Shifting Horizons: Temporal Orientations and Conflict Decision-making

This project explores how time horizons influence decision-making in international conflict. Despite their prevalence as an explanation for conflict behavior, it is less clear how temporal orientations lead to selecting certain policies, and pushing others ‘off the table’. I investigate this puzzle by focusing on the effects of variations in time horizons on the decision-making process. Using insights from IR, political psychology and decision science, I develop a theoretical framework arguing that actors’ time horizons serve as a screening mechanism that shapes the decision process by reducing the type and number of alternatives that are evaluated. Since individuals’ time horizons vary, different choice-sets of policy options emerge. I posit that individuals with long time horizons evaluate larger and more diverse choice-sets compared to those with short time horizons. In turn, the composition of these choice-sets affects the final policy selection. Using a two-phase experiment, I estimate the effects of time horizons on the decision-making process. The results demonstrate that time horizons have a direct effect on the decision process, and an indirect effect on the selection of a conflict strategy. Then, I explore time horizons as a dependent variable. In order to explain what leads to variations in time horizons, I develop a framework that describes how the interplay between situational factors and individual dispositions shapes time horizons. I argue that situational factors moderate the effects of individual dispositions and shift decision-makers’ temporal orientations and policy choices. I assess this framework with a survey experiment, and a large-N statistical analysis of leaders in international conflicts. The findings demonstrate how the conditional relations between both sets of factors shape leaders’ time horizons in conflict. This project presents a comprehensive view of the role that time horizons play in conflict decision-making. First, I unpack the decision-making process and highlight how time horizons influence the selection of conflict strategies. Second, I present an integrated framework to explain how time horizons shift facing a conflict situation. As a whole, this research places the concept of time horizons as a prominent explanation for the behavior of decision-makers in international politics

Who Is a Rebel? Typology and Rebel Groups in the Contemporary Middle East

This article provides a typology of rebel groups in the Middle East from the perspective of political science and situates them in a broader context of rebellion around the world

Is there any sense in antisense editing?

A number of recent studies have hypothesized that sense-antisense RNA transcript pairs create dsRNA duplexes that undergo extensive A-to-I RNA editing. Here we studied human and mouse genomic antisense regions, and found that the editing level in these areas is negligible. This observation puts in question the scope of sense-antisense duplexes formation in-vivo, which is the basis for a number of proposed regulatory mechanisms

Integration of Remote Patient Monitoring Systems into Physicians Work in Underserved Communities: Survey of Healthcare Provider Perspectives

Remote patient monitoring (RPM) technologies have been identified as a viable alternative to improve access to care in underserved communities. Successful RPM platforms are designed and implemented for seamless integration into healthcare providers work to increase adoption and availability for offering remote care. A quantitative survey was designed and administered to elicit perspectives from a wide range of stakeholders, including healthcare providers and healthcare administrators, about barriers and facilitators in the adoption and integration of RPM into clinical workflows in underserved areas. Ease of adoption, workflow disruption, changes in the patient-physician relationship, and costs and financial benefits are identified as relevant factors that influence the widespread use of RPM by healthcare providers; significant communication and other implementation preferences also emerged. Further research is needed to identify methods to address such concerns and use information collected in this study to develop protocols for RPM integration into clinical workflow

Inactivation of the KcsA potassium channel explored with heterotetramers

The tetrameric prokaryotic potassium channel KcsA is activated by protons acting on the intracellular aspect of the protein and inactivated through conformational changes in the selectivity filter. Inactivation is modulated by a network of interactions within each protomer between the pore helix and residues at the external entrance of the channel. Inactivation is suppressed by the E71A mutation, which perturbs the stability of this network. Here, cell-free protein synthesis followed by protein purification by sodium dodecyl sulfate–polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis was used to produce heterotetramers of KcsA that contain different combinations of wild-type and E71A subunits. Single-channel recordings from these heterotetramers reveal how the network of interactions in individual protomers affects ionic conduction and channel inactivation, suggesting that the latter is a cooperative process

Naturally occurring antisense: Transcriptional leakage or real overlap?

Naturally occurring antisense transcription is associated with the regulation of gene expression through a variety of biological mechanisms. Several recent genome-wide studies reported the identification of potential antisense transcripts for thousands of mammalian genes, many of them resulting from alternatively polyadenylated transcripts or heterogeneous transcription start sites. However, it is not clear whether this transcriptional plasticity is intentional, leading to regulated overlap between the transcripts, or, alternatively, represents a “leakage” of the RNA transcription machinery. To address this question through an evolutionary approach, we compared the genomic organization of genes, with or without antisense, between human, mouse, and the pufferfish Fugu rubripes. Our hypothesis was that if two neighboring genes overlap and have a sense-antisense relationship, we would expect negative selection acting on the evolutionary separation between them. We found that antisense gene pairs are twice as likely to preserve their genomic organization throughout vertebrates' evolution compared to nonantisense pairs, implying an overlap existence in the ancestral genome. In addition, we show that increasing the genomic distance between pairs of genes having a sense-antisense relationship is selected against. These findings indicate that, at least in part, the abundance of antisense transcripts observed in expressed data represents real overlap rather than transcriptional leakage. Moreover, our results imply that natural antisense transcription has considerably affected vertebrate genome evolution