Making sense of dream experiences: A multidimensional approach to beliefs about dreams.

There exists little research on dream-related beliefs and their role in peoples’ lives. Our aim was to develop a questionnaire (the Inventory of Dream Experiences & Attitudes [IDEA]) to assess dream-related beliefs and investigate their relations to waking-state variables. Seven hundred twenty-five participants completed the IDEA, and 357 participants also completed questionnaires on dreams, personality, and well-being and recorded their dreams for 2 or more consecutive weeks. A factor analysis of the IDEA revealed 7 dimensions: significance, positivity, recall, apprehension, entertainment, continuity, and guidance. Using these dimensions, individuals were classified into three distinct profiles that showed differential relations to measures of personality and well-being. The findings indicate that the IDEA is a useful instrument for researchers and that dream-related beliefs can play important psychological roles. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Natural enemy diversity and biological control: Making sense of the context-dependency

Numerous studies have demonstrated that diverse predator assemblages can be more effective at controlling prey populations. Yet, other studies have shown no effect of predator diversity on prey mortality, or even negative effects (for example due to intraguild predation or interference). Much research emphasis has been placed on the traits of predators that maximise functional complementarity. However, comparatively less attention has been paid to the traits of the prey or habitat that may maximise predator diversity effects, even though there must be a variety of prey niches available to be partitioned in order for niche complementarity to occur. Following this logic, we review six hypotheses for when diverse enemy assemblages should be most effective: when 1) prey communities are diverse; 2) prey have complex life cycles; 3) prey are patchily distributed in space or time; 4) studies are conducted at larger spatial and temporal scales; 5) plant structures are complex; 6) prey are abundant. Many of these hypotheses lack direct tests, particularly in agricultural systems, but we find little or no direct or indirect support for hypotheses 1, 4, 5 and 6. However, previous work does provide some support for hypotheses 2 and 3. We discuss methods to test these hypotheses directly, and suggest that natural enemy diversity may only benefit the biological control of arthropods in heterogeneous systems.     

From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896–1954.

From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896-1954. Lee D. Baker. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. 325 pp.     

From ABC genes to regulatory networks,epigenetic landscapes and flower morphogenesis: Making biological sense of theoretical approaches

The ABC model postulates that expression combinations of three classes of genes (A, B and C) specify the four floral organs at early stages of flower development. This classic model provides a solid framework to study flower development and has been the foundation for multiple studies in different plant species, as well as for new evolutionary hypotheses. Nevertheless, it has been shown that in spite of being necessary, these three gene classes are not sufficient for flower organ specification. Rather, flower organ specification depends on complex interactions of several genes, and probably other non-genetic factors. Being useful to study systems of complex interactions, mathematical and computational models have enlightened the origin of the A, B and C stereotyped and robust expression patterns and the process of early flower morphogenesis. Here, we present a brief introduction to basic modeling concepts and techniques and review the results that these models have rendered for the particular case of the Arabidopsis thaliana flower organ specification. One of the main results is the uncovering of a robust functional module that is sufficient to recover the gene configurations characterizing flower organ primordia. Another key result is that the temporal sequence with which such gene configurations are attained may be recovered only by modeling the aforementioned functional module as a noisy or stochastic system. Finally, modeling approaches enable testable predictions regarding the role of non-genetic factors (noise, mechano-elastic forces, etc.) in development. These predictions, along with some perspectives for future work, are also reviewed and discussed.     

Making sense of nonsense: the evolution of selenocysteine usage in proteins

A recent analysis of sequences derived from organisms in the Sargasso Sea has revealed a surprisingly different set of selenium-containing proteins than that previously found in sequenced genomes and suggests that selenocysteine utilization has been lost by many groups of organisms during evolution.