Love, Language, and Linear Algebra: Linguistic Modeling of Personality and Mate Preference

This study utilized Latent Semantic Analysis to determine whether similarities in personality predicted similarities in responses to a romantic writing prompt (Landauer & Dumais, 1997). From participants’ writing samples, we calculated thematic cosines (a measure of relatedness) between each male and female participant. Participants also completed the Big Five Personality Questionnaire Short Form (Morizet, 2014). Extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness were related to cosines, which suggested small-medium relationships from personality traits to written responses. This relationship was consistent with previous studies; therefore, Latent Semantic Analysis may be useful in quantifying mate preference, especially when alongside traditional survey methods. We conclude with a discussion of the compatibility of ordinal measures (survey data) and continuous measures in examining complex phenomena in the Behavioral Sciences

Memorias de Mi Familia

Abstract Memorias de Mi Familia is an hour-long personal documentary through which I explore the meaning of “home.” I was born and raised in New York to a Puerto Rican mother and Ecuadorian father and lived between two worlds—sometimes more. While on a visit to Puerto Rico with my mother, Sylvia, I search for belonging and explore my family’s story of migration between the island and the United States. Through interviews, family films, home videos and photographs spanning over 60 years, I examine the revolving migration pattern common to many Puerto Ricans on the island and in the diaspora, a cycle framed and at times burdened by Puerto Rico’s colonial relationship to the United States

Attachment and couple sexual functioning

Within the last several years, there has been a surge in the publications that focus on attachment within the couple relationships, including how it pertains to infidelity treatment. Despite the interest in couple relationships and attachment, however, a limited amount of literature focuses on how varying styles of attachment manifest in a couple\u27s level of sexual functioning. This study is a response to the need to explore the literature and related gaps in literature

A Numerical Investigation of Hurricane Florence-Induced Compound Flooding in the Cape Fear Estuary Using a Dynamically Coupled Hydrological-Ocean Model

Hurricane-induced compound flooding is a combined result of multiple processes, including overland runoff, precipitation, and storm surge. This study presents a dynamical coupling method applied at the boundary of a processes-based hydrological model (the hydrological modeling extension package of the Weather Research and Forecasting model) and the two-dimensional Regional Ocean Modeling System on the platform of the Coupled-Ocean-Atmosphere-Wave-Sediment Transport Modeling System. The coupled model was adapted to the Cape Fear River Basin and adjacent coastal ocean in North Carolina, United States, which suffered severe losses due to the compound flood induced by Hurricane Florence in 2018. The model\u27s robustness was evaluated via comparison against observed water levels in the watershed, estuary, and along the coast. With a series of sensitivity experiments, the contributions from different processes to the water level variations in the estuary were untangled and quantified. Based on the temporal evolution of wind, water flux, water level, and water-level gradient, compound flooding in the estuary was categorized into four stages: (I) swelling, (II) local-wind-dominated, (III) transition, and (IV) overland-runoff-dominated. A nonlinear effect was identified between overland runoff and water level in the estuary, which indicated the estuary could serve as a buffer for surges from the ocean side by reducing the maximum surge height. Water budget analysis indicated that water in the estuary was flushed 10 times by overland runoff within 23 days after Florence\u27s landfall

The Importance of the Fifth Nucleotide in DNA: Uracil

Uracil is a ribonucleotide found in both DNA and RNA, with the main difference between the two being the presence of thymine in DNA and uracil in RNA. Although thymine and uracil are similar in function and can form the same base pairs with adenine, the presence of uracil in DNA can affect DNA stability and modulate cell-specific functions. Without repair mechanisms to remove uracil from DNA, cytosine deamination can occur, resulting in gene drift that is not tolerable in organisms. While the deamination of cytosine in DNA signals damage, a corresponding deamination in RNA would yield normal RNA constituents. To correct this, uracil DNA glycosylases detect and remove uracil bases from uracil-containing DNA, but not natural thymine-containing DNA. The mechanisms of uracil incorporation into DNA, its roles in DNA, cellular mechanisms to detect and remove uracil, and the clinical utility of uracil in DNA will be discussed in this chapter

Oncogenic microRNA-4534 regulates PTEN pathway in prostate cancer.

Prostate carcinogenesis involves alterations in several signaling pathways, the most prominent being the PI3K/AKT pathway. This pathway is constitutively active and drives prostate cancer (PCa) progression to advanced metastatic disease. PTEN, a critical tumor and metastasis suppressor gene negatively regulates cell survival, proliferation, migration and angiogenesis via the PI3K/Akt pathway. PTEN is mutated, downregulated/dysfunctional in many cancers and its dysregulation correlates with poor prognosis in PCa. Here, we demonstrate that microRNA-4534 (miR-4534) is overexpressed in PCa and show that miR-4534 is hypermethylated in normal tissues and cell lines compared to PCa tissues/cells. miR-4534 exerts its oncogenic effects partly by downregulating the tumor suppressor PTEN gene. Knockdown of miR-4534 impaired cell proliferation, migration/invasion and induced G0/G1 cell cycle arrest and apoptosis in PCa. Suppression of miR-4534 and its effects on tumor growth was confirmed in a xenograft mouse model. We performed parallel experiments in non-cancer RWPE1 cells by overexpessing miR-4534 followed by functional assays. Overexpression of miR-4534 induced pro-cancerous characteristics in this non-cancer cell line. Statistical analyses revealed that miR-4534 has potential to independently distinguish malignant from normal tissues and positively correlated with poor overall and PSA recurrence free survival. Taken together, our results show that depletion of miR-4534 in PCa induces a tumor suppressor phenotype partly through induction of PTEN. These results have important implications for identifying and defining the role of new PTEN regulators such as microRNAs in prostate tumorigenesis. Understanding aberrantly overexpressed miR-4534 and its downregulation of PTEN will provide mechanistic insight and therapeutic targets for PCa therapy

Regionally aggregated, stitched and de‐drifted CMIP‐climate data, processed with netCDF‐SCM v2.0.0

The world's most complex climate models are currently running a range of experiments as part of the Sixth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6). Added to the output from the Fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5), the total data volume will be in the order of 20PB. Here, we present a dataset of annual, monthly, global, hemispheric and land/ocean means derived from a selection of experiments of key interest to climate data analysts and reduced complexity climate modellers. The derived dataset is a key part of validating, calibrating and developing reduced complexity climate models against the behaviour of more physically complete models. In addition to its use for reduced complexity climate modellers, we aim to make our data accessible to other research communities. We facilitate this in a number of ways. Firstly, given the focus on annual, monthly, global, hemispheric and land/ocean mean quantities, our dataset is orders of magnitude smaller than the source data and hence does not require specialized ‘big data’ expertise. Secondly, again because of its smaller size, we are able to offer our dataset in a text-based format, greatly reducing the computational expertise required to work with CMIP output. Thirdly, we enable data provenance and integrity control by tracking all source metadata and providing tools which check whether a dataset has been retracted, that is identified as erroneous. The resulting dataset is updated as new CMIP6 results become available and we provide a stable access point to allow automated downloads. Along with our accompanying website (cmip6.science.unimelb.edu.au), we believe this dataset provides a unique community resource, as well as allowing non-specialists to access CMIP data in a new, user-friendly way