What you may not see might slow you down anyway: masked images and driving

Many theories of driver behaviour suggest that unconscious or implicit emotions play a functional role in the shaping and control of behaviour. This has not been experimentally tested however. Therefore, in this study the effects of emotive masked images on driver behaviour were examined. While driving a simulator, participants were repeatedly exposed to negative or neutral emotionally laden target images that were sandwich masked by emotionally neutral images. These images were encountered across two different trials each of which consisted of 3-4 minutes of driving on a rural road. The results indicate an effect of the negative target images primarily in reducing the extent of familiarisation occurring between the first and second experimental drives. This is evident in a reduced decrease in heart rate and a reduced increase in high band heart rate variability and actual travelling speed from the first to second drives if the negative target image was presented in the second drive. In addition to these findings there was no clear effect of the target image on subjective ratings of effort or feelings of risk. There was however an effect of gender, with the majority of the effects found in the study being limited to the larger female dataset. These findings suggest that unconscious or implicit emotional stimuli may well influence driver behaviour without explicit awareness.     

The tragedy of translation: the case of "first use" in human embryonic stem cell research

Who should go first in phase-I human trials when neither risks nor benefits can be estimated? By assessing concerns raised by Bretzner et?al. (2011), we highlight a tragic dimension underlying all such trials. We discuss strategies to avoid the pitfalls of ethical hubris by promoting fidelity and trust.     

The unknown tradition: Continuity and innovation in Soviet ethnography

Conclusion In this article we have not attempted to cover the entire problematic or history of Russian-Soviet ethnography. Instead, we tried to explain the significance of the arguments about social theory and demonstrate why Soviet ethnography must be viewed as part of an intellectual tradition fundamentally different from the Western. At the same time, we believe that the theoretical tradition that took shape in the 1920s and the attempts to revive and further it, inconclusive as they may be, are of great potential significance to Western anthropologists.Among the topics left out of consideration was, for example, the traditional and successful collaboration between ethnography and folklore studies culminating in the structural analysis of Russian fairy tales by Vladimir Ya. Propp. We also did not discuss the study of religion, which in the 1930s–1950s was often disguised as folklore studies, and which in the Soviet context was obviously limited by the doctrine dictating the approach to it as a disappearing form of social consciousness, an embarrassing survival of the past. Another subject left out is the study of material culture and everyday life, which continues the pre-revolutionary Russian tradition. The same may be said about a more recent Soviet revival of interest in ethnicity in so far as it can be traced to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century concern with cultural and ethnic divisions. This interest, of course, has much to do with the practical tasks of integrating over 100 nations, nationalities and various other ethnic groups into one Soviet People.The formation of the Soviet people, which Lenin believed to be an inevitable result of education, and which Stalin spurred using massive violence, is viewed not only as both desirable and inevitable but as an actual reality. The coming into being of the Soviet people was proclaimed by Leonid Brezhnev a decade ago. The theory of ethnicity, as well as the whole problem of interethnic relations are so closely connected to the sensitive issues of nationality policy that even field ethnographers often see and report the desirable rather than the actual situation. The Soviet data, therefore, can be used only with great caution.It is perhaps relevant to note the change that occurred in the Soviet attitude toward psychology. At one time practically banned (along with Freud) in favor of the sociological approach, social psychology, psycholinguistics, and ethnopsychology (a Soviet term) today are legitimate, though often doctrinally limited areas of inquiry. Soviet ethnographers agree that the reflection in people's consciousness of their membership in an ethnos as ethnic self-awareness serves as the final proof of the objective existence of that ethnos.Both in terms of the problems considered to fall within its scope and in terms of the approach to these problems, Soviet ethnography today comes closer to Shternberg's conception than to the view which prevailed after the All-Russian Archaeological-Ethnographic Conference of 1932 described earlier. Bromley claims that the conception of ethnography most widely shared among Soviet scientists today is of a science that deals with the characteristics of the daily life and belief systems of a people which distinguish them ethnically (i.e., culturally), and the origins (ethnogenesis) and history of the ethnic units defined by these characteristics. It embraces the history of culture of all peoples in the past as well as the present. To this end it makes use of data not only of the historical sciences, but of the natural sciences (e.g., biology, ecology, geography) as these relate to formation and functioning of ethnos.Broadly speaking, there are three major characteristics that determine the present status of Soviet ethnography:First, there is an open acknowledgement of the validity of pre-revolutionary Russian tradition. One facet of this is a modest rivival of the Shternberg school that combined rigorous requirements for fieldwork (not unlike Boas) with ethnographers' active participation in the lives of the investigated peoples, and a broadly historical dynamic approach to culture.Second, after a period of isolation, the best work in ethnography, as illustrated in the case of kinship studies, is strongly influenced by Western social anthropology. The language and concerns of these studies can be much easier understood in the West than, perhaps, any other Soviet writings. But one should not lose sight of the fact that basic assumptions, such as the general view of evolution, are not the same as in the West.Third, the main struggle in Soviet ethnography now is not against bourgeois theories. More and more it is centered around the inadequacy of the Soviet theoretical heritage itself.The gains in kinship studies, the tacit return to the forcibly broken tradition of the 1920s in conceptualization of culture (Bogoraz, Bukharin) visible in the work of Markarian, and the possibility to question and reject particular hypotheses advanced by Morgan, Engels, or the early Soviet fundamentalists make Soviet ethnography a rich and exciting field. This impression is not diminished by the fact that the thorough theoretical revision of orthodoxy promised by PIDO Two in 1968 never materialized. The intellectual currents that produced it still exist and now and then surface, waiting for a time when the deological climate improves.An important thing to remember is that many theoretical positions in the Soviet Union are arrived at by thrashing out the issues in oral discussions until consensus is gradually formed, not by boldly proclaiming a new approach in an individual paper. Olderogge's rejection of Morgan's Hawaiian hypothesis, as well as the whole project of PIDO Two are but two examples of consensus formed before they were published. We suspect that some work is being done, of which the short conference resumés (unavailable in the West) are often the only and cryptic witnesses.The administrative control over Soviet ethnography remains in the hands of the fundamentalists, who associate true Marxism with doctrine and whose main task is to defend the hypotheses incorporated in official ideology. They are opposed by a vital group of scholars, who gain their inspiration from a general philosophical approach and method of conceptualization they find in classical Marxism. The division into these two camps is not at all clearcut; many people intermittently align themselves with one or the other. And of course, the strong current of Russian intellectual tradition (never demythologized) with its search for an integral and simultaneously ethical social theory brings many of them together.But the discussions persist, and it appears that for non-fundamentalists Marxism provides only a method (and even this is understood in a variety of ways), a theory of cognition, the most general language of theory. No particular hypothesis is sacred. Since the method is not reducible to ethnographic theory, it does not in itself guarantee success. The theory has to be judged on its own merit, not by appeal to the classics. These seem to be the unspoken points underlying the debate today.What is at stake is not only the right of scientists to develop various perspectives on society, culture, and evolution. Whether or not the participants themselves would put it this way, it affects the very nature of theory in social sciences. The rallying point for the non-fundamentalists, regardless of their areas of research or their views on particular problems, is the tacit rejection of theory as doctrine. The revolt is against theory as quasireligion, as the Absolute which is simultaneously a scientific and an ethical doctrine that pits us who know the Truth against them who do not: and this may be nothing less than the beginning of a fundamental break with the Russian intellectual tradition.Dr. Jovan Howe is working on a book on Soviet archaeology.Vladimir Plotkin is a Visiting Professor in Russian and Eastern European Studies at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington.     

The story of protein arginine methylation: characterization,regulation, and function

Introduction: Arginine methylation is an important post-translational modification (PTM) in cells, which is catalyzed by a group of protein arginine methyltransferases (PRMTs). It plays significant roles in diverse cellular processes and various diseases. Misregulation and aberrant expression of PRMTs can provide potential biomarkers and therapeutic targets for drug discovery.

Areas covered: Herein, we review the arginine methylation literature and summarize the methodologies for the characterization of this modification, as well as describe the recent insights into arginine methyltransferases and their biological functions in diseases.

Expert commentary: Benefits from the enzyme-based large-scale screening approach, the novel affinity enrichment strategies, arginine methylated protein family is the focus of attention. Although a number of arginine methyltransferases and related substrates are identified, the catalytic mechanism of different types of PRMTs remains unclear and few related demethylases are characterized. Novel functional studies continuously reveal the importance of this modification in the cell cycle and diseases. A deeper understanding of arginine methylated proteins, modification sites, and their mechanisms of regulation is needed to explore their role in life processes, especially their relationship with diseases, thus accelerating the generation of potent, selective, cell-penetrant drug candidates.     

A navigational guide to variable fitness: common methods of analysis,where they break down,and what you can do instead

Our methods for analyzing stochastic fitness are mostly approximations, and the assumptions behind these approximations are not always well understood. Furthermore, many of these approximations break down when fitness variance is high. This review covers geometric mean growth, diffusion approximations, and Markov processes. It discusses where each is appropriate, the conditions under which they break down, and their advantages and disadvantages, with special attention to the case of high fitness variance. A model of sessile and site-attached coastal species is used as a running example, and fully worked calculations and code are provided. Summary: The logarithm of geometric mean growth is usually only appropriate when (a) an invader growth rate is needed and (b) fitness variability is driven by environmental fluctuations. The usual approximation breaks down when fitness variance is high. Diffusion approximations can provide a reasonable guide to the expected change in frequency over a time step if expected fitnesses and fitness variances are appropriately scaled by the average expected fitness. Diffusion approximations can perform less well for fixation probabilities, especially since further approximations may be required. Fixation probabilities can be calculated exactly using a Markov process, regardless of how large fitness variance is, although an analytic expression is frequently not possible. If an analytic expression is desired, it may be worth using a diffusion approximation and checking it with a Markov process calculation.     

Within you, without you: HIV-1 Rev and RNA export

There are hundreds of viruses that infect different human organs and cause diseases. Some fatal emerging viral infections have become serious public health issues worldwide. Early diagnosis and subsequent treatment are therefore essential for fighting viral infections. Current diagnostic techniques frequently employ polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based methods to quickly detect the pathogenic viruses and establish the etiology of the disease or illness. However, the fast PCR method suffers from many drawbacks such as a high false-positive rate and the ability to detect only one or a few gene targets at a time. Microarray technology solves the problems of the PCR limitations and can be effectively applied to all fields of molecular medicine. Recently, a report in Retrovirology described a multi-virus DNA array that contains more than 250 open reading frames from eight human viruses including human immunodeficiency virus type 1. This array can be used to detect multiple viral co-infections in cells and in vivo. Another benefit of this kind of multi-virus array is in studying promoter activity and viral gene expression and correlating such readouts with the progression of disease and reactivation of latent infections. Thus, the virus DNA-chip development reported in Retrovirology is an important advance in diagnostic application which could be a potent clinical tool for characterizing viral co-infections in AIDS as well as other patients.     

Mental health and employment: The SAD story

This paper explores the relationship between health-related quality of life (HRQOL) measures and employment status in light of a constructed index related to Seasonal Affective Disorder that depends only on latitude and day of year. In models including demographic covariates and indicators for state, year, and quarter, more hours of darkness is associated with poorer HRQOL, which in turn is associated with a lower likelihood of employment. The relationships between the darkness index and HRQOL measures are stronger overall for women than for men. Inclusion of both the darkness index and the HRQOL measures in models of employment status determinants provides some evidence that the former operates through the latter in predicting a lower likelihood of employment. When specifying the darkness index as an instrument for HRQOL, each additional day of poor mental health per month leads to a 0.76 percentage point increase in the probability of unemployment among women.     

Arctic fisheries catches in Russia, USA, and Canada: baselines for neglected ecosystems

The Amerasian Arctic, covering northern Siberia (Russia), Arctic Alaska (USA), and the Canadian Arctic, extends over seven coastal Large Marine Ecosystems and makes up the seasonally ice-free part of FAO Statistical Area 18 (Arctic Sea). Historically, the harsh climate has limited marine fisheries (here excluding marine mammal hunting) to small-scale operations conducted mainly in estuaries and river deltas. Most of the catches have traditionally not been reported to FAO, with the result that total catch estimated here from 1950 to 2006 is 75 times higher than the sum of the catches reported for FAO 18 (Arctic). Catches were reconstructed from data on fishing communities in Canada and Alaska, and from various government and non-government sources for Siberia. Based on national data supplied to FAO since 1950, catches have been reported as 12,700 t in toto (reported on behalf of the former Soviet Union). This compares with our reconstructed catches of over 950,000 t, i.e., 770,000, 89,000, and 94,000 t by Russia, USA, and Canada, respectively for the same time period. The reconstructed catch (mainly whitefishes in Siberia, various salmonids in Alaska, and Arctic char in Canada) was 24,100 t year⁻¹ in 1950, but declined to 10,200 t year⁻¹ by the mid-2000s. Reasons for these trends are discussed by country, along with sources of uncertainty (particularly large for Siberia). Catches were allocated to Large Marine Ecosystems to present ecosystem-relevant baselines for the impact of fisheries on the Arctic, which can be expected to increase, as industrial fisheries move into a warming Arctic following the invasion of boreal species, unless countries apply precautionary ecosystem-based management approaches.     

Disability payments continue to climb: "Tell us what you see,not what you think," CPP tells MDs

Growing concern about the sustainability of the Canada Pension Plan has led to a closer look at the disability benefits it provides. The federal auditor general reported recently that the number of recipients has almost doubled in the past 10 years, and disability payments have more than tripled, to $3 billion annually. This article looks at the role physicians play in determining whether an applicant is disabled.     

Hope, Arkansas to Hope, Albania: naivete and idealism to reality and tragedy

The wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo were perpretrated by a radical nationalist Serbian cultural political consciousness that the American cultural political consciousness and leadership had difficulty responding to and understanding. There is a great cultural divide between a 'pathology' in Serbian culture, Milosevi?'s radical nationalism, and a humane 'naivete' in American cultural consciousness. I discuss why, finally, American political leadership, Bill Clinton from Hope, Arkansas, responded to the tragedy of these wars. However, we are still left with the question of good vs evil: What is the course of human history; psychotic political leadership causing repetitive human tragedy or can there be a higher humane and moral order to human cultural events?     

The tragedy of the commons in microbial populations: insights from theoretical, comparative and experimental studies

First principles of thermodynamics imply that metabolic pathways are faced with a trade-off between the rate and yield of ATP production. Simple evolutionary models argue that this trade-off generates a fundamental social conflict in microbial populations: average fitness in a population is highest if all individuals exploit common resources efficiently, but individual reproductive rate is maximized by consuming common resources at the highest possible rate, a scenario known as the tragedy of the commons. In this paper, I review studies that have addressed two key questions: What is the evidence that the rate-yield trade-off is an evolutionary constraint on metabolic pathways? And, if so, what determines evolutionary outcome of the conflicts generated by this trade-off? Comparative studies and microbial experiments provide evidence that the rate-yield trade-off is an evolutionary constraint that is driven by thermodynamic constraints that are common to all metabolic pathways and pathway-specific constraints that reflect the evolutionary history of populations. Microbial selection experiments show that the evolutionary consequences of this trade-off depend on both kin selection and biochemical constraints. In well-mixed populations with low relatedness, genotypes with rapid and efficient metabolism can coexist as a result of negative frequency-dependent selection generated by density-dependent biochemical costs of rapid metabolism. Kin selection can promote the maintenance of efficient metabolism in structured populations with high relatedness by ensuring that genotypes with efficient metabolic pathways gain an indirect fitness benefit from their competitive restraint. I conclude by suggesting avenues for future research and by discussing the broader implications of this work for microbial social evolution.     

The tragedy of the commons in microbial populations: insights from theoretical, comparative and experimental studies

First principles of thermodynamics imply that metabolic pathways are faced with a trade-off between the rate and yield of ATP production. Simple evolutionary models argue that this trade-off generates a fundamental social conflict in microbial populations: average fitness in a population is highest if all individuals exploit common resources efficiently, but individual reproductive rate is maximized by consuming common resources at the highest possible rate, a scenario known as the tragedy of the commons. In this paper, I review studies that have addressed two key questions: What is the evidence that the rate-yield trade-off is an evolutionary constraint on metabolic pathways? And, if so, what determines evolutionary outcome of the conflicts generated by this trade-off? Comparative studies and microbial experiments provide evidence that the rate-yield trade-off is an evolutionary constraint that is driven by thermodynamic constraints that are common to all metabolic pathways and pathway-specific constraints that reflect the evolutionary history of populations. Microbial selection experiments show that the evolutionary consequences of this trade-off depend on both kin selection and biochemical constraints. In well-mixed populations with low relatedness, genotypes with rapid and efficient metabolism can coexist as a result of negative frequency-dependent selection generated by density-dependent biochemical costs of rapid metabolism. Kin selection can promote the maintenance of efficient metabolism in structured populations with high relatedness by ensuring that genotypes with efficient metabolic pathways gain an indirect fitness benefit from their competitive restraint. I conclude by suggesting avenues for future research and by discussing the broader implications of this work for microbial social evolution.