Ritual,emotion, and sacred symbols

This paper considers religion in relation to four recurrent traits: belief systems incorporating supernatural agents and counterintuitive concepts, communal ritual, separation of the sacred and the profane, and adolescence as a preferred developmental period for religious transmission. These co-occurring traits are viewed as an adaptive complex that offers clues to the evolution of religion from its nonhuman ritual roots. We consider the critical element differentiating religious from non-human ritual to be the conditioned association of emotion and abstract symbols. We propose neurophysiological mechanisms underlying such associations and argue that the brain plasticity of human adolescence constitutes an “experience expectant” developmental period for ritual conditioning of sacred symbols. We suggest that such symbols evolved to solve an ecological problem by extending communication and coordination of social relations across time and space. Candace Alcorta is currently a doctoral student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Connecticut. Her research interests include the behavioral ecology and evolution of religion, and the interrelationship between cultural and neurophysiological systems. She is currently conducting research on adolescent religious participation, stress, and health. Richard Sosis is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Connecticut and a senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His current research interests include the evolution of cooperation, utopian societies, and the behavioral ecology of religion. He has conducted fieldwork on Ifaluk Atoll in the Federated States of Micronesia and is currently pursuing various projects in Israel aimed at understanding the benefits and costs associated with religious behavior.     

森林公园中的植物景观设计探讨

在对森林公园规划中植物景观设计现状分析的基础上,从不同的感官需求出发对植物景观设计的手法进行探讨。     

Morphological,histochemical, and ultrastructural characterization of the accessory cells of neuromasts in the salamander Pleurodeles waltlii

Summary The ultrastructural and histochemical features of the accessory cells of the neuromast of the salamander P. waltlii have been examined. Three types of accessory cells, supporting, mantle, and basal, were found, but only the first 2 are considered in this article. Supporting cells characterized by a highly dilated endoplasmic reticulum occur among and surrounding sensory cells. Mantle cells, morphologically different from the supporting cells, surround the remainder of the neuromast. Both types of accessory cells exhibit histochemically different secretory materials. Our morphological results suggest that both accessory cells contribute to the formation of cupular material.     

The effect of repeated testing on judgement biases in sheep

Testing judgement biases of animals may provide insight into their affective states; however important questions about methodologies need to be answered. This experiment investigated the effect of repeated testing using unreinforced, ambiguous cues on the response of sheep to a go/no-go judgement bias test. Fifteen sheep were trained to differentiate between two locations, reinforced respectively with feed (positive) or with the presentation of a dog (negative). The responses to nine ambiguous locations, positioned between the positively and negatively reinforced locations, were tested repeatedly over 3 weeks. Sheep exhibited a symmetrical gradation in response to ambiguous locations between the positive and negative reinforcers. There was a significant decline (P = 0.001) in the total number of approaches to the ambiguous positions over time (weeks). This effect of time suggests that sheep learnt that the ambiguous locations were unrewarded. This result supplies evidence of a limitation identified in current judgement bias methodology, due to repeated testing, which has the potential to provide misleading results.     

Novel genetic capacitors and potentiators for the natural genetic variation of sensory bristles and their trait specificity in Drosophila melanogaster

Cryptic genetic variation (CGV) is defined as the genetic variation that has little effect on phenotypic variation under a normal condition, but contributes to heritable variation under environmental or genetic perturbations. Genetic buffering systems that suppress the expression of CGV and store it in a population are called genetic capacitors, and the opposite systems are called genetic potentiators. One of the best‐known candidates for a genetic capacitor and potentiator is the molecular chaperone protein, HSP90, and one of its characteristics is that it affects the genetic variation in various morphological traits. However, it remains unclear whether the wide‐ranging effects of HSP90 on a broad range of traits are a general feature of genetic capacitors and potentiators. In the current study, I searched for novel genetic capacitors and potentiators for quantitative bristle traits of Drosophila melanogaster and then investigated the trait specificity of their genetic buffering effect. Three bristle traits of D. melanogaster were used as the target traits, and the genomic regions with genetic buffering effects were screened using the 61 genomic deficiencies examined previously for genetic buffering effects in wing shape. As a result, four and six deficiencies with significant effects on increasing and decreasing the broad‐sense heritability of the bristle traits were identified, respectively. Of the 18 deficiencies with significant effects detected in the current study and/or by the previous study, 14 showed trait‐specific effects, and four affected the genetic buffering of both bristle traits and wing shape. This suggests that most genetic capacitors and potentiators exert trait‐specific effects, but that general capacitors and potentiators with effects on multiple traits also exist.     

New perspectives on the declining significance of race: a rejoinder

In sharp contrast to many earlier studies, the articles in this symposium encompass a careful discussion of the two major underlying themes of my book, The Declining Significance of Race: (1) the effect of fundamental economic and political shifts on the changing relative importance of race and class in black occupational mobility and job placement; and (2) the swing in the concentration of racial conflict from the economic sector to the sociopolitical order. In my rejoinder I reflect on their arguments, including those that relate these themes to more recent developments in American race and ethnic relations featuring other groups, including whites and Latinos.     

“情绪管理”在临床护理管理工作中的应用体会

目的：探讨情绪管理在临床护理管理工作中的应用和效果,为临床护理管理的实践提供指导和帮助。方法：选取我院244名护士为研究对象,随机分为常规管理组和情绪管理组,每组各122名护士。常规管理组采取常规的护理管理模式,情绪管理组则对护士进行情绪调节、以适当方式释放压力等情绪管理方法。比较两组研究对象在解决问题、求助、合理化、退避、自责、幻想等方面的评分情况。结果：实施不同的管理措施后,情绪管理组护士在解决问题、求助、合理化、退避、自责、幻想等方面的得分结果明显优于常规管理组护士的得分结果,差异显著有统计学意义（P〈0．05）。结论：情绪管理对临床护理管理工作的实践具有重要意义,可有效调节护理人员的工作情绪,从而提高临床护理的质量。     

Current status of Potyvirus in India

Potyvirus particles are flexuous rods of 700–900?nm in length and contain one positive sense single-stranded genomic RNA molecule of approximately 10?kb, which is encapsidated by a single type of coat protein. According to available NCBI database, Potyvirus infection is prominently present in Solanaceae, Leguminosae and Cucurbitaceae families in India. Potyviruses can induce a wide range of different symptoms in infected host plants including mosaic, stripe, mottling, vein clearing, vein banding, ringspots, necrotic or chlorotic lesions, flower breaking, stunting, wilting, and most commonly lead tostunting and yield losses. PCR-based methods for the detection and identification of potyviruses rely on degenerate primers designed for conserved regions. Potyvirus infection requires the interaction of host factors with viral proteins and RNA for its replication and systemic spread, i.e interaction between VPg and eIF4E is required for Potyvirus genome translation. Mutations in host translational initiation factor eIF4E cause the conformational shift in encoded proteins which are unable to bind with viral protein (VPg), resulting in broad-spectrum Potyvirus resistance.     

Body Site Variation of Cool Perception Thresholds,with Observations on Paradoxical Heat

Thresholds for the perception of coolness and heat pain were determined in sessions that randomly intermixed temperature increases and decreases. Four body sites were tested bilaterally: thenar eminence of the hand, plantar surface of the foot, dorsolateral forearm, and lateral calf. Coolness thresholds were lowest for the hand, intermediate for the forearm, and highest for the leg and foot. Laterality differences were not statistically significant.

In 34% of the sessions, subjects did not consistently report cool or cold sensations with detectable temperatue decreases. When they did not report cool or cold, they most often reported heat or pain, thus exhibiting the phenomenon of “paradoxical heat”. There were significantly more paradoxical heat responses when cooling stimuli were intermixed with painfully hot stimuli than when they were intermixed with only warm stimuli.

There was no significant correlation observed between thresholds for coolness and heat pain, either across body sites or across subjects at any single body site. This result implies that the various factors relevant to thermal sensitivity (i.e., thermal properties of the epidermis, innervation density) are differentially important for cool versus heat pain perception.     

“Disorganized in time”: Impact of bottom-up and top-down negative emotion generation on memory formation among healthy and traumatized adolescents

“Travelling in time,” a central feature of episodic memory is severely affected among individuals with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) with two opposite effects: vivid traumatic memories are unorganized in temporality (bottom-up processes), non-traumatic personal memories tend to lack spatio-temporal details and false recognitions occur more frequently that in the general population (top-down processes). To test the effect of these two types of processes (i.e. bottom-up and top-down) on emotional memory, we conducted two studies in healthy and traumatized adolescents, a period of life in which vulnerability to emotion is particularly high. Using negative and neutral images selected from the international affective picture system (IAPS), stimuli were divided into perceptual images (emotion generated by perceptual details) and conceptual images (emotion generated by the general meaning of the material). Both categories of stimuli were then used, along with neutral pictures, in a memory task with two phases (encoding and recognition). In both populations, we reported a differential effect of the emotional material on encoding and recognition. Negative perceptual scenes induced an attentional capture effect during encoding and enhanced the recollective distinctiveness. Conversely, the encoding of conceptual scenes was similar to neutral ones, but the conceptual relatedness induced false memories at retrieval. However, among individuals with PTSD, two subgroups of patients were identified. The first subgroup processed the scenes faster than controls, except for the perceptual scenes, and obtained similar performances to controls in the recognition task. The second subgroup group desmonstrated an attentional deficit in the encoding task with no benefit from the distinctiveness associated with negative perceptual scenes on memory performances. These findings provide a new perspective on how negative emotional information may have opposite influences on memory in normal and traumatized individuals. It also gives clues to understand how intrusive memories and overgeneralization takes place in PTSD.