Norms of valence and arousal for 14,031 Spanish words

Most current models of research on emotion recognize valence (how pleasant a stimulus is) and arousal (the level of activation or intensity that a stimulus elicits) as important components in the classification of affective experiences (Barrett, 1998; Kuppens, Tuerlinckx, Russell, & Barrett, 2012). Here we present a set of norms for valence and arousal for a very large set of Spanish words, including items from a variety of frequencies, semantic categories, and parts of speech, including a subset of conjugated verbs. In this regard, we found that there were significant but very small differences between the ratings for conjugations of the same verb, validating the practice of applying the ratings for infinitives to all derived forms of the verb. Our norms show a high degree of reliability and are strongly correlated with those of Redondo, Fraga, Padron, and Comesana's (2007) Spanish version of the influential Affective Norms for English Words (Bradley & Lang, 1999), as well as those from Warriner, Kuperman, and Brysbaert (2013), the largest available set of emotional norms for English words. Additionally, we included measures of word prevalence-that is, the percentage of participants that knew a particular word-for each variable (Keuleers, Stevens, Mandera, & Brysbaert, 2015). Our large set of norms in Spanish not only will facilitate the creation of stimuli and the analysis of texts in that language, but also will be useful for cross-language comparisons and research on emotional aspects of bilingualism. The norms can be downloaded and available as a supplementary materials to this article

The C-terminal domain of TPX2 is made of alpha-helical tandem repeats

Background: TPX2 (Targeting Protein for Xklp2) is essential for spindle assembly, activation of the mitotic kinase Aurora A and for triggering microtubule nucleation. Homologs of TPX2 in Chordata and plants were previously identified. Currently, proteins of the TPX2 family have little structural information and only small parts are covered by defined protein domains. Methods: We have used computational sequence analyses and structural predictions of proteins of the TPX2 family, supported with Circular Dichroism (CD) measurements. Results: Here, we report our finding that the C-terminal domain of TPX2, which is responsible of its microtubule nucleation capacity and is conserved in all members of the family, is actually formed by tandem repeats, covering well above 2/3 of the protein. We propose that this region forms a flexible solenoid involved in protein-protein interactions. Structural prediction and molecular modeling, combined with Circular Dichroism (CD) measurements reveal a predominant alpha-helical content. Furthermore, we identify full length homologs in fungi and shorter homologs with a different domain organization in diptera (including a paralogous expansion in Drosophila). Conclusions: Our results, represent the first computational and biophysical analysis of the TPX2 proteins family and help understand the structure and evolution of this conserved protein family to direct future structural studies

Molecular simulations of the synthesis of periodic mesoporous silica phases at high surfactant concentrations

Molecular dynamics simulations of a coarse-grained model are used to study the formation mechanism of periodic mesoporous silica over a wide range of cationic surfactant concentrations. This follows up on an earlier study of systems with low surfactant concentrations. We started by studying the phase diagram of the surfactant-water system and found that our model shows good qualitative agreement with experiments with respect to the surfactant concentrations where various phases appear. We then considered the impact of silicate species upon the morphologies formed. We have found that even in concentrated surfactant systems --in the concentration range where pure surfactant solutions yield a liquid crystal phase -- the liquid-crystal templating mechanism is not viable because the preformed liquid crystal collapses as silica monomers are added into the solution. Upon the addition of silica dimers, a new phase-separated hexagonal array is formed. The preformed liquid crystals were found to be unstable in the presence of monomeric silicates. In addition, the silica dimer is found to be essential for mesoscale ordering at both low and high surfactant concentrations. Our results support the view that a cooperative interaction of anionic silica oligomers and cationic surfactants determines the mesostructure formation in the M41S family of materials.publishe

At the southeast fringe of the Bantu expansion: genetic diversity and phylogenetic relationships to other sub-Saharan tribes

Here, we present 12 loci paternal haplotypes (Y-STR profiles) against the backdrop of the Y-SNP marker system of Bantu males from the Maputo Province of Southeast Africa, a region believed to represent the southeastern fringe of the Bantu expansion. Our Maputo Bantu group was analyzed within the context of 27 geographically relevant reference populations in order to ascertain its genetic relationship to other Bantu and non Bantu (Pygmy, Khoisan and Nilotic) sub-equatorial tribes from West and East Africa. This study entails statistical pair wise comparisons and multidimensional scaling based on YSTR Rst distances, network analyses of Bantu (B2a-M150) and Pygmy (B2b-M112) lineages as well as an assessment of Y-SNP distribution patterns. Several notable findings include the following: 1) the Maputo Province Bantu exhibits a relatively close paternal affinity with both east and west Bantu tribes due to high proportion of Bantu Y chromosomal markers, 2) only traces of Khoisan (1.3%) and Pygmy (1.3%) markers persist in the Maputo Province Bantu gene pool, 3) the occurrence of R1a1a-M17/M198, a member of the Eurasian R1a-M420 branch in the population of the Maputo Province, may represent back migration events and/or recent admixture events, 4) the shared presence of E1b1b1-M35 in all Tanzanian tribes examined, including Bantu and non-Bantu groups, in conjunction with its nearly complete absence in the West African populations indicate that, in addition to a shared linguistic, cultural and genetic heritage, geography (e.g., east vs. west) may have impacted the paternal landscape of sub-Saharan Africa, 5) the admixture and assimilation processes of Bantu elements were both highly complex and region-specific

Community participatory action to build a canopy bridge for wild black and gold howler monkeys (Alouatta caraya) in northern Argentina

The combination of urbanization and destruction of native forests commonly has forced wild animals to search for food and shelter in urban areas. Groups of black and gold howler monkeys (Alouatta caraya) are moving into urban areas in Northern Argentina as a consequence of rapid alteration and degradation of their habitats. In general, local people in the area are unaware of and disconnected from conservation actions, such as the protection of local biodiversity. We aimed to address this issue by organizing a group of high school students from both the city of Corrientes and outlying rural areas with the objective of transforming their perceptions on local non-human primates and to build the inaugural canopy bridge to instill biodiversity appreciation. With the students, we identified a location to install a bridge to facilitate the movement of Alouatta caraya across areas of discontinuous canopy. The students worked to build awareness within their community, obtained the necessary permission, and designed the bridge. From the beginning of the awareness campaign to the bridge installation, the process took four years. Afterwards, we installed two more bridges in the same region. From this single case study, we learned that participatory actions are a very important tool for residents of local communities to act collectively to promote biodiversity conservation.Fil: Raño, Mariana. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Nordeste. Centro de Ecología Aplicada del Litoral. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Centro de Ecología Aplicada del Litoral; ArgentinaFil: Palazzo, Mariana. Instituto Pio Xi - Club de Ciencias Arquímedes; ArgentinaFil: Soliz, Alicia. Colegio Secundario San Cayetano; ArgentinaFil: Holzer, Juan C.. Dirección de Parques y Reservas de la Provincia de Corrientes; ArgentinaFil: Perez, Dario A.. Colegio Secundario San Cayetano; ArgentinaFil: Sánchez, Emilio M.. Dirección de Parques y Reservas de la Provincia de Corrientes; ArgentinaFil: Romero, Verónica Lorena. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Nordeste. Centro de Ecología Aplicada del Litoral. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Centro de Ecología Aplicada del Litoral; ArgentinaFil: Sanchez Gavier, Francisco. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Nordeste. Centro de Ecología Aplicada del Litoral. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Centro de Ecología Aplicada del Litoral; ArgentinaFil: Kowalewski, Miguel Martin. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Nordeste. Centro de Ecología Aplicada del Litoral. Universidad Nacional del Nordeste. Centro de Ecología Aplicada del Litoral; Argentin

Improving Feature Representation Based on a Neural Network for Author Profiling in Social Media Texts

We introduce a lexical resource for preprocessing social media data. We show that a neural network-based feature representation is enhanced by using this resource. We conducted experiments on the PAN 2015 and PAN 2016 author profiling corpora and obtained better results when performing the data preprocessing using the developed lexical resource. The resource includes dictionaries of slang words, contractions, abbreviations, and emoticons commonly used in social media. Each of the dictionaries was built for the English, Spanish, Dutch, and Italian languages. The resource is freely available

Shoc2/Sur8 protein regulates neurite outgrowth

This is an openaccess article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.-- et al.The Shoc2 protein has been implicated in the positive regulation of the Ras-ERK pathway by increasing the functional binding interaction between Ras and Raf, leading to increased ERK activity. Here we found that Shoc2 overexpression induced sustained ERK phosphorylation, notably in the case of EGF stimulation, and Shoc2 knockdown inhibited ERK activation. We demonstrate that ectopic overexpression of human Shoc2 in PC12 cells significantly promotes neurite extension in the presence of EGF, a stimulus that induces proliferation rather than differentiation in these cells. Finally, Shoc2 depletion reduces both NGF-induced neurite outgrowth and ERK activation in PC12 cells. Our data indicate that Shoc2 is essential to modulate the Ras-ERK signaling outcome in cell differentiation processes involved in neurite outgrowth.GL, TG and LMD were recipients of fellowships from the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (MEC) (to GL, TG), and Fondo de Investigaciones Sanitarias (FIS) (to LMD). LSR held a postdoctoral research contract from CIBERNED. This work was supported by FIS grant (PI10/00815) to JLO; CIBERNED to MC; SAF2008-01951, Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid (CAM) SSAL-0202-2006-01 and Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red sobre Enfermedades Neurodegenerativas (CIBERNED) to TI; FIS grant PI12/00775 and ISCIII-RETIC (Red Temática de Investigación Cooperativa en Cáncer) RD12/0036/0027 from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III to PSG; and FIS grants (PI09/0562 and PI13/00703), ISCIIIRETIC (RD06/0020/0003 and RD12/0036/0021), and the Spanish Association Against Cancer (AECC) to JMR.Peer Reviewe

The OTELO survey: A case study of [O III] lambda 4959,5007 emitters at z=0.83

Context. The OSIRIS Tunable Filter Emission Line Object (OTELO) survey is a very deep, blind exploration of a selected region of the Extended Groth Strip and is designed for finding emission-line sources (ELSs). The survey design, observations, data reduction, astrometry, and photometry, as well as the correlation with ancillary data used to obtain a final catalogue, including photo-z estimates and a preliminary selection of ELS, were described in a previous contribution. Aims. Here, we aim to determine the main properties and luminosity function (LF) of the [O III] ELS sample of OTELO as a scientific demonstration of its capabilities, advantages, and complementarity with respect to other surveys. Methods. The selection and analysis procedures of ELS candidates obtained using tunable filter pseudo-spectra are described. We performed simulations in the parameter space of the survey to obtain emission-line detection probabilities. Relevant characteristics of [O III] emitters and the LF ([O III]), including the main selection biases and uncertainties, are presented. Results. From 541 preliminary emission-line source candidates selected around z = 0.8, a total of 184 sources were confirmed as [O III] emitters. Consistent with simulations, the minimum detectable line flux and equivalent width in this ELS sample are ∼5 × 10−19 erg s−1 cm2 and ∼6 Å, respectively. We are able to constrain the faint-end slope (α = −1.03 ± 0.08) of the observed LF ([O III]) at a mean redshift of z = 0.83. This LF reaches values that are approximately ten times lower than those from other surveys. The vast majority (84%) of the morphologically classified [O III] ELSs are disc-like sources, and 87% of this sample is comprised of galaxies with stellar masses of M⋆ <  1010 M⊙