Culture and Group Processes

Contrary to traditional views of North Americans as strongly individualistic, accumulating evidence indicates that they are actually also highly collectivistic, or group-oriented, when compared to people in other parts of the world. Review of previous findings suggest an alternative view; cultural differences in group-behavior and psychology does not reside in the levels of collectivism, or the strength and amount of identity and loyalty to the group, but rather in the type of psychological processes that bring about those phenomena: specifically, an orientation towards intergroup differentiation and comparisons in North American cultures versus an orientation towards intragroup relationships in East Asian cultures. In addition, we offer a possible account for why such a difference could exist based on a socio-ecological perspective, focusing specifically on the role of relational mobility.

Characteristic Infrasound Events Associated with Sea-Ice Discharges in the Lützow-Holm Bay of Antarctica: April 2016

Infrasound waves detected in Antarctica contain information on the physical interaction among the surface environment at the margin of the continent and surrounding ocean. Time-space variation of source location for infrasound excitation during mid-April 2016 was investigated by using a combination of two arrays deployed along the coast of the Lützow-Holm Bay (LHB), East Antarctica. The infrasound array observations detected temporal variations in distance from the sources and propagation direction. A few tens of infrasound events were identified during 10 days of the period, and many of them located in the northward direction from the array stations were inside the LHB and offshore in the Southern Indian Ocean. Many of the events had predominant frequency content of few Hz, which were higher than microbaroms generated from the ocean. By comparing with MODIS satellite image at the same period, these sources were considered to be the ice-related phenomenon associated with the discharge of fast sea ice from the LHB

Proton transfer pathway in anion channelrhodopsin-1

Anion channelrhodopsin from Guillardia theta (GtACR1) has Asp234 (3.2 angstrom) and Glu68 (5.3 angstrom) near the protonated Schiff base. Here, we investigate mutant GtACR1s (e.g., E68Q/D234N) expressed in HEK293 cells. The influence of the acidic residues on the absorption wavelengths was also analyzed using a quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical approach. The calculated protonation pattern indicates that Asp234 is deprotonated and Glu68 is protonated in the original crystal structures. The D234E mutation and the E68Q/D234N mutation shorten and lengthen the measured and calculated absorption wavelengths, respectively, which suggests that Asp234 is deprotonated in the wild-type GtACR1. Molecular dynamics simulations show that upon mutation of deprotonated Asp234 to asparagine, deprotonated Glu68 reorients toward the Schiff base and the calculated absorption wavelength remains unchanged. The formation of the proton transfer pathway via Asp234 toward Glu68 and the disconnection of the anion conducting channel are likely a basis of the gating mechanism

Anomalous momentum dependence of the multiband electronic structure of FeSe_1-xTe_x superconductors induced by atomic disorder

When periodicity of crystal is disturbed by atomic disorder, its electronic state becomes inhomogeneous and band dispersion is obscured. In case of Fe-based superconductors, disorder of chalcogen/pnictogen height causes disorder of Fe 3d level splitting. Here, we report an angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy study on FeSe_1-xTe_x with the chalcogen height disorder, showing that the disorder affects the Fe 3d band dispersions in an orbital-selective way instead of simple obscuring effect. The reverse of the Fe 3d level splitting due to the chalcogen height difference causes the splitting of the hole band with Fe 3d x^2-y^2 character around the Gamma point.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure