Aversion, interpretation and determinability: Three factors of uncertainty that may play a role in psychopathology

This opinion piece considers the construct of tolerance of uncertainty and suggests that it should be viewed in the context of three psychological factors: uncertainty aversion, uncertainty interpretation, and uncertainty determinability. Uncertainty aversion refers to a dislike of situations in which the outcomes are not deterministic and is similar to conventional conceptions of (in)tolerance of uncertainty. Uncertainty interpretation refers to the extent to which variability in an observed outcome is interpreted as random fluctuation around a relatively stable base-rate versus frequent and rapid changes in the base-rate. Uncertainty determinability refers to the (actual or perceived) capacity of the individual to generate any meaningful expectancy of the uncertain outcome, which may be undeterminable if predictions are updated too quickly. We argue that uncertainty interpretation and determinability are psychological responses to the experience of probabilistic events that vary among individuals and can moderate negative affect experienced in response to uncertainty. We describe how individual differences in basic parameters of associative learning (modelled by a simple learning window) could lead to this variation. To explain these hypotheses, we utilise the distinction between aleatory uncertainty (the inherent unpredictability of individual stochastic events) and epistemic uncertainty (obtainable knowledge that the individual lacks or perceives to be lacking). We argue that when expectancies are updated quickly, epistemic uncertainty will dominate the individual’s representation of the events around them, leading to a subjective experience of the world as one that is volatile and unpredictable

Do partial and distributed tests enhance new learning?

Testing facilitates subsequent learning of new information, a phenomenon known as the forward testing effect. The effect is often investigated in multilist procedures, where studied lists are followed by a retrieval test, or a control task such as restudying, and learning is compared on the final list. In most studies of the effect, tests include all material from the preceding list. We report four experiments, three of which were preregistered, to determine whether tests that are partial (not including all studied items) and distributed (including retrieval of items from earlier lists) are effective in enhancing new learning. The results show that testing of all studied material is not necessary to produce beneficial effects on new learning or to reduce intrusions. The beneficial effects of testing were substantially mediated by reduced proactive interference. Importantly, there was minimal evidence that the forward learning benefits of partial and distributed tests are offset by a cost to untested items via retrieval-induced forgetting

Evaluating the conceptual strategy change account of test-potentiated new learning in list recall

Prior testing potentiates new learning, an effect known as test-potentiated new learning (TPNL). Research using lists of related words has established that testing, by free recall, also increases semantic clustering of later recall output. It has been suggested that this is evidence that testing induces a strategy change in encoding and retrieval towards greater conceptual organisation. The current research evaluated whether this conceptual strategy change explains TPNL in three experiments. We found a) that a retrieval task that did not increase semantic clustering (list discrimination) consistently produced TPNL, and b) that factors (word-relatedness and list structure) that influenced the amount of semantic clustering had no effect on the magnitude of TPNL. These results suggest that conceptual strategy change is neither necessary nor sufficient for TPNL and is more likely to be an effect of testing, rather than a cause of TPNL

Learned Predictiveness Models Predict Opposite Attention Biases in the Inverse Base-Rate Effect

Several attention-based models of associative learning are built upon the learned predictiveness principle, whereby learning is optimized by attending to the most predictive features and ignoring the least predictive features. Despite their functional similarity, these models differ in their formal mechanisms and thus may produce very different predictions in some circumstances. As we demonstrate, this is particularly evident in the inverse base-rate effect. Using simulations with a modified Mackintosh model and the EXIT model, we found that models based on the learned predictiveness principle can account for rare-outcome choice biases associated with the inverse base-rate effect, despite making opposite predictions for relative attention to rare versus common predictors. The models also make different predictions regarding changes in attention across training, and effects of context associations on attention to cues. Using a human causal learning task, we replicated the inverse base-rate effect and a recently reported reduction in this effect when the context is not predictive of the common outcome and used eye-tracking to test model predictions about changes in attention both prior to making a decision, and during feedback. The results support the predictions made by EXIT, where the rare predictor commands greater attention than the common predictor throughout training. In addition, patterns of attention prior to making a decision differed to those during feedback, where effects of using a partially predictive context were evident only prior to making a prediction

Characterization of a Novel Small Molecule Subtype Specific Estrogen-Related Receptor α Antagonist in MCF-7 Breast Cancer Cells

The orphan nuclear receptor estrogen-related receptor alpha (ERRalpha) is a member of the nuclear receptor superfamily. It was identified through a search for genes encoding proteins related to estrogen receptor alpha (ERalpha). An endogenous ligand has not been found. Novel ERRalpha antagonists that are highly specific for binding to the ligand binding domain (LBD) of ERRalpha have been recently reported. Research suggests that ERRalpha may be a novel drug target to treat breast cancer and/or metabolic disorders and this has led to an effort to characterize the mechanisms of action of N-[(2Z)-3-(4,5-dihydro-1,3-thiazol-2-yl)-1,3-thiazolidin-2-yl idene]-5H dibenzo[a,d][7]annulen-5-amine, a novel ERRalpha specific antagonist.We demonstrate this ERRalpha ligand inhibits ERRalpha transcriptional activity in MCF-7 cells by luciferase assay but does not affect mRNA levels measured by real-time RT-PCR. Also, ERalpha (ESR1) mRNA levels were not affected upon treatment with the ERRalpha antagonist, but other ERRalpha (ESRRA) target genes such as pS2 (TFF1), osteopontin (SPP1), and aromatase (CYP19A1) mRNA levels decreased. In vitro, the ERRalpha antagonist prevents the constitutive interaction between ERRalpha and nuclear receptor coactivators. Furthermore, we use Western blots to demonstrate ERRalpha protein degradation via the ubiquitin proteasome pathway is increased by the ERRalpha-subtype specific antagonist. We demonstrate by chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) that the interaction between ACADM, ESRRA, and TFF1 endogenous gene promoters and ERRalpha protein is decreased when cells are treated with the ligand. Knocking-down ERRalpha (shRNA) led to similar genomic effects seen when MCF-7 cells were treated with our ERRalpha antagonist.We report the mechanism of action of a novel ERRalpha specific antagonist that inhibits transcriptional activity of ERRalpha, disrupts the constitutive interaction between ERRalpha and nuclear coactivators, and induces proteasome-dependent ERRalpha protein degradation. Additionally, we confirmed that knocking-down ERRalpha lead to similar genomic effects demonstrated in vitro when treated with the ERRalpha specific antagonist

The extent and variability of storm-induced temperature changes in lakes measured with long-term and high-frequency data

The intensity and frequency of storms are projected to increase in many regions of the world because of climate change. Storms can alter environmental conditions in many ecosystems. In lakes and reservoirs, storms can reduce epilimnetic temperatures from wind-induced mixing with colder hypolimnetic waters, direct precipitation to the lake's surface, and watershed runoff. We analyzed 18 long-term and high-frequency lake datasets from 11 countries to assess the magnitude of wind- vs. rainstorm-induced changes in epilimnetic temperature. We found small day-to-day epilimnetic temperature decreases in response to strong wind and heavy rain during stratified conditions. Day-to-day epilimnetic temperature decreased, on average, by 0.28 degrees C during the strongest windstorms (storm mean daily wind speed among lakes: 6.7 +/- 2.7 m s(-1), 1 SD) and by 0.15 degrees C after the heaviest rainstorms (storm mean daily rainfall: 21.3 +/- 9.0 mm). The largest decreases in epilimnetic temperature were observed >= 2 d after sustained strong wind or heavy rain (top 5(th) percentile of wind and rain events for each lake) in shallow and medium-depth lakes. The smallest decreases occurred in deep lakes. Epilimnetic temperature change from windstorms, but not rainstorms, was negatively correlated with maximum lake depth. However, even the largest storm-induced mean epilimnetic temperature decreases were typicallyPeer reviewe

Border Insecurity: Reading Transnational Environments in Jim Lynch’s Border Songs

This article applies an eco-critical approach to contemporary American fiction about the Canada-US border, examining Jim Lynch’s portrayal of the British Columbia-Washington borderlands in his 2009 novel Border Songs. It argues that studying transnational environmental actors in border texts—in this case, marijuana, human migrants, and migratory birds—helps illuminate the contingency of political boundaries, problems of scale, and discourses of risk and security in cross-border regions after 9/11. Further, it suggests that widening the analysis of trans-border activity to include environmental phenomena productively troubles concepts of nature and regional belonging in an era of climate change and economic globalization. Cet article propose une lecture écocritique de la fiction étatsunienne contemporaine portant sur la frontière entre le Canada et les États-Unis, en étudiant le portrait donné par Jim Lynch de la région frontalière entre la Colombie-Britannique et Washington dans son roman Border Songs, paru en 2009. L’article soutient que l’étude, dans les textes sur la frontière, des acteurs environnementaux transnationaux – dans ce cas-ci, la marijuana, les migrants humains et les oiseaux migratoires – jette un jour nouveau sur la contingence des limites territoriales politiques, des problèmes d’échelle et des discours sur le risque et la sécurité des régions transfrontalières après les évènements du 11 septembre 2001. Il suggère également qu’en élargissant l’analyse de l’activité transfrontalière pour y inclure les phénomènes environnementaux, on brouille de façon productive les concepts de nature et d’appartenance régionale d’une époque marquée par les changements climatiques et la mondialisation de l’économie

A manually annotated Actinidia chinensis var. chinensis (kiwifruit) genome highlights the challenges associated with draft genomes and gene prediction in plants

Most published genome sequences are drafts, and most are dominated by computational gene prediction. Draft genomes typically incorporate considerable sequence data that are not assigned to chromosomes, and predicted genes without quality confidence measures. The current Actinidia chinensis (kiwifruit) 'Hongyang' draft genome has 164\ua0Mb of sequences unassigned to pseudo-chromosomes, and omissions have been identified in the gene models

Global data set of long-term summertime vertical temperature profiles in 153 lakes

Climate change and other anthropogenic stressors have led to long-term changes in the thermal structure, including surface temperatures, deepwater temperatures, and vertical thermal gradients, in many lakes around the world. Though many studies highlight warming of surface water temperatures in lakes worldwide, less is known about long-term trends in full vertical thermal structure and deepwater temperatures, which have been changing less consistently in both direction and magnitude. Here, we present a globally-expansive data set of summertime in-situ vertical temperature profiles from 153 lakes, with one time series beginning as early as 1894. We also compiled lake geographic, morphometric, and water quality variables that can influence vertical thermal structure through a variety of potential mechanisms in these lakes. These long-term time series of vertical temperature profiles and corresponding lake characteristics serve as valuable data to help understand changes and drivers of lake thermal structure in a time of rapid global and ecological change

Global data set of long-term summertime vertical temperature profiles in 153 lakes

Measurement(s) : temperature of water, temperature profile Technology Type(s) : digital curation Factor Type(s) : lake location, temporal interval Sample Characteristic - Environment : lake, reservoir Sample Characteristic - Location : global Machine-accessible metadata file describing the reported data: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.14619009Climate change and other anthropogenic stressors have led to long-term changes in the thermal structure, including surface temperatures, deepwater temperatures, and vertical thermal gradients, in many lakes around the world. Though many studies highlight warming of surface water temperatures in lakes worldwide, less is known about long-term trends in full vertical thermal structure and deepwater temperatures, which have been changing less consistently in both direction and magnitude. Here, we present a globally-expansive data set of summertime in-situ vertical temperature profiles from 153 lakes, with one time series beginning as early as 1894. We also compiled lake geographic, morphometric, and water quality variables that can influence vertical thermal structure through a variety of potential mechanisms in these lakes. These long-term time series of vertical temperature profiles and corresponding lake characteristics serve as valuable data to help understand changes and drivers of lake thermal structure in a time of rapid global and ecological change