Interakcje ekonomii i psychologii w świetle koncepcji Gary’ego Beckera

Podstawowe gałęzie psychologii, takie jak psychologia poznawcza, decyzji, czy też zachowań ryzykownych, zostały dostosowane do analiz lokujących się na styku ekonomii i psychologii. W ekonomii podobny trend zapoczątkował Gary Becker, który jako ekonomista dokonał ekspansji na obszary zarezerwowane dla psychologii, socjologii i politologii. Przypominając dorobek Beckera, autor omawia cechy charakterystyczne obydwu podejść: psychologicznego i ekonomicznego, i wskazuje różnice warsztatów badawczych, wynikające z celów i źródeł obu nauk, które uniemożliwiają ich wzajemne przenikanie się. Pomimo tych problemów, zdaniem autora, przyszłość należy do tego, co się na tym pograniczu narodzi, i co być może na zawsze odwróci uwagę od manii kwantyfikowania rzeczywistości przy pomocy rozbudowanej analizy matematycznej

Lipid droplets in mammalian eggs are utilized during embryonic diapause

Embryonic diapause (ED) is a temporary arrest of an embryo at the blastocyst stage when it waits for the uterine receptivity signal to implant. ED used by over 100 species may also occur in normally “nondiapausing” mammals when the uterine receptivity signal is blocked or delayed. A large number of lipid droplets (LDs) are stored throughout the preimplantation embryo development, but the amount of lipids varies greatly across different mammalian species. Yet, the role of LDs in the mammalian egg and embryo remains unknown. Here, using a mouse model, we provide evidence that LDs play a crucial role in maintaining ED. By mechanical removal of LDs from zygotes, we demonstrated that delipidated embryos are unable to survive during ED. LDs are not essential for normal prompt implantation, without ED. We further demonstrated that with the progression of ED, the amount of intracellular lipid reduces, and composition changes. This decrease in lipid is caused by a switch from carbohydrate metabolism to lipid catabolism in diapausing blastocysts, which also exhibit increased release of exosomes reflecting elevated embryonic signaling to the mother. We have also shown that presence of LDs in the oocytes of various mammals positively corelates with their species-specific length of diapause. Our results reveal the functional role of LDs in embryonic development. These results can help to develop diagnostic techniques and treatment of recurrent implantation failure and will likely ignite further studies in developmental biology and reproductive medicine fields

Interakcje ekonomii i psychologii w świetle koncepcji Gary’ego Beckera

Podstawowe gałęzie psychologii, takie jak psychologia poznawcza, decyzji, czy też zachowań ryzykownych, zostały dostosowane do analiz lokujących się na styku ekonomii i psychologii. W ekonomii podobny trend zapoczątkował Gary Becker, który jako ekonomista dokonał ekspansji na obszary zarezerwowane dla psychologii, socjologii i politologii. Przypominając dorobek Beckera, autor omawia cechy charakterystyczne obydwu podejść: psychologicznego i ekonomicznego, i wskazuje różnice warsztatów badawczych, wynikające z celów i źródeł obu nauk, które uniemożliwiają ich wzajemne przenikanie się. Pomimo tych problemów, zdaniem autora, przyszłość należy do tego, co się na tym pograniczu narodzi, i co być może na zawsze odwróci uwagę od manii kwantyfikowania rzeczywistości przy pomocy rozbudowanej analizy matematycznej

Metody przetwarzania spektroskopii rezonansu magnetycznego skutecznym narzędziem diagnostycznym

Magnetic resonance spectroscopy is currently used as a diagnostic tool in current medicine and chemistry. E ective read o spectrum can give scien- tists in ormation concerning biochemical composition o researched tissue. Method is non-invasive technique which provides details o metabolic chang- es in selected tissues. Due to number o limitations, quality o data obtained in spectroscopy is very o ten insu icient and methods o preprocessing are introduced. Such approach can be reached by application o singular value decomposition on data arranged in Hankel matrix. HSVD method can be used inpreprocessingtechniquesandin urtheranalysiso metabolites

Wpływ ruchu drogowego na jakość powietrza wewnętrznego

The quality of air that people breathe has become a very important parameter of quality of life. Pollution contributes to numerous diseases, problems with the absorption of knowledge, and also reduces work efficiency. The article attempts to find the relationship between road traffic and indoor air quality. The parameter used to assess air pollution was particulate matter (smog). The research was carried out in three localisations with different traffic volumes, in three places for each localisation, in the summer, autumn, and winter periods. It was found that in areas with heavy road traffic, this traffic causes an inflow of pollutants into the rooms. In low-traffic localisations, sources other than road traffic have a greater impact on the indoor air quality, especially in the cool periods (autumn, and winter)Jakość powietrza, jakim oddycha człowiek, stała się bardzo istotnym parametrem jakości życia. Zanieczyszczenia przyczyniają się do licznych zachorowań, problemów z przyswajaniem wiedzy, a także obniżają wydajność pracy. W artykule podjęto próbę odnalezienia zależności pomiędzy natężeniem ruchu drogowego i jakością powietrza wewnętrznego. Parametrem, który wykorzystano do oceny zanieczyszczenia powietrza, był pył zawieszony (smog). Badania przeprowadzono w trzech lokalizacjach o różnym natężeniu ruchu, w trzech miejscach dla każdej lokalizacji, w okresach lato, jesień i zima. Stwierdzono, że w lokalizacji o dużym natężeniu ruchu pojazdów ruch ten powoduje napływ zanieczyszczeń do pomieszczeń. W lokalizacjach o małym natężeniu ruchu większy wpływ na jakość powietrza wewnętrznego mają inne niż ruch drogowy źródła, szczególnie w okresach chłodnych (jesień, zima)

Quality Control Procedure Based on Partitioning of NMR Time Series

The quality of the magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) depends on the stability of magnetic resonance (MR) system performance and optimal hardware functioning, which ensure adequate levels of signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) as well as good spectral resolution and minimal artifacts in the spectral data. MRS quality control (QC) protocols and methodologies are based on phantom measurements that are repeated regularly. In this work, a signal partitioning algorithm based on a dynamic programming (DP) method for QC assessment of the spectral data is described. The proposed algorithm allows detection of the change points—the abrupt variations in the time series data. The proposed QC method was tested using the simulated and real phantom data. Simulated data were randomly generated time series distorted by white noise. The real data were taken from the phantom quality control studies of the MRS scanner collected for four and a half years and analyzed by LCModel software. Along with the proposed algorithm, performance of various literature methods was evaluated for the predefined number of change points based on the error values calculated by subtracting the mean values calculated for the periods between the change-points from the original data points. The time series were checked using external software, a set of external methods and the proposed tool, and the obtained results were comparable. The application of dynamic programming in the analysis of the phantom MRS data is a novel approach to QC. The obtained results confirm that the presented change-point-detection tool can be used either for independent analysis of MRS time series (or any other) or as a part of quality control

Inter-population Differences in Retrogene Loss and Expression in Humans.

Gene retroposition leads to considerable genetic variation between individuals. Recent studies revealed the presence of at least 208 retroduplication variations (RDVs), a class of polymorphisms, in which a retrocopy is present or absent from individual genomes. Most of these RDVs resulted from recent retroduplications. In this study, we used the results of Phase 1 from the 1000 Genomes Project to investigate the variation in loss of ancestral (i.e. shared with other primates) retrocopies among different human populations. In addition, we examined retrocopy expression levels using RNA-Seq data derived from the Ilumina BodyMap project, as well as data from lymphoblastoid cell lines provided by the Geuvadis Consortium. We also developed a new approach to detect novel retrocopies absent from the reference human genome. We experimentally confirmed the existence of the detected retrocopies and determined their presence or absence in the human genomes of 17 different populations. Altogether, we were able to detect 193 RDVs; the majority resulted from retrocopy deletion. Most of these RDVs had not been previously reported. We experimentally confirmed the expression of 11 ancestral retrogenes that underwent deletion in certain individuals. The frequency of their deletion, with the exception of one retrogene, is very low. The expression, conservation and low rate of deletion of the remaining 10 retrocopies may suggest some functionality. Aside from the presence or absence of expressed retrocopies, we also searched for differences in retrocopy expression levels between populations, finding 9 retrogenes that undergo statistically significant differential expression

Retrocopies undergoing differential expression between analyzed populations.

<p>Retrocopies undergoing differential expression between analyzed populations.</p

Incorporation of host gene exon by retrogene retro_hsap_2011.

<p>Splice variants of <i>ZNF761</i> gene (upper part) and <i>TPM3P9</i> retrogene (lower part). F and R refer to forward and reverse primer binding sites, respectively.</p