Exploring the effects of colouring graph diagrams on people of various backgrounds

Colour is one of the primary aesthetic elements of a visualization. It is often used successfully to encode information such as the importance of a particular part of the diagram or the relationship between two parts. Even so, there are few investigations into the human reading of colour coding on diagrams from the scientific community. In this paper we report on an experiment with graph diagrams comparing a black and white composition with two other colour treatments. We drew our subjects from engineering, art, visual design, physical education, tourism, psychology and social science disciplines. We found that colouring the nodes of interest reduced the time taken to find the shortest path between the two nodes for all subjects. Engineers, tourism and social scientists proved significantly faster with artist/designers just below the overall average speed. From this study, we contribute that adding particular colour treatments to diagrams increases legibility. In addition, preliminary work investigating colour treatments and schemes indicates potential for future gains. © 2014 Springer-Verlag

Nitric oxide and cyclic nucleotides: Their roles in junction dynamics and spermatogenesis

Spermatogenesis is a highly complicated process in which functional spermatozoa (haploid, 1n) are generated from primitive mitotic spermatogonia (diploid, 2n). This process involves the differentiation and transformation of several types of germ cells as spermatocytes and spermatids undergo meiosis and differentiation. Due to its sophistication and complexity, testis possesses intrinsic mechanisms to modulate and regulate different stages of germ cell development under the intimate and indirect cooperation with Sertoli and Leydig cells, respectively. Furthermore, developing germ cells must translocate from the basal to the apical (adluminal) compartment of the seminiferous epithelium. Thus, extensive junction restructuring must occur to assist germ cell movement. Within the seminiferous tubules, three principal types of junctions are found namely anchoring junctions, tight junctions, and gap junctions. Other less studied junctions are desmosome-like junctions and hemidesmosome junctions. With these varieties of junction types, testes are using different regulators to monitor junction turnover. Among the uncountable junction modulators, nitric oxide (NO) is a prominent candidate due to its versatility and extensive downstream network. NO is synthesized by nitric oxide synthase (NOS). Three traditional NOS, specified as endothelial NOS (eNOS), inducible NOS (iNOS), and neuronal NOS (nNOS), and one testis-specific nNOS (TnNOS) are found in the testis. For these, eNOS and iNOS were recently shown to have putative junction regulation properties. More important, these two NOSs likely rely on the downstream soluble guanylyl cyclase/cGMP/protein kinase G signaling pathway to regulate the structural components at the tight junctions and adherens junctions in the testes. Apart from the involvement in junction regulation, NOS/NO also participates in controlling the levels of cytokines and hormones in the testes. On the other hand, NO is playing a unique role in modulating germ cell viability and development, and indirectly acting on some aspects of male infertility and testicular pathological conditions. Thus, NOS/NO bears an irreplaceable role in maintaining the homeostasis of the microenvironment in the seminiferous epithelium via its different downstream signaling pathways

Do Nurses Use Discourse Markers Differently when Using Their Second Language as Opposed to Their First while Interviewing Patients?

This study examined whether discourse-marker use changes in nurse-patient interactions as a function of nurses using their first (L1) or second (L2) language. Discourse markers were analyzed as turn-maintenance markers that indicate acknowledgement and discourse-shift markers that signal shifts of a topic or speaker in the conversation. These two categories differ in terms of degree of discourse management and interactional control. Sixteen nurses conducted a pain-assessment interview with a patient native speaker of English and with a patient native speaker of French, where the nurses used their own L1 in one case and their own weaker L2 in the other. The first hypothesis, that nurses would generally use discourse markers more frequently in the L1 than in the L2, was not supported. The second hypothesis, that nurses would use discourse-shift markers less frequently in their L2 compared to the L1, relative to their (baseline) use of turn-maintenance markers, was supported. The findings, especially the support for the second hypothesis, could have implications for the development of L2 training for health practitioners.</p

It's Time to Think about Time in Health Psychology

This position paper addresses the need for stronger theorizing on temporal matters in health psychology. Too few theories in health psychology address temporal matters in the specified psychological phenomena, their relationships, and the explanation for these relationships. This might lead to underestimating existing relationships between constructs over time or missing out on opportunities for advancing our knowledge with regard to dynamic developments of the phenomena of interest. Examples of existing theories and approaches addressing temporal matters in health psychology are provided. Further, drawing from other disciplines, examples of methodological and conceptual approaches are outlined that offer directions on how to optimize our theories with regard to temporal matters. This might start with including time-related theoretical considerations to the definition of psychological concepts already in cross-sectional research and might reach as far as developing dynamic theories for capturing and changing phenomena of interest in real life. Challenges and opportunities of theorizing about temporal matters in health psychology are addressed