Mirror,Mirror on the Wall,I Deserve More Than All: Perceived Attractiveness and Self-Interested Behavior

A substantial amount of research has demonstrated that good-looking individuals are perceived and treated in a favorable manner; however, relatively little research has examined how attractive people actually behave. There are two predominant theories on attractiveness: the self-fulfilling nature of “what is beautiful is good” from social psychology and the evolutionary perspective of attractiveness, make divergent predictions in this regard. The current research systematically investigated whether physical attractiveness can predict self-interested behavior and, if so, in which direction. Across five studies (N = 1303), self-perceived attractiveness, either chronically experienced (Studies 1–3) or temporarily heightened (Studies 4 and 5), predicted and increased self-interested behavioral intention and behavior. Increased psychological entitlement acted as a mediator in this process (Studies 1–5). Furthermore, the publicity of the act was a boundary condition for the effect of attractiveness on self-interested behavior (Study 5). We have discussed theoretical and practical implications.     

Trypanosomatids, Other Than Phytomonas spp., Isolated and Cultured from Fruit

Trypanosomatids were isolated from edible fruit. One of the isolates (from tangerine) presented a set of enzymes for the metabolism of arginine-ornithine similar to that of Leptomonas spp., and failed to be recognized by monoclonal antibodies specific for Phytomonas spp. The possibility that trypanosomatids other than Phytomonas spp. could infect fruit was further examined by inoculating tomatoes with species of Crithidia, Leptomonas and Herpetomonas. Some of these flagellates multiplied in tomatoes. Besides, house flies became infected with Crithidia sp. when fed on tomatoes experimentally inoculated with this flagellate. Therefore, isolation of a trypanosomatid from a plant should not constitute an absolute criterion for placing it in the genus Phytomonas.     

More Tweets,More Votes: Social Media as a Quantitative Indicator of Political Behavior

Is social media a valid indicator of political behavior? There is considerable debate about the validity of data extracted from social media for studying offline behavior. To address this issue, we show that there is a statistically significant association between tweets that mention a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives and his or her subsequent electoral performance. We demonstrate this result with an analysis of 542,969 tweets mentioning candidates selected from a random sample of 3,570,054,618, as well as Federal Election Commission data from 795 competitive races in the 2010 and 2012 U.S. congressional elections. This finding persists even when controlling for incumbency, district partisanship, media coverage of the race, time, and demographic variables such as the district''s racial and gender composition. Our findings show that reliable data about political behavior can be extracted from social media.     

Chelating Compound,Chrysoidine, Is More Effective in Both Antiprion Activity and Brain Endothelial Permeability Than Quinacrine

1. As an extension of our previous study of quinacrine and its derivatives, chelating chemicals were screened to obtain more effective, better brain-permeable antiprion compounds using either prion-infected neuroblastoma cells or brain capillary endothelial cells. 2. Eleven chemicals were found to have antiprion activity. Most of them shared a common structure consisting of benzene or naphthalene at either end of an azo bond. Structure–activity data suggest that chelating activity is not necessary but might contribute to the antiprion action. 3. Chrysoidine, a representative compound found here, was about 27 times more effective in the antiprion activity and five times more efficiently permeable through the brain capillary endothelial cells than quinacrine was. 4. These chemicals might be useful as compounds for development of therapeutics for prion diseases.     

More Than Just a Cargo Adapter,Melanophilin Prolongs and Slows Processive Runs of Myosin Va

Myosin Va (myoVa) is a molecular motor that processively transports cargo along actin tracks. One well studied cargo in vivo is the melanosome, a pigment organelle that is moved first by kinesin on microtubules and then handed off to myoVa for transport in the actin-rich dendritic periphery of melanocytes. Melanophilin (Mlph) is the adapter protein that links Rab27a-melanosomes to myoVa. Using total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy and quantum dot-labeled full-length myoVa, we show at the single-molecule level that Mlph increases the number of processively moving myoVa motors by 17-fold. Surprisingly, myoVa-Mlph moves ∼4-fold slower than myoVa alone and with twice the run length. These two changes greatly increase the time spent on actin, a property likely to enhance the transfer of melanosomes to the adjacent keratinocyte. In contrast to the variable stepping pattern of full-length myoVa, the myoVa-Mlph complex shows a normal gating pattern between the heads typical of a fully active motor and consistent with a cargo-dependent activation mechanism. The Mlph-dependent changes in myoVa depend on a positively charged cluster of amino acids in the actin binding domain of Mlph, suggesting that Mlph acts as a “tether” that links the motor to the track. Our results provide a molecular explanation for the uncharacteristically slow speed of melanosome movement by myoVa in vivo. More generally, these data show that proteins that link motors to cargo can modify motor properties to enhance their biological role.     

APEC,An A2-Selective Adenosine Agonist,is a More Potent Locomotor Depressant Than N6-Cyclohexyladenosine

Abstract

The locomotor depressant effects of APEC are due to activation of central A2 adenosine receptors, while the depressant effects of NECA are dependent primarily on A₁-receptor activation. A variety of potent A₁-antagonists, including conjugates of the XAC, were screened as antagonists; 2-thio-CPX and CPT reversed effects of CHA, but not of APEC.     

Oxazine Dyes. 2. Celestine Blue B, Gallocyanin and Gallamin Blue with Mordants Other Than Ferric Alum

Experiments with 3 oxazine dyes with 19 mordants failed to produce a more satisfactory staining solution than that recorded by Gray et al. (1956). The most practical solution developed is prepared by adding 0.4 ml concentrated HNO₃ to 1gm celestine blue B and dissolving the resulting mass in 100 ml 5% cupric nitrate containing 14 ml glycerol. This solution is less acid (pH 1.4) than the celestine blue B-ferric alum solution (pH 0.8) previously recommended. It gives as intense and sharp a stain but is slightly less stable. Formulae are given for four other combinations of possible practical application.     

More Than 1,001 Problems with Protein Domain Databases: Transmembrane Regions,Signal Peptides and the Issue of Sequence Homology

Large-scale genome sequencing gained general importance for life science because functional annotation of otherwise experimentally uncharacterized sequences is made possible by the theory of biomolecular sequence homology. Historically, the paradigm of similarity of protein sequences implying common structure, function and ancestry was generalized based on studies of globular domains. Having the same fold imposes strict conditions over the packing in the hydrophobic core requiring similarity of hydrophobic patterns. The implications of sequence similarity among non-globular protein segments have not been studied to the same extent; nevertheless, homology considerations are silently extended for them. This appears especially detrimental in the case of transmembrane helices (TMs) and signal peptides (SPs) where sequence similarity is necessarily a consequence of physical requirements rather than common ancestry. Thus, matching of SPs/TMs creates the illusion of matching hydrophobic cores. Therefore, inclusion of SPs/TMs into domain models can give rise to wrong annotations. More than 1001 domains among the 10,340 models of Pfam release 23 and 18 domains of SMART version 6 (out of 809) contain SP/TM regions. As expected, fragment-mode HMM searches generate promiscuous hits limited to solely the SP/TM part among clearly unrelated proteins. More worryingly, we show explicit examples that the scores of clearly false-positive hits, even in global-mode searches, can be elevated into the significance range just by matching the hydrophobic runs. In the PIR iProClass database v3.74 using conservative criteria, we find that at least between 2.1% and 13.6% of its annotated Pfam hits appear unjustified for a set of validated domain models. Thus, false-positive domain hits enforced by SP/TM regions can lead to dramatic annotation errors where the hit has nothing in common with the problematic domain model except the SP/TM region itself. We suggest a workflow of flagging problematic hits arising from SP/TM-containing models for critical reconsideration by annotation users.     

Odor Valence Linearly Modulates Attractiveness,but Not Age Assessment,of Invariant Facial Features in a Memory-Based Rating Task

Scented cosmetic products are used across cultures as a way to favorably influence one''s appearance. While crossmodal effects of odor valence on perceived attractiveness of facial features have been demonstrated experimentally, it is unknown whether they represent a phenomenon specific to affective processing. In this experiment, we presented odors in the context of a face battery with systematic feature manipulations during a speeded response task. Modulatory effects of linear increases of odor valence were investigated by juxtaposing subsequent memory-based ratings tasks – one predominantly affective (attractiveness) and a second, cognitive (age). The linear modulation pattern observed for attractiveness was consistent with additive effects of face and odor appraisal. Effects of odor valence on age perception were not linearly modulated and may be the result of cognitive interference. Affective and cognitive processing of faces thus appear to differ in their susceptibility to modulation by odors, likely as a result of privileged access of olfactory stimuli to affective brain networks. These results are critically discussed with respect to potential biases introduced by the preceding speeded response task.     

Pastoral Practices to Reverse Shrub Encroachment of Sub-Alpine Grasslands: Dung Beetles (Coleoptera,Scarabaeoidea) Respond More Quickly Than Vegetation

In recent decades, pastoral abandonment has produced profound ecological changes in the Alps. In particular, the reduction in grazing has led to extensive shrub encroachment of semi-natural grasslands, which may represent a threat to open habitat biodiversity. To reverse shrub encroachment, we assessed short-term effects of two different pastoral practices on vegetation and dung beetles (Coleoptera, Scarabaeoidea). Strategic placement of mineral mix supplements (MMS) and arrangement of temporary night camp areas (TNCA) for cattle were carried out during summer 2011 in the Val Troncea Natural Park, north-western Italian Alps. In 2012, one year after treatment, a reduction in shrub cover and an increase in bare ground cover around MMS sites was detected. A more intense effect was detected within TNCA through increases in forage pastoral value, and in the cover and height of the herbaceous layer. Immediately after treatment, changes in dung beetle diversity (total abundance, species richness, Shannon diversity, taxonomic and functional diversity) showed a limited disturbance effect caused by high cattle density. In contrast, dung beetle diversity significantly increased one year later both at MMS and TNCA sites, with a stronger effect within TNCA. Multivariate Regression Trees and associated Indicator Value analyses showed that some ecologically relevant dung beetle species preferred areas deprived of shrub vegetation. Our main conclusions are: i) TNCA are more effective than MMS in terms of changes to vegetation and dung beetles, ii) dung beetles respond more quickly than vegetation to pastoral practices, and iii) the main driver of the rapid response by dung beetles is the removal of shrubs. The resulting increase in dung beetle abundance and diversity, which are largely responsible for grassland ecosystem functioning, may have a positive effect on meso-eutrophic grassland restoration. Shrub encroachment in the Alps may therefore be reversed, and restoration of grassland enhanced, by using appropriate pastoral practices.     

The Slugs of Britain and Ireland: Undetected and Undescribed Species Increase a Well-Studied,Economically Important Fauna by More Than 20%

The slugs of Britain and Ireland form a well-studied fauna of economic importance. They include many widespread European species that are introduced elsewhere (at least half of the 36 currently recorded British species are established in North America, for example). To test the contention that the British and Irish fauna consists of 36 species, and to verify the identity of each, a species delimitation study was conducted based on a geographically wide survey. Comparisons between mitochondrial DNA (COI, 16S), nuclear DNA (ITS-1) and morphology were investigated with reference to interspecific hybridisation. Species delimitation of the fauna produced a primary species hypothesis of 47 putative species. This was refined to a secondary species hypothesis of 44 species by integration with morphological and other data. Thirty six of these correspond to the known fauna (two species in Arion subgenus Carinarion were scarcely distinct and Arion (Mesarion) subfuscus consisted of two near-cryptic species). However, by the same criteria a further eight previously undetected species (22% of the fauna) are established in Britain and/or Ireland. Although overlooked, none are strictly morphologically cryptic, and some appear previously undescribed. Most of the additional species are probably accidentally introduced, and several are already widespread in Britain and Ireland (and thus perhaps elsewhere). At least three may be plant pests. Some evidence was found for interspecific hybridisation among the large Arion species (although not involving A. flagellus) and more unexpectedly in species pairs in Deroceras (Agriolimacidae) and Limacus (Limacidae). In the latter groups, introgression appears to have occurred in one direction only, with recently-invading lineages becoming common at the expense of long-established or native ones. The results show how even a well-studied, macroscopic fauna can be vulnerable to cryptic and undetected invasions and changes.     

The Candidate Phylum Poribacteria by Single-Cell Genomics: New Insights into Phylogeny,Cell-Compartmentation,Eukaryote-Like Repeat Proteins,and Other Genomic Features

The candidate phylum Poribacteria is one of the most dominant and widespread members of the microbial communities residing within marine sponges. Cell compartmentalization had been postulated along with their discovery about a decade ago and their phylogenetic association to the Planctomycetes, Verrucomicrobia, Chlamydiae superphylum was proposed soon thereafter. In the present study we revised these features based on genomic data obtained from six poribacterial single cells. We propose that Poribacteria form a distinct monophyletic phylum contiguous to the PVC superphylum together with other candidate phyla. Our genomic analyses supported the possibility of cell compartmentalization in form of bacterial microcompartments. Further analyses of eukaryote-like protein domains stressed the importance of such proteins with features including tetratricopeptide repeats, leucin rich repeats as well as low density lipoproteins receptor repeats, the latter of which are reported here for the first time from a sponge symbiont. Finally, examining the most abundant protein domain family on poribacterial genomes revealed diverse phyH family proteins, some of which may be related to dissolved organic posphorus uptake.     

Hepatitis B and C Co-Infections in Some HIV-Positive Populations in Cameroon,West Central Africa: Analysis of Samples Collected Over More Than a Decade

As people infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in Sub-Saharan Africa live longer due to availability of antiretroviral treatment (ART), so is the rise of associated infections with their burdens on patients. But reliable data on the prevalence of co-infection with hepatitis B (HBV) or C (HCV) still remains sparse and many individuals with HIV do not know their co-infection status. This study attempted to estimate the seroprevalence and identify risk factors associated with hepatitis B and/or C co-infections in HIV-infected individuals from five Regions of Cameroon by screening 531 HIV infected subjects for the presence of HBV surface antigen (HBsAg) and antibodies to HCV (HCV-Ab). A Screening and a confirmatory Enzyme linked immunosorbent assay were used to detect presence of markers of infection. CD4 count levels were also examined. The results indicate that of the 531 participants, 68% were females and 32% males. Mean CD4 count was ~400 cells/μl. Seroprevalence rates for HBsAg and HCV-Ab were 23.7%, and 7.2%, respectively. Associations assessed using logistic regression revealed that HBsAg but not HCV-Ab positivity was linked to age, lower CD4 count and residing in an urban rather than in a rural setting. This high prevalence of co-infection with HBV raises the urgent need to systematically screen all newly diagnosed HIV cases for co-infection in Cameroon and other regions of sub-Saharan Africa where HIV accounts for the majority of the global infection, so as to improve management strategies for HBV infection and ART implementation.     

Evening Chronotype Is Associated with Changes in Eating Behavior,More Sleep Apnea,and Increased Stress Hormones in Short Sleeping Obese Individuals

Background

Short sleep duration and decreased sleep quality are emerging risk factors for obesity and its associated morbidities. Chronotype, an attribute that reflects individual preferences in the timing of sleep and other behaviors, is a continuum from morningness to eveningness. The importance of chronotype in relation to obesity is mostly unknown. Evening types tend to have unhealthy eating habits and suffer from psychological problems more frequently than Morning types, thus we hypothesized that eveningness may affect health parameters in a cohort of obese individuals reporting sleeping less than 6.5 hours per night.

Methodology and Principal Findings

Baseline data from obese (BMI: 38.5±6.4 kg/m²) and short sleeping (5.8±0.8 h/night by actigraphy) participants (n = 119) of the Sleep Extension Study were analyzed (www.ClinicalTrials.gov, identifier {"type":"clinical-trial","attrs":{"text":"NCT00261898","term_id":"NCT00261898"}}NCT00261898). Assessments included the Horne and Ostberg Morningness-Eveningness questionnaire, a three-day dietary intake diary, a 14-day sleep diary, 14 days of actigraphy, and measurements of sleep apnea. Twenty-four hour urinary free cortisol, 24 h urinary norepinephrine and epinephrine levels, morning plasma ACTH and serum cortisol, fasting glucose and insulin, and lipid parameters were determined. Eveningness was associated with eating later in the day on both working and non-working days. Progression towards eveningness was associated with an increase in BMI, resting heart rate, food portion size, and a decrease in the number of eating occasions and HDL-cholesterol. Evening types had overtly higher 24 h urinary epinephrine and morning plasma ACTH levels, and higher morning resting heart rate than Morning types. In addition, Evening types more often had sleep apnea, independent of BMI or neck circumference.

Conclusions

Eveningness was associated with eating later and a tendency towards fewer and larger meals and lower HDL-cholesterol levels. In addition, Evening types had more sleep apnea and higher stress hormones. Thus, eveningness in obese, chronically sleep-deprived individuals compounds the cardiovascular risk associated with obesity.     

The Body Adiposity Index (Hip Circumference ÷ Height1.5) Is Not a More Accurate Measure of Adiposity Than Is BMI,Waist Circumference,or Hip Circumference

Based on cross‐sectional analyses, it was suggested that hip circumference divided by height^1.5 ?18 (the body adiposity index (BAI)), could directly estimate percent body fat without the need for further correction for sex or age. We compared the prediction of percent body fat, as assessed by dual‐energy X‐ray absorptiometry (PBF_DXA), by BAI, BMI, and circumference (waist and hip) measurements among 1,151 adults who had a total body scan by DXA and circumference measurements from 1993 through 2005. After accounting for sex, we found that PBF_DXA was related similarly to BAI, BMI, waist circumference, and hip circumference. In general, BAI underestimated PBF_DXA among men (2.5%) and overestimated PBF_DXA among women (4%), but the magnitudes of these biases varied with the level of body fatness. The addition of covariates and quadratic terms for the body size measures in regression models substantially improved the prediction of PBF_DXA, but none of the models based on BAI could more accurately predict PBF_DXA than could those based on BMI or circumferences. We conclude that the use of BAI as an indicator of adiposity is likely to produce biased estimates of percent body fat, with the errors varying by sex and level of body fatness. Although regression models that account for the nonlinear association, as well as the influence of sex, age, and race, can yield more accurate estimates of PBF_DXA, estimates based on BAI are not more accurate than those based on BMI, waist circumference, or hip circumference.