A defiance attitude towards experts? On the influence of emphasising researcher’s expertise on participants’ causal attribution ratings in a closed-response format

Objectives. Formal features of a questionnaire influence self-reports on central psychological constructs such as causal attributions: Using open-response formats Norenzayan and Schwarz (1999) demonstrated that respondents provided causal explanations for a given event corresponding with the researcher’s communicated research field. Extending this, our research investigates the influence of emphasising the researcher’s expertise on causal attributions using closed-response formats. Methods. In a 3 (field of research: personality, social, criminology) × 2 (emphasis of expertise: yes, no) between-subjects design, students (N = 144) rated the importance of specified personality-based causal explanations for a crime. Results. ANCOVA analysis (covariates: age, gender, personality dimensions) yielded a significant disordinal medium-sized interaction: When expertise was emphasised for the personality researcher, importance ratings of personality reasons decreased, whereas these ratings increased when expertise was emphasised for the social researcher. Conclusion. Respondents oppose authority and emphasise causal attributions contrary to the researcher’s epistemic interest when expertise is emphasised

Risk Factors for Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome

Patellofemoral pain syndrome (PFPS) is a common source of anterior knee in pain females. PFPS has been linked to severe pain, disability, and long-term consequences such as osteoarthritis. Three main mechanisms have been proposed as possible causes of PFPS: the top-down mechanism (a result of hip weakness), the bottom-up mechanism (a result of abnormal foot structure/mobility), and factors local to the knee (related to alignment and quadriceps strength). The purpose of this study was to compare hip strength and arch structure of young females with and without PFPS in order to detect risk factors for PFPS

Yuck, This Biscuit Looks Lumpy! Neophobic Levels and Cultural Differences Drive Children’s Check-All-That-Apply (CATA) Descriptions and Preferences for High-Fibre Biscuits

Food neophobia influences food choice in school-aged children. However, little is known about how children with different degrees of food neophobia perceive food and to what extent different sensory attributes drive their liking. This paper explores liking and sensory perception of fibre-rich biscuits in school-aged children (n = 509, age 9–12 years) with different degrees of food neophobia and from five different European countries (Finland, Italy, Spain, Sweden and United Kingdom). Children tasted and rated their liking of eight commercial biscuits and performed a Check-All-That-Apply task to describe the samples and further completed a Food Neophobia Scale. Children with a higher degree of neophobia displayed a lower liking for all tasted biscuits (p < 0.001). Cross-cultural differences in liking also appeared (p < 0.001). A negative correlation was found between degree of neophobia and the number of CATA-terms used to describe the samples (r = −0.116, p = 0.009). Penalty analysis showed that degree of food neophobia also affected drivers of biscuit liking, where particularly appearance terms were drivers of disliking for neophobic children. Cross-cultural differences in drivers of liking and disliking were particularly salient for texture attributes. Further research should explore if optimizing appearance attributes could be a way to increase liking of fibre-rich foods in neophobic children

Für wen gebe ich mein Urteil ab? Der systematische Einfluss des Fragebogenadressaten auf Kausalattributionsgewichtungen bei geschlossenen Antwortformaten

Die Fragebogenforschung belegt, dass Respondenten durch Kontextinformationen eines Fragebogens systematisch in ihrem Antwortverhalten beeinflusst werden. So zeigten Norenzayan und Schwarz (1999), dass Probanden bei freier Antwortmöglichkeit eher persönlichkeitsbezogene Ursachen zur Erklärung von Straftaten nennen, wenn der Fragebogen scheinbar von einem Institut für Persönlichkeitsforschung (verglichen mit einem Institut für Sozialforschung) erstellt wurde. Hierzu diskutierte Erklärungen sind einerseits Konversationsmaximen, die einen Bezug zwischen Adressat und Gesagtem induzieren, andererseits kognitive Primings, die selektive kognitive Aktivierungen und damit Verfügbarkeiten bedingen sollen. Die vorliegende Studie untersucht diese Erklärungsalternativen, indem sie erstmals in einem analogen Studiendesign persönlichkeitsbezogene und soziale Gründe in geschlossenen Antwortformaten vorgibt und gewichten lässt. Mögliche Gewichtungsunterschiede sind somit nicht mittels kognitiver Verfügbarkeit erklärbar. Eine Kovarianzanalyse (Alter, Geschlecht und die Big-Five-Persönlichkeitsdimensionen als Kovariaten) belegt im Einklang mit den Konversationsmaximen eine signifikant stärkere Bedeutungszuschreibung für persönlichkeitsbezogene Ursachen unter der Bedingung „Institut für Persönlichkeitsforschung“ im Vergleich zu „Institut für Sozialforschung“ und einer Kontrollbedingung („Institut für Kriminologie“)

Yuck, This Biscuit Looks Lumpy! Neophobic Levels and Cultural Differences Drive Children's Check-All-That-Apply (CATA) Descriptions and Preferences for High-Fibre Biscuits

Food neophobia influences food choice in school-aged children. However, little is known about how children with different degrees of food neophobia perceive food and to what extent different sensory attributes drive their liking. This paper explores liking and sensory perception of fibre-rich biscuits in school-aged children (n = 509, age 9-12 years) with different degrees of food neophobia and from five different European countries (Finland, Italy, Spain, Sweden and United Kingdom). Children tasted and rated their liking of eight commercial biscuits and performed a Check-All-That-Apply task to describe the samples and further completed a Food Neophobia Scale. Children with a higher degree of neophobia displayed a lower liking for all tasted biscuits (p < 0.001). Cross-cultural differences in liking also appeared (p < 0.001). A negative correlation was found between degree of neophobia and the number of CATA-terms used to describe the samples (r = -0.116, p = 0.009). Penalty analysis showed that degree of food neophobia also affected drivers of biscuit liking, where particularly appearance terms were drivers of disliking for neophobic children. Cross-cultural differences in drivers of liking and disliking were particularly salient for texture attributes. Further research should explore if optimizing appearance attributes could be a way to increase liking of fibre-rich foods in neophobic children

Intake of Fibre-Associated Foods and Texture Preferences in Relation to Weight Status Among 9-12 Years Old Children in 6 European Countries

Plant foods, rich in fibre, can offer textures that children find difficult to orally manipulate, resulting in low preferences but are important for a healthy diet and prevention of overweight in children. Our aim was to investigate preferences for food texture, intake of fibre-associated foods and the relation to BMI. Three hundred thirty European children (9-12 years, 54% female) indicated their texture preferences using the Child-Food-Texture-Preference- Questionnaire (CFTPQ), and their parents responded on fibre-associated food consumption and anthropometric information. BMI was significantly lower for children with higher intake of wholegrain alternatives of common foods; in addition to being significantly influenced by country and the wearing of a dental brace. Overall BMI-for-age-percentiles (BMI_pct) were negatively associated with the consumption of wholegrain cereals, white pasta and wholemeal products and positively associated with the intake of legumes and white biscuits. In males, BMI_pct were negatively associated with wholegrain products and dried fruits, and in females, positively with legume consumption. A few country-related associations were found for BMI_pct and wholegrain biscuits, seeds and nuts and refined products. No overall correlation was found between BMI_pct and the texture preference of soft/hard foods by CFTPQ, except in Austria. We conclude that this study revealed evidence of a connection between fibre-associated foods and children's BMI at a cross-cultural level and that sex is an important determinant of fibre-associated food intake and the development of overweight in childhood

Expression of pH-Sensitive TRPC4 in Common Skin Tumors

TRPCs (transient receptor potential classical or cation channels) play a crucial role in tumor biology, especially in the Ca2+ homeostasis in cancer cells. TRPC4 is a pH-sensitive member of this family of proteins. As solid tumors exhibit an inversed pH-gradient with lowered extracellular and increased intracellular pH, both contributing to tumor progression, TRPC4 might be a signaling molecule in the altered tumor microenvironment. This is the first study to investigate the expression profiles of TRPC4 in common skin cancers such as basal cell carcinoma (BCC), squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), malignant melanoma (MM) and nevus cell nevi (NCN). We found that all SCCs, NCNs, and MMs show positive TRPC4-expression, while BCCs do only in about half of the analyzed samples. These data render TRPC4 an immunohistochemical marker to distinguish SCC and BCC, and this also gives rise to future studies investigating the role of TRPC4 in tumor progression, and especially metastasis as BCCs very rarely spread and are mostly negative for TRPC4

Microwave engineering of programmable X X Z Hamiltonians in arrays of Rydberg atoms

We use the resonant dipole-dipole interaction between Rydberg atoms and a periodic external microwave field to engineer XXZ spin Hamiltonians with tunable anisotropies. The atoms are placed in one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) arrays of optical tweezers. As illustrations, we apply this engineering to two iconic situations in spin physics: the Heisenberg model in square arrays and spin transport in 1D. We first benchmark the Hamiltonian engineering for two atoms and then demonstrate the freezing of the magnetization on an initially magnetized 2D array. Finally, we explore the dynamics of 1D domain-wall systems with both periodic and open boundary conditions. We systematically compare our data with numerical simulations and assess the residual limitations of the technique as well as routes for improvement. The geometrical versatility of the platform, combined with the flexibility of the simulated Hamiltonians, opens up exciting prospects in the fields of quantum simulation, quantum information processing, and quantum sensing.This work is supported by the European Union (EU) Horizon 2020 research and innovation program “Programmable Atomic Large-Scale Quantum Simulation” (PASQuanS) under Grant Agreement No. 817482, the Agence National de la Recherche (ANR, project RYBOTIN), the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy EXC2181/1-390900948 (the Heidelberg STRUCTURES Excellence Cluster), within the Collaborative Research Center SFB1225 (ISOQUANT), the DFG Priority Program 1929 “GiRyd” (DFG WE2661/12-1), and by the Heidelberg Center for Quantum Dynamics. C.H. acknowledges funding from the Alexander von Humboldt foundation, T.F. from a graduate scholarship of the Heidelberg University (LGFG), and D.B. from the Ramón y Cajal program (RYC2018-025348-I). F.W. is partially supported by the Erasmus+ program of the EU. We also acknowledge support by the state of Baden-Württemberg through Baden-Württemberg high performance computing (bwHPC) and the DFG through Grant No. INST 40/575-1 FUGG (JUSTUS 2 cluster).Peer reviewe

Genetic loci and prioritization of genes for kidney function decline derived from a meta-analysis of 62 longitudinal genome-wide association studies

Estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) reflects kidney function. Progressive eGFR-decline can lead to kidney failure, necessitating dialysis or transplantation. Hundreds of loci from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) for eGFR help explain population cross section variability. Since the contribution of these or other loci to eGFR-decline remains largely unknown, we derived GWAS for annual eGFR-decline and meta-analyzed 62 longitudinal studies with eGFR assessed twice over time in all 343,339 individuals and in high-risk groups. We also explored different covariate adjustment. Twelve genome-wide significant independent variants for eGFR-decline unadjusted or adjusted for eGFR-baseline (11 novel, one known for this phenotype), including nine variants robustly associated across models were identified. All loci for eGFR-decline were known for cross-sectional eGFR and thus distinguished a subgroup of eGFR loci. Seven of the nine variants showed variant-by-age interaction on eGFR cross section (further about 350,000 individuals), which linked genetic associations for eGFR-decline with age-dependency of genetic cross-section associations. Clinically important were two to four-fold greater genetic effects on eGFR-decline in high-risk subgroups. Five variants associated also with chronic kidney disease progression mapped to genes with functional in-silico evidence (UMOD, SPATA7, GALNTL5, TPPP). An unfavorable versus favorable nine-variant genetic profile showed increased risk odds ratios of 1.35 for kidney failure (95% confidence intervals 1.03-1.77) and 1.27 for acute kidney injury (95% confidence intervals 1.08-1.50) in over 2000 cases each, with matched controls). Thus, we provide a large data resource, genetic loci, and prioritized genes for kidney function decline, which help inform drug development pipelines revealing important insights into the age-dependency of kidney function genetics