Observation of An Evolving Magnetic Flux Rope Prior To and During A Solar Eruption

Explosive energy release is a common phenomenon occurring in magnetized plasma systems ranging from laboratories, Earth's magnetosphere, the solar corona and astrophysical environments. Its physical explanation is usually attributed to magnetic reconnection in a thin current sheet. Here we report the important role of magnetic flux rope structure, a volumetric current channel, in producing explosive events. The flux rope is observed as a hot channel prior to and during a solar eruption from the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) telescope on board the Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO). It initially appears as a twisted and writhed sigmoidal structure with a temperature as high as 10 MK and then transforms toward a semi-circular shape during a slow rise phase, which is followed by fast acceleration and onset of a flare. The observations suggest that the instability of the magnetic flux rope trigger the eruption, thus making a major addition to the traditional magnetic-reconnection paradigm.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure

Behavior change interventions: the potential of ontologies for advancing science and practice

A central goal of behavioral medicine is the creation of evidence-based interventions for promoting behavior change. Scientific knowledge about behavior change could be more effectively accumulated using "ontologies." In information science, an ontology is a systematic method for articulating a "controlled vocabulary" of agreed-upon terms and their inter-relationships. It involves three core elements: (1) a controlled vocabulary specifying and defining existing classes; (2) specification of the inter-relationships between classes; and (3) codification in a computer-readable format to enable knowledge generation, organization, reuse, integration, and analysis. This paper introduces ontologies, provides a review of current efforts to create ontologies related to behavior change interventions and suggests future work. This paper was written by behavioral medicine and information science experts and was developed in partnership between the Society of Behavioral Medicine's Technology Special Interest Group (SIG) and the Theories and Techniques of Behavior Change Interventions SIG. In recent years significant progress has been made in the foundational work needed to develop ontologies of behavior change. Ontologies of behavior change could facilitate a transformation of behavioral science from a field in which data from different experiments are siloed into one in which data across experiments could be compared and/or integrated. This could facilitate new approaches to hypothesis generation and knowledge discovery in behavioral science

Design and Construction of Multigenic Constructs for Plant Biotechnology Using the GoldenBraid Cloning Strategy

GoldenBraid (GB) is an iterative and standardized DNA assembling system specially designed for Multigene Engineering in Plant Synthetic Biology. GB is based on restriction–ligation reactions using type IIS restriction enzymes. GB comprises a collection of standard DNA pieces named “GB parts” and a set of destination plasmids (pDGBs) that incorporate the multipartite assembly of standardized DNA parts. GB reactions are extremely efficient: two transcriptional units (TUs) can be assembled from several basic GBparts in one T-DNA less than 24 h. Moreover, larger assemblies comprising 4–5 TUs are routinely built in less than 2 working weeks. Here we provide a detailed view of the GB methodology. As a practical example, a Bimolecular Fluorescence Complementation construct comprising four TUs in a 12 kb DNA fragment is presented.Sarrion-Perdigones, A.; Palací, J.; Granell Richart, A.; Orzáez Calatayud, DV. (2014). Design and Construction of Multigenic Constructs for Plant Biotechnology Using the GoldenBraid Cloning Strategy. Methods in Molecular Biology. 1116:133-151. doi:10.1007/978-1-62703-764-8_10S1331511116Haseloff J, Ajioka J (2009) Synthetic biology, history, challenges and prospects. J R Soc Interface 6(Suppl 4):S389–S391Check E (2005) Synthetic biology, designs on life. Nature 438:417–418Kosuri S, Eroshenko N, LeProust EM et al (2010) Scalable gene synthesis by selective amplification of DNA pools from high-fidelity microchips. Nat Biotechnol 28:1295–1299Ellis T, Adie T, Baldwin GS (2011) DNA assembly for synthetic biology, from parts to pathways and beyond. Integr Biol 3:109–118Gibson DG, Young L, Chuang R-Y et al (2009) Enzymatic assembly of DNA molecules up to several hundred kilobases. Nat Methods 6: 343–345Gibson DG, Glass JI, Lartigue C et al (2010) Creation of a bacterial cell controlled by a chemically synthesized genome. Science 329:52–56Sarrion-Perdigones A, Falconi EE, Zandalinas SI et al (2011) GoldenBraid, an iterative cloning system for standardized assembly of reusable genetic modules. PLoS One 6:e21622Sarrion-Perdigones A, Vilar-Vazquez M et al (2013) GoldenBraid2.0, A comprehensive DNA assembly framework for plant synthetic biology. Plant Physiol 162:1618–1631Engler C, Gruetzner R, Kandzia R (2009) Golden gate shuffling, a one-pot DNA shuffling method based on type IIs restriction enzymes. PLoS One 4:e5553Engler C, Kandzia R, Marillonnet S (2008) A one pot, one step, precision cloning method with high throughput capability. PLoS One 3:e3647Bracha-Drori K, Shichrur K, Katz A et al (2004) Detection of protein-protein interactions in plants using bimolecular fluorescence complementation. Plant J 40:419–427Smaczniak C, Immink RG, Muino JM et al (2012) Characterization of MADS-domain transcription factor complexes in Arabidopsis flower development. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 109:1560–1565de Folter S, Immink RG, Kieffer M et al (2005) Comprehensive interaction map of the Arabidopsis MADS Box transcription factors. Plant Cell 17:1424–1433Lorenz WW, McCann RO, Longiaru M et al (1991) Isolation and expression of a cDNA encoding Renilla reniformis luciferase. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 88:4438–4442Voinnet O, Pinto YM, Baulcombe DC (1999) Suppression of gene silencing: a general strategy used by diverse DNA and RNA viruses of plants. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 96: 14147–14152Hellens RP, Edwards EA, Leyland NR et al (2000) pGreen: a versatile and flexible binary Ti vector for Agrobacterium-mediated plant transformation. Plant Mol Biol 42:819–832Butelli E, Titta L, Giorgio M et al (2008) Enrichment of tomato fruit with health-promoting anthocyanins by expression of select transcription factors. Nat Biotechnol 26: 1301–1308Kapila J, DeRycke R, VanMontagu M et al (1997) An Agrobacterium-mediated transient gene expression system for intact leaves. Plant Sci 122:101–10

COVID‐19‐related anxiety predicts somatic symptoms in the UK population

This study aimed to estimate the association between anxiety associated with COVID‐19 and somatic symptoms, using data from a large, representative sample (N = 2,025) of the UK adult population. Results showed that moderate to high levels of anxiety associated with COVID‐19 were significantly associated with general somatic symptoms and in particular with gastrointestinal and fatigue symptoms. This pattern of associations remained significant after controlling for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), pre‐existing health problems, age, gender, and income. This is the first evidence that anxiety associated with COVID‐19 makes a unique contribution to somatization, above and beyond the effect of GAD

The Authoritarian Dynamic During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Effects on Nationalism and Anti-Immigrant Sentiment

Research has demonstrated that situational factors such as perceived threats to the social order activate latent authoritarianism. The deadly COVID-19 pandemic presents a rare opportunity to test whether existential threat stemming from an indiscriminate virus moderates the relationship between authoritarianism and political attitudes toward the nation and out-groups. Using data from two large nationally representative samples of adults in the United Kingdom (N = 2,025) and Republic of Ireland (N = 1,041) collected during the initial phases of strict lockdown measures in both countries, we find that the associations between right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and (1) nationalism and (2) anti-immigrant attitudes are conditional on levels of perceived threat. As anxiety about the COVID-19 pandemic increases, so too does the effect of RWA on those political outcomes. Thus, it appears that existential threats to humanity from the COVID-19 pandemic moderate expressions of authoritarianism in society

The Underestimation Of Egocentric Distance: Evidence From Frontal Matching Tasks

There is controversy over the existence, nature, and cause of error in egocentric distance judgments. One proposal is that the systematic biases often found in explicit judgments of egocentric distance along the ground may be related to recently observed biases in the perceived declination of gaze (Durgin & Li, Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, in press), To measure perceived egocentric distance nonverbally, observers in a field were asked to position themselves so that their distance from one of two experimenters was equal to the frontal distance between the experimenters. Observers placed themselves too far away, consistent with egocentric distance underestimation. A similar experiment was conducted with vertical frontal extents. Both experiments were replicated in panoramic virtual reality. Perceived egocentric distance was quantitatively consistent with angular bias in perceived gaze declination (1.5 gain). Finally, an exocentric distance-matching task was contrasted with a variant of the egocentric matching task. The egocentric matching data approximate a constant compression of perceived egocentric distance with a power function exponent of nearly 1; exocentric matches had an exponent of about 0.67. The divergent pattern between egocentric and exocentric matches suggests that they depend on different visual cues

Different Conspiracy Theories Have Different Psychological and Social Determinants: Comparison of Three Theories About the Origins of the COVID-19 Virus in a Representative Sample of the UK Population

COVID-19 conspiracy theories have proliferated during the global pandemic, and their rapid spread among certain groups may jeopardize the public health response (e.g., undermining motivation to engage in social distancing and willingness to vaccinate against the virus). Using survey data from two waves of a nationally representative, longitudinal study of life in lockdown in the United Kingdom (N = 1,406), we analyze the factors associated with belief in three origin theories related to COVID-19, namely that it 1) originated in a meat market in Wuhan, China; 2) was developed in a lab in Wuhan, China; and 3) is caused by 5G mobile networks. Our findings suggest that political-psychological predispositions are strongly associated with belief in conspiracy theories about the virus, though the direction and effect sizes of these predictors vary depending on the specific content of each origin theory. For instance, belief in the Chinese lab conspiracy theory is strongly associated with right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), social dominance orientation (SDO), and general conspiracy ideation, as well as less reliable news sources, distrust in scientists, and anxiety about the pandemic. Belief in the 5G network conspiracy theory is strongly associated with SDO, distrust in scientists, while less strongly with conspiracy ideation and information from social networks/media; RWA is strongly negatively associated with belief in the 5G conspiracy theory, with older and more wealthy individuals somewhat less likely to endorse it. The meat market origin theory is predicted by intolerance of uncertainty, ethnocentrism, COVID-19 anxiety, and less so by higher income, while distrust in scientists is negatively associated with this origin story. Finally, belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories is associated with negative public health behaviors such as unwillingness to social distance and vaccinate against the virus. Crucially, our findings suggest that the specific content of COVID-19 conspiracy theories likely determines which individuals may be most likely to endorse them

Testing both affordability-availability and psychological-coping mechanisms underlying changes in alcohol use during the COVID-19 pandemic

Two theoretical perspectives have been proffered to explain changes in alcohol use during the pandemic: the 'affordability-availability' mechanism (i.e., drinking decreases due to changes in physical availability and/or reduced disposable income) and the 'psychologicalcoping' mechanism (i.e., drinking increases as adults attempt to cope with pandemic-related distress). We tested these alternative perspectives via longitudinal analyses of the COVID- 19 Psychological Consortium (C19PRC) Study data (spanning three timepoints during March to July 2020). Respondents provided data on psychological measures (e.g., anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress, paranoia, extraversion, neuroticism, death anxiety, COVID-19 anxiety, intolerance of uncertainty, resilience), changes in socio-economic circumstances (e.g., income loss, reduced working hours), drinking motives, solitary drinking, and 'at-risk' drinking (assessed using a modified version of the AUDIT-C). Structural equation modelling was used to determine (i) whether 'at-risk' drinking during the pandemic differed from that recalled before the pandemic, (ii) dimensions of drinking motives and the psychosocial correlates of these dimensions, (iii) if increased alcohol consumption was predicted by drinking motives, solitary drinking, and socio-economic changes. The proportion of adults who recalled engaging in 'at-risk' drinking decreased significantly from 35.9% prepandemic to 32.0% during the pandemic. Drinking to cope was uniquely predicted by experiences of anxiety and/or depression and low resilience levels. Income loss or reduced working hours were not associated with coping, social enhancement, or conformity drinking motives, nor changes in drinking during lockdown. In the earliest stage of the pandemic, psychological-coping mechanisms may have been a stronger driver to changes in adults' alcohol use than 'affordability-availability' alone