A meta-analytic review of stand-alone interventions to improve body image

Objective Numerous stand-alone interventions to improve body image have been developed. The present review used meta-analysis to estimate the effectiveness of such interventions, and to identify the specific change techniques that lead to improvement in body image. Methods The inclusion criteria were that (a) the intervention was stand-alone (i.e., solely focused on improving body image), (b) a control group was used, (c) participants were randomly assigned to conditions, and (d) at least one pretest and one posttest measure of body image was taken. Effect sizes were meta-analysed and moderator analyses were conducted. A taxonomy of 48 change techniques used in interventions targeted at body image was developed; all interventions were coded using this taxonomy. Results The literature search identified 62 tests of interventions (N = 3,846). Interventions produced a small-to-medium improvement in body image (d+ = 0.38), a small-to-medium reduction in beauty ideal internalisation (d+ = -0.37), and a large reduction in social comparison tendencies (d+ = -0.72). However, the effect size for body image was inflated by bias both within and across studies, and was reliable but of small magnitude once corrections for bias were applied. Effect sizes for the other outcomes were no longer reliable once corrections for bias were applied. Several features of the sample, intervention, and methodology moderated intervention effects. Twelve change techniques were associated with improvements in body image, and three techniques were contra-indicated. Conclusions The findings show that interventions engender only small improvements in body image, and underline the need for large-scale, high-quality trials in this area. The review identifies effective techniques that could be deployed in future interventions

Recognition of Face Identity and Emotion in Expressive Specific Language Impairment

Objective: To study face and emotion recognition in children with mostly expressive specific language impairment (SLI-E). Subjects and Methods: A test movie to study perception and recognition of faces and mimic-gestural expression was applied to 24 children diagnosed as suffering from SLI-E and an age-matched control group of normally developing children. Results: Compared to a normal control group, the SLI-E children scored significantly worse in both the face and expression recognition tasks with a preponderant effect on emotion recognition. The performance of the SLI-E group could not be explained by reduced attention during the test session. Conclusion: We conclude that SLI-E is associated with a deficiency in decoding non-verbal emotional facial and gestural information, which might lead to profound and persistent problems in social interaction and development. Copyright (C) 2012 S. Karger AG, Base

Symbiodinium Genotypic and Environmental Controls on Lipids in Reef Building Corals

BACKGROUND: Lipids in reef building corals can be divided into two classes; non-polar storage lipids, e.g. wax esters and triglycerides, and polar structural lipids, e.g. phospholipids and cholesterol. Differences among algal endosymbiont types are known to have important influences on processes including growth and the photobiology of scleractinian corals yet very little is known about the role of symbiont types on lipid energy reserves. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The ratio of storage lipid and structural lipid fractions of Scott Reef corals were determined by thin layer chromatography. The lipid fraction ratio varied with depth and depended on symbiont type harboured by two corals (Seriatopora hystrix and Pachyseris speciosa). S. hystrix colonies associated with Symbiodinium C1 or C1/C# at deep depths (>23 m) had lower lipid fraction ratios (i.e. approximately equal parts of storage and structural lipids) than those with Symbiodinium D1 in shallow depths (<23 m), which had higher lipid fraction ratios (i.e. approximately double amounts of storage relative to structural lipid). Further, there was a non-linear relationship between the lipid fraction ratio and depth for S. hystrix with a modal peak at ∼23 m coinciding with the same depth as the shift from clade D to C types. In contrast, the proportional relationship between the lipid fraction ratio and depth for P. speciosa, which exhibited high specificity for Symbiodinium C3 like across the depth gradient, was indicative of greater amounts of storage lipids contained in the deep colonies. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: This study has demonstrated that Symbiodinium exert significant controls over the quality of coral energy reserves over a large-scale depth gradient. We conclude that the competitive advantages and metabolic costs that arise from flexible associations with divergent symbiont types are offset by energetic trade-offs for the coral host

Training Auto-encoder-based Optimizers for Terahertz Image Reconstruction

Terahertz (THz) sensing is a promising imaging technology for a wide variety of different applications. Extracting the interpretable and physically meaningful parameters for such applications, however, requires solving an inverse problem in which a model function determined by these parameters needs to be fitted to the measured data. Since the underlying optimization problem is nonconvex and very costly to solve, we propose learning the prediction of suitable parameters from the measured data directly. More precisely, we develop a model-based autoencoder in which the encoder network predicts suitable parameters and the decoder is fixed to a physically meaningful model function, such that we can train the encoding network in an unsupervised way. We illustrate numerically that the resulting network is more than 140 times faster than classical optimization techniques while making predictions with only slightly higher objective values. Using such predictions as starting points of local optimization techniques allows us to converge to better local minima about twice as fast as optimization without the network-based initialization.Comment: This is a pre-print of a conference paper published in German Conference on Pattern Recognition (GCPR) 201

<i>C-elegans</i> model identifies genetic modifiers of alpha-synuclein inclusion formation during aging

Inclusions in the brain containing alpha-synuclein are the pathological hallmark of Parkinson's disease, but how these inclusions are formed and how this links to disease is poorly understood. We have developed a &lt;i&gt;C-elegans&lt;/i&gt; model that makes it possible to monitor, in living animals, the formation of alpha-synuclein inclusions. In worms of old age, inclusions contain aggregated alpha-synuclein, resembling a critical pathological feature. We used genome-wide RNA interference to identify processes involved in inclusion formation, and identified 80 genes that, when knocked down, resulted in a premature increase in the number of inclusions. Quality control and vesicle-trafficking genes expressed in the ER/Golgi complex and vesicular compartments were overrepresented, indicating a specific role for these processes in alpha-synuclein inclusion formation. Suppressors include aging-associated genes, such as sir-2.1/SIRT1 and lagr-1/LASS2. Altogether, our data suggest a link between alpha-synuclein inclusion formation and cellular aging, likely through an endomembrane-related mechanism. The processes and genes identified here present a framework for further study of the disease mechanism and provide candidate susceptibility genes and drug targets for Parkinson's disease and other alpha-synuclein related disorders

Response characteristics in the apex of the gerbil cochlea studied through auditory nerve recordings

In this study, we analyze the processing of low-frequency sounds in the cochlear apex through responses of auditory nerve fibers (ANFs) that innervate the apex. Single tones and irregularly spaced tone complexes were used to evoke ANF responses in Mongolian gerbil. The spike arrival times were analyzed in terms of phase locking, peripheral frequency selectivity, group delays, and the nonlinear effects of sound pressure level (SPL). Phase locking to single tones was similar to that in cat. Vector strength was maximal for stimulus frequencies around 500 Hz, decreased above 1 kHz, and became insignificant above 4 to 5 kHz. We used the responses to tone complexes to determine amplitude and phase curves of ANFs having a characteristic frequency (CF) below 5 kHz. With increasing CF, amplitude curves gradually changed from broadly tuned and asymmetric with a steep low-frequency flank to more sharply tuned and asymmetric with a steep high-frequency flank. Over the same CF range, phase curves gradually changed from a concave-upward shape to a concave-downward shape. Phase curves consisted of two or three approximately straight segments. Group delay was analyzed separately for these segments. Generally, the largest group delay was observed near CF. With increasing SPL, most amplitude curves broadened, sometimes accompanied by a downward shift of best frequency, and group delay changed along the entire range of stimulus frequencies. We observed considerable across-ANF variation in the effects of SPL on both amplitude and phase. Overall, our data suggest that mechanical responses in the apex of the cochlea are considerably nonlinear and that these nonlinearities are of a different character than those known from the base of the cochlea

Robust Detection of Hierarchical Communities from Escherichia coli Gene Expression Data

Determining the functional structure of biological networks is a central goal of systems biology. One approach is to analyze gene expression data to infer a network of gene interactions on the basis of their correlated responses to environmental and genetic perturbations. The inferred network can then be analyzed to identify functional communities. However, commonly used algorithms can yield unreliable results due to experimental noise, algorithmic stochasticity, and the influence of arbitrarily chosen parameter values. Furthermore, the results obtained typically provide only a simplistic view of the network partitioned into disjoint communities and provide no information of the relationship between communities. Here, we present methods to robustly detect coregulated and functionally enriched gene communities and demonstrate their application and validity for Escherichia coli gene expression data. Applying a recently developed community detection algorithm to the network of interactions identified with the context likelihood of relatedness (CLR) method, we show that a hierarchy of network communities can be identified. These communities significantly enrich for gene ontology (GO) terms, consistent with them representing biologically meaningful groups. Further, analysis of the most significantly enriched communities identified several candidate new regulatory interactions. The robustness of our methods is demonstrated by showing that a core set of functional communities is reliably found when artificial noise, modeling experimental noise, is added to the data. We find that noise mainly acts conservatively, increasing the relatedness required for a network link to be reliably assigned and decreasing the size of the core communities, rather than causing association of genes into new communities.Comment: Due to appear in PLoS Computational Biology. Supplementary Figure S1 was not uploaded but is available by contacting the author. 27 pages, 5 figures, 15 supplementary file

What traits are carried on mobile genetic elements, and why?

Although similar to any other organism, prokaryotes can transfer genes vertically from mother cell to daughter cell, they can also exchange certain genes horizontally. Genes can move within and between genomes at fast rates because of mobile genetic elements (MGEs). Although mobile elements are fundamentally self-interested entities, and thus replicate for their own gain, they frequently carry genes beneficial for their hosts and/or the neighbours of their hosts. Many genes that are carried by mobile elements code for traits that are expressed outside of the cell. Such traits are involved in bacterial sociality, such as the production of public goods, which benefit a cell's neighbours, or the production of bacteriocins, which harm a cell's neighbours. In this study we review the patterns that are emerging in the types of genes carried by mobile elements, and discuss the evolutionary and ecological conditions under which mobile elements evolve to carry their peculiar mix of parasitic, beneficial and cooperative genes

Environmental Factors Controlling the Distribution of Symbiodinium Harboured by the Coral Acropora millepora on the Great Barrier Reef

Background: The Symbiodinium community associated with scleractinian corals is widely considered to be shaped by seawater temperature, as the coral's upper temperature tolerance is largely contingent on the Symbiodinium types harboured. Few studies have challenged this paradigm as knowledge of other environmental drivers on the distribution of Symbiodinium is limited. Here, we examine the influence of a range of environmental variables on the distribution of Symbiodinium associated with Acropora millepora collected from 47 coral reefs spanning 1,400 km on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), Australia