Callous-Unemotional Traits Moderate Anticipated Guilt and Wrongness Judgments to Everyday Moral Transgressions in Adolescents.

Callous-unemotional (CU) traits observed during childhood and adolescence are thought to be precursors of psychopathic traits in adulthood. Adults with high levels of psychopathic traits typically present antisocial behavior. Such behavior can be indicative of atypical moral processing. Evidence suggests that moral dysfunction in these individuals may stem from a disruption of affective components of moral processing rather than from an inability to compute moral judgments per se. No study to date has tested if the dissociation between affective and cognitive dimensions of moral processing linked to psychopathic traits in adulthood is also linked to CU traits during development. Here, 47 typically developing adolescents with varying levels of CU traits completed a novel, animated cartoon task depicting everyday moral transgressions and indicated how they would feel in such situations and how morally wrong the situations were. Adolescents with higher CU traits reported reduced anticipated guilt and wrongness appraisals of the transgressions. However, our key finding was a significant interaction between CU traits and anticipated guilt in predicting wrongness judgments. The strength of the association between anticipated guilt and wrongness judgement was significantly weaker for those with higher levels of CU traits. This evidence extends our knowledge on the cognitive-affective processing deficits that may underlie moral dysfunction in youth who are at heightened risk for antisocial behavior and psychopathy in adulthood. Future longitudinal research is required to elucidate whether there is an increased dissociation between different components of moral processing from adolescence to adulthood for those with high psychopathic traits

Modeling the Measurements of Cochlear Microcirculation and Hearing Function after Loud Noise

Objective: Recent findings support the crucial role of microcirculatory disturbance and ischemia for hearing impairment especially after noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL). The aim of this study was to establish an animal model for in vivo analysis of cochlear microcirculation and hearing function after a loud noise to allow precise measurements of both parameters in vivo. Study Design: Randomized controlled trial. Setting: Animal study. Subjects and Methods: After assessment of normacusis (0 minutes) using evoked auditory brainstem responses (ABRs), noise (106-dB sound pressure level [SPL]) was applied to both ears in 6 guinea pigs for 30 minutes while unexposed animals served as controls. In vivo fluorescence microscopy of the stria vascularis capillaries was performed after surgical exposure of 1 cochlea. ABR measurements were derived from the contralateral ear. Results: After noise exposure, red blood cell velocity was reduced significantly by 24.3% (120 minutes) and further decreased to 44.5% at the end of the observation (210 minutes) in contrast to stable control measurements. Vessel diameters were not affected in both groups. A gradual decrease of segmental blood flow became significant (38.1%) after 150 minutes compared with controls. Hearing thresholds shifted significantly from 20.0 ± 5.5 dB SPL (0 minutes) to 32.5 ± 4.2dB SPL (60 minutes) only in animals exposed to loud noise. Conclusion: With regard to novel treatments targeting the stria vascularis in NIHL, this standardized model allows us to analyze in detail cochlear microcirculation and hearing function in vivo

Problem Solving Styles in Autism Spectrum Disorder and the development of higher cognitive functions

The Vygotsky Blocks Test (VBT) assesses problem-solving styles within a theoretical framework for the development of higher mental processes devised by Vygotsky (Daniels et al., 2007). Because both the theory and the associated test situate cognitive development within the child's social and linguistic context, they address conceptual issues around the developmental relation between language and thought that are pertinent to development in autism. Our aim was to document the performance of adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) on the VBT, and our results showed that they made more errors than the typically developing (TD) participants and that these errors correlated with performance IQ. The ASD group also required more cues than the TD group to discern the conceptual structure of the blocks, a pattern that correlated with ADOS Communication and Imagination/Creativity sub-scales. When asked to categorize the blocks in new ways, the ASD participants developed fewer principles on which to base new categorizations, which in contrast to the TD group, correlated with verbal IQ and with the Imagination/Creativity sub-scale of the ADOS. These results are in line with a number of existing findings in the ASD literature and confirm that conceptualization in ASD seems to rely more on non-verbal and less on imaginative processes than in TD individuals. The findings represent first steps to the possibility of outlining a testable account of psychological development in ASD that integrates verbal, non-verbal and social factors into the transition from elementary to higher-level processes

In vitro measurement of temperature changes during implantation of cemented glenoid components

Background and purpose It is unclear whether the increase in temperature during cement curing may cause osteonecrosis, leading to loosening of the glenoid component in shoulder arthroplasty. We therefore analyzed the temperature during implantation of cemented glenoid implants

Drivers and Socioeconomic Impacts of Tourism Participation in Protected Areas

Nature-based tourism has the potential to enhance global biodiversity conservation by providing alternative livelihood strategies for local people, which may alleviate poverty in and around protected areas. Despite the popularity of the concept of nature-based tourism as an integrated conservation and development tool, empirical research on its actual socioeconomic benefits, on the distributional pattern of these benefits, and on its direct driving factors is lacking, because relevant long-term data are rarely available. In a multi-year study in Wolong Nature Reserve, China, we followed a representative sample of 220 local households from 1999 to 2007 to investigate the diverse benefits that these households received from recent development of nature-based tourism in the area. Within eight years, the number of households directly participating in tourism activities increased from nine to sixty. In addition, about two-thirds of the other households received indirect financial benefits from tourism. We constructed an empirical household economic model to identify the factors that led to household-level participation in tourism. The results reveal the effects of local households' livelihood assets (i.e., financial, human, natural, physical, and social capitals) on the likelihood to participate directly in tourism. In general, households with greater financial (e.g., income), physical (e.g., access to key tourism sites), human (e.g., education), and social (e.g., kinship with local government officials) capitals and less natural capital (e.g., cropland) were more likely to participate in tourism activities. We found that residents in households participating in tourism tended to perceive more non-financial benefits in addition to more negative environmental impacts of tourism compared with households not participating in tourism. These findings suggest that socioeconomic impact analysis and change monitoring should be included in nature-based tourism management systems for long-term sustainability of protected areas

Proliferative Hypothalamic Neurospheres Express NPY, AGRP, POMC, CART and Orexin-A and Differentiate to Functional Neurons

Some pathological conditions with feeding pattern alterations, including obesity and Huntington disease (HD) are associated with hypothalamic dysfunction and neuronal cell death. Additionally, the hypothalamus is a neurogenic region with the constitutive capacity to generate new cells of neuronal lineage, in adult rodents

The host response to the probiotic Escherichia coli strain Nissle 1917: Specific up-regulation of the proinflammatory chemokine MCP-1

BACKGROUND: The use of live microorganisms to influence positively the course of intestinal disorders such as infectious diarrhea or chronic inflammatory conditions has recently gained increasing interest as a therapeutic alternative. In vitro and in vivo investigations have demonstrated that probiotic-host eukaryotic cell interactions evoke a large number of responses potentially responsible for the effects of probiotics. The aim of this study was to improve our understanding of the E. coli Nissle 1917-host interaction by analyzing the gene expression pattern initiated by this probiotic in human intestinal epithelial cells. METHODS: Gene expression profiles of Caco-2 cells treated with E. coli Nissle 1917 were analyzed with microarrays. A second human intestinal cell line and also pieces of small intestine from BALB/c mice were used to confirm regulatory data of selected genes by real-time RT-PCR and cytometric bead array (CBA) to detect secretion of corresponding proteins. RESULTS: Whole genome expression analysis revealed 126 genes specifically regulated after treatment of confluent Caco-2 cells with E. coli Nissle 1917. Among others, expression of genes encoding the proinflammatory molecules monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 ligand 2 (MCP-1), macrophage inflammatory protein-2 alpha (MIP-2α) and macrophage inflammatory protein-2 beta (MIP-2β) was increased up to 10 fold. Caco-2 cells cocultured with E. coli Nissle 1917 also secreted high amounts of MCP-1 protein. Elevated levels of MCP-1 and MIP-2α mRNA could be confirmed with Lovo cells. MCP-1 gene expression was also up-regulated in mouse intestinal tissue. CONCLUSION: Thus, probiotic E. coli Nissle 1917 specifically upregulates expression of proinflammatory genes and proteins in human and mouse intestinal epithelial cells

The Leucine Zipper Domains of the Transcription Factors GCN4 and c-Jun Have Ribonuclease Activity

Basic-region leucine zipper (bZIP) proteins are one of the largest transcription factor families that regulate a wide range of cellular functions. Owing to the stability of their coiled coil structure leucine zipper (LZ) domains of bZIP factors are widely employed as dimerization motifs in protein engineering studies. In the course of one such study, the X-ray structure of the retro-version of the LZ moiety of yeast transcriptional activator GCN4 suggested that this retro-LZ may have ribonuclease activity. Here we show that not only the retro-LZ but also the authentic LZ of GCN4 has weak but distinct ribonuclease activity. The observed cleavage of RNA is unspecific, it is not suppressed by the ribonuclease A inhibitor RNasin and involves the breakage of 3′,5′-phosphodiester bonds with formation of 2′,3′-cyclic phosphates as the final products as demonstrated by HPLC/electrospray ionization mass spectrometry. Several mutants of the GCN4 leucine zipper are catalytically inactive, providing important negative controls and unequivocally associating the enzymatic activity with the peptide under study. The leucine zipper moiety of the human factor c-Jun as well as the entire c-Jun protein are also shown to catalyze degradation of RNA. The presented data, which was obtained in the test-tube experiments, adds GCN4 and c-Jun to the pool of proteins with multiple functions (also known as moonlighting proteins). If expressed in vivo, the endoribonuclease activity of these bZIP-containing factors may represent a direct coupling between transcription activation and controlled RNA turnover. As an additional result of this work, the retro-leucine zipper of GCN4 can be added to the list of functional retro-peptides

Performance Analysis of Orthogonal Pairs Designed for an Expanded Eukaryotic Genetic Code

Background: The suppression of amber stop codons with non-canonical amino acids (ncAAs) is used for the site-specific introduction of many unusual functions into proteins. Specific orthogonal aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase (o-aaRS)/amber suppressor tRNA CUA pairs (o-pairs) for the incorporation of ncAAs in S. cerevisiae were previously selected from an E. coli tyrosyl-tRNA synthetase/tRNACUA mutant library. Incorporation fidelity relies on the specificity of the o-aaRSs for their ncAAs and the ability to effectively discriminate against their natural substrate Tyr or any other canonical amino acid. Methodology/Principal Findings: We used o-pairs previously developed for ncAAs carrying reactive alkyne-, azido-, or photocrosslinker side chains to suppress an amber mutant of human superoxide dismutase 1 in S. cerevisiae. We found worse incorporation efficiencies of the alkyne- and the photocrosslinker ncAAs than reported earlier. In our hands, amber suppression with the ncAA containing the azido group did not occur at all. In addition to the incorporation experiments in S. cerevisiae, we analyzed the catalytic properties of the o-aaRSs in vitro. Surprisingly, all o-aaRSs showed much higher preference for their natural substrate Tyr than for any of the tested ncAAs. While it is unclear why efficiently recognized Tyr is not inserted at amber codons, we speculate that metabolically inert ncAAs accumulate in the cell, and for this reason they are incorporated despite being weak substrates for the o-aaRSs. Conclusions/Significance: O-pairs have been developed for a whole plethora of ncAAs. However, a systematic and detaile