included in a multivariate model of contraceptive consistency. Those variables, as well as contraceptive consistency itself, are then included in a multivariate model of pregnancy. Net of other factors, girls' attitudes towards getting pregnant did not affect whether they actually became pregnant. However, ambivalence about pregnancy made girls less likely to use contraception. Girls who were most opposed to pregnancy did not differ in contraceptive consistency from those least opposed. Implications for pregnancy prevention efforts are discussed

Crossing Symmetry Violation of Unitarized Pion-Pion Amplitude in the Resonance Region

Pion-pion scattering amplitude obtained from one-loop Chiral Perturbation Theory (ChPT) is crossing symmetric, however the corresponding partial wave amplitudes do not respect exact unitarity relation. There are different approaches to get unitarized partial wave amplitudes from ChPT. Here we consider the inverse amplitude method (IAM) that is often used to fit pion-pion phase shifts to experimental data, by adjusting free parameters. We measure the amount of crossing symmetry violation (CSV) in this case and we show that crossing symmetry is badly violated by the IAM unitarized ChPT amplitude in the resonance region. Important CSV also occurs when all free parameters are set equal to zero.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Acroneuria lycorias (Boreal Stonefly, Plecoptera: Perlidae) Emergence Behaviors Discovered in Pinus strobus Canopy

Species of Plecoptera, or stoneflies, are known to use vertical emergence supports, and researchers believe many species of Plecoptera exploit arboreal habitats during emergence. However, the exact nature of these arboreal behaviors has largely remained a mystery. While exploring the habitat potential of Pinus strobus (L.) (Eastern White Pine) canopies in northern Wisconsin we observed Acroneuria lycorias (Newman) (Boreal Stonefly, Plecoptera: Perlidae) exuviae at heights as high as 12m (observations at 6.6, 9, 9.5, and 12m). Most A. lycorias exuviae appeared to have a strong preference for emergence sites at the underside or base of branches similar to some Odonate species. We also observed A. lycorias, adults climbing upwards along the main stem, post-emergence, to heights up to 22m. To our knowledge, these heights represent the greatest heights ever documented for A. lycorias adults and exuviae, or any Plecopteran species. While other researchers have speculated that A. lycorias uses arboreal habitats during emergence, these behaviors were considered almost impossible to describe. Our observations provide us with new insights into Plecopteran emergence behaviors, especially for this species. We propose three alternative hypotheses that may explain these unique emergence behaviors

Humans are not fooled by size illusions in attractiveness judgements

Could signallers use size contrast illusions to dishonestly exaggerate their attractiveness to potential mates? Using composite photographs of women from three body mass index (BMI) categories designed to simulate small groups, we show that target women of medium size are judged as thinner when surrounded by larger women than when surrounded by thinner women. However, attractiveness judgements of the same target women were unaffected by this illusory change in BMI, despite small true differences in the BMIs of the target women themselves producing strong effects on attractiveness. Thus, in the context of mate choice decisions, the honesty of female body size as a signal of mate quality appears to have been maintained by the evolution of assessment strategies that are immune to size contrast illusions. Our results suggest that receiver psychology is more flexible than previously assumed, and that illusions are unlikely to drive the evolution of exploitative neighbour choice in human sexual displays. © 2014 The Authors

Resilience-Focused HIV Care to Promote Psychological Well-Being During COVID-19 and Other Catastrophes

The COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected people with HIV due to disruptions in prevention and care services, economic impacts, and social isolation. These stressors have contributed to worse physical health, HIV treatment outcomes, and psychological wellness. Psychological sequelae associated with COVID-19 threaten the overall well-being of people with HIV and efforts to end the HIV epidemic. Resilience is a known mediator of health disparities and can improve psychological wellness and behavioral health outcomes along the HIV Continuum of Care. Though resilience is often organically developed in individuals as a result of overcoming adversity, it may be fostered through multi-level internal and external resourcing (at psychological, interpersonal, spiritual, and community/neighborhood levels). In this Perspective, resilience-focused HIV care is defined as a model of care in which providers promote optimum health for people with HIV by facilitating multi-level resourcing to buffer the effects of adversity and foster well-being. Adoption of resilience-focused HIV care may help providers better promote well-being among people living with HIV during this time of increased psychological stress and help prepare systems of care for future catastrophes. Informed by the literature, we constructed a set of core principles and considerations for successful adoption and sustainability of resilience-focused HIV care. Our definition of resilience-focused HIV care marks a novel contribution to the knowledge base and responds to the call for a multidimensional definition of resilience as part of HIV research

Clonal kinetics and single-cell transcriptional profiling of CAR-T cells in patients undergoing CD19 CAR-T immunotherapy

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has produced remarkable anti-tumor responses in patients with B-cell malignancies. However, clonal kinetics and transcriptional programs that regulate the fate of CAR-T cells after infusion remain poorly understood. Here we perform TCRB sequencing, integration site analysis, and single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) to profile CD8+ CAR-T cells from infusion products (IPs) and blood of patients undergoing CD19 CAR-T immunotherapy. TCRB sequencing shows that clonal diversity of CAR-T cells is highest in the IPs and declines following infusion. We observe clones that display distinct patterns of clonal kinetics, making variable contributions to the CAR-T cell pool after infusion. Although integration site does not appear to be a key driver of clonal kinetics, scRNA-seq demonstrates that clones that expand after infusion mainly originate from infused clusters with higher expression of cytotoxicity and proliferation genes. Thus, we uncover transcriptional programs associated with CAR-T cell behavior after infusion.Published versio