Lexical Derivation of the PINT Taxonomy of Goals: Prominence, Inclusiveness, Negativity Prevention, and Tradition

What do people want? Few questions are more fundamental to psychological science than this. Yet, existing taxonomies disagree on both the number and content of goals. We thus adopted a lexical approach and investigated the structure of goal-relevant words from the natural English lexicon. Through an intensive rating process, 1,060 goal-relevant English words were first located. In Studies 1-2, two relatively large and diverse samples (total n = 1,026) rated their commitment to approaching or avoiding these goals. Principal component analyses yielded 4 replicable components: Prominence, Inclusiveness, Negativity prevention, and Tradition (the PINT Taxonomy). Study 3-7 (total n = 1,396) supported the 4-factor structure of an abbreviated scale and found systematic differences in their relationships with past goal-content measures, the Big 5 traits, affect, and need satisfaction. This investigation thus provides a data-driven taxonomy of higher-order goal-content and opens up a wide variety of fascinating lines for future research

Dynamic fluctuations in ascending heart-to-brain communication under mental stress

Dynamical information exchange between central and autonomic nervous systems, as referred to functional brain-heart interplay, occurs during emotional and physical arousal. It is well documented that physical and mental stress lead to sympathetic activation. Nevertheless, the role of autonomic inputs in nervous system-wise communication under mental stress is yet unknown. In this study, we estimated the causal and bidirectional neural modulations between electroencephalogram (EEG) oscillations and peripheral sympathetic and parasympathetic activities using a recently proposed computational framework for a functional brain-heart interplay assessment, namely the sympathovagal synthetic data generation model. Mental stress was elicited in 37 healthy volunteers by increasing their cognitive demands throughout three tasks associated with increased stress levels. Stress elicitation induced an increased variability in sympathovagal markers, as well as increased variability in the directional brain-heart interplay. The observed heart-to-brain interplay was primarily from sympathetic activity targeting a wide range of EEG oscillations, whereas variability in the efferent direction seemed mainly related to EEG oscillations in the c band. These findings extend current knowledge on stress physiology, which mainly referred to top-down neural dynamics. Our results suggest that mental stress may not cause an increase in sympathetic activity exclusively as it initiates a dynamic fluctuation within brain-body networks including bidirectional interactions at a brain-heart level. We conclude that directional brain-heart interplay measurements may provide suitable biomarkers for a quantitative stress assessment and bodily feedback may modulate the perceived stress caused by increased cognitive demand

Intermittency in two-dimensional Ekman-Navier-Stokes turbulence

We study the statistics of the vorticity field in two-dimensional Navier-Stokes turbulence with a linear Ekman friction. We show that the small-scale vorticity fluctuations are intermittent, as conjectured by Nam et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. vol.84 (2000) 5134]. The small-scale statistics of vorticity fluctuations coincides with the one of a passive scalar with finite lifetime transported by the velocity field itself.Comment: 4 pages, 7 figure

Ergodicity criteria for non-expanding transformations of 2-adic spheres

In the paper, we obtain necessary and sufficient conditions for ergodicity (with respect to the normalized Haar measure) of discrete dynamical systems $$ on 2-adic spheres $\mathbf S_{2^{-r}}(a)$ of radius $2^{-r}$, $r\ge 1$, centered at some point $a$ from the ultrametric space of 2-adic integers $\mathbb Z_2$. The map $f\colon\mathbb Z_2\to\mathbb Z_2$ is assumed to be non-expanding and measure-preserving; that is, $f$ satisfies a Lipschitz condition with a constant 1 with respect to the 2-adic metric, and $f$ preserves a natural probability measure on $\mathbb Z_2$, the Haar measure $\mu_2$ on $\mathbb Z_2$ which is normalized so that $\mu_2(\mathbb Z_2)=1$

The neuropilin 1 cytoplasmic domain is required for VEGF-A-dependent arteriogenesis.

Neuropilin 1 (NRP1) plays an important but ill-defined role in VEGF-A signaling and vascular morphogenesis. We show that mice with a knockin mutation that ablates the NRP1 cytoplasmic tail (Nrp1(cyto)) have normal angiogenesis but impaired developmental and adult arteriogenesis. The arteriogenic defect was traced to the absence of a PDZ-dependent interaction between NRP1 and VEGF receptor 2 (VEGFR2) complex and synectin, which delayed trafficking of endocytosed VEGFR2 from Rab5+ to EAA1+ endosomes. This led to increased PTPN1 (PTP1b)-mediated dephosphorylation of VEGFR2 at Y(1175), the site involved in activating ERK signaling. The Nrp1(cyto) mutation also impaired endothelial tubulogenesis in vitro, which could be rescued by expressing full-length NRP1 or constitutively active ERK. These results demonstrate that the NRP1 cytoplasmic domain promotes VEGFR2 trafficking in a PDZ-dependent manner to regulate arteriogenic ERK signaling and establish a role for NRP1 in VEGF-A signaling during vascular morphogenesis

Strongly anisotropic spin relaxation in graphene/transition metal dichalcogenide heterostructures at room temperature

Graphene has emerged as the foremost material for future two-dimensional spintronics due to its tuneable electronic properties. In graphene, spin information can be transported over long distances and, in principle, be manipulated by using magnetic correlations or large spin-orbit coupling (SOC) induced by proximity effects. In particular, a dramatic SOC enhancement has been predicted when interfacing graphene with a semiconducting transition metal dechalcogenide, such as tungsten disulphide (WS$_2$). Signatures of such an enhancement have recently been reported but the nature of the spin relaxation in these systems remains unknown. Here, we unambiguously demonstrate anisotropic spin dynamics in bilayer heterostructures comprising graphene and WS$_2$. By using out-of-plane spin precession, we show that the spin lifetime is largest when the spins point out of the graphene plane. Moreover, we observe that the spin lifetime varies over one order of magnitude depending on the spin orientation, indicating that the strong spin-valley coupling in WS$_2$ is imprinted in the bilayer and felt by the propagating spins. These findings provide a rich platform to explore coupled spin-valley phenomena and offer novel spin manipulation strategies based on spin relaxation anisotropy in two-dimensional materials

The Chicken Yolk Sac IgY Receptor, a Mammalian Mannose Receptor Family Member, Transcytoses IgY across Polarized Epithelial Cells

In mammals the transfer of passive immunity from mother to young is mediated by the MHC-related receptor FcRn, which transports maternal IgG across epithelial cell barriers. In birds, maternal IgY in egg yolk is transferred across the yolk sac to passively immunize chicks during gestation and early independent life. The chicken yolk sac IgY receptor (FcRY) is the ortholog of the mammalian phospholipase A2 receptor, a mannose receptor family member, rather than an FcRn or MHC homolog. FcRn and FcRY both exhibit ligand binding at the acidic pH of endosomes and ligand release at the slightly basic pH of blood. Here we show that FcRY expressed in polarized mammalian epithelial cells functioned in endocytosis, bidirectional transcytosis, and recycling of chicken FcY/IgY. Confocal immunofluorescence studies demonstrated that IgY binding and endocytosis occurred at acidic but not basic pH, mimicking pH-dependent uptake of IgG by FcRn. Colocalization studies showed FcRY-mediated internalization via clathrin-coated pits and transport involving early and recycling endosomes. Disruption of microtubules partially inhibited apical-to-basolateral and basolateral-to-apical transcytosis, but not recycling, suggesting the use of different trafficking machinery. Our results represent the first cell biological evidence of functional equivalence between FcRY and FcRn and provide an intriguing example of how evolution can give rise to systems in which similar biological requirements in different species are satisfied utilizing distinct protein folds

Spontaneous spirals in vibrated granular chains

We present experimental measurements on the spontaneous formation of compact spiral structures in vertically-vibrated granular chains. Under weak vibration when the chain is quasi two-dimensional and self-avoiding, spiral structures emerge from random initial configurations. We compare the spiral geometry with that of an ideal tight spiral. Globally, the spiral undergoes a slow rotation such that to keep itself wound, while internally, fast vibrational modes are excited along the backbone with transverse oscillations dominating over longitudinal ones