Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inheritance of female mating preference in a sympatric sibling species pair of Lake Victoria cichlids: implications for speciation

Female mate choice has often been proposed to play an important role in cases of rapid speciation, in particular in the explosively evolved haplochromine cichlid species flocks of the Great Lakes of East Africa. Little, if anything, is known in cichlid radiations about the heritability of female mating preferences. Entirely sympatric distribution, large ecological overlap and conspicuous differences in male nuptial coloration, and female preferences for these, make the sister species Pundamilia pundamilia and P. nyererei from Lake Victoria an ideally suited species pair to test assumptions on the genetics of mating preferences made in models of sympatric speciation. Female mate choice is necessary and sufficient to maintain reproductive isolation between these species, and it is perhaps not unlikely therefore, that female mate choice has been important during speciation. A prerequisite for this, which had remained untested in African cichlid fish, is that variation in female mating preferences is heritable. We investigated mating preferences of females of these sister species and their hybrids to test this assumption of most sympatric speciation models, and to further test the assumption of some models of sympatric speciation by sexual selection that female preference is a single–gene trait. We find that the differences in female mating preferences between the sister species are heritable, possibly with quite high heritabilities, and that few but probably more than one genetic loci contribute to this behavioural speciation trait with no apparent dominance. We discuss these results in the light of speciation models and the debate about the explosive radiation of cichlid fishes in Lake Victoria.
A Job Isn’t Just a Job: The Differential Impact of Formal Versus Informal Work on Adolescent Problem Behavior

Research consistently demonstrates a positive correlation between hours of employment and problem behavior for adolescents. In response, the National Research Council (1998) proposed limits on youth work involvement, and its recommendation forms the basis for proposed legislation to amend federal child labor provisions. An unanticipated consequence may be to increase the amount of time that youths spend in the informal labor market because child labor laws only govern youth employment in the formal labor market. In this article, the authors attempt to address this policy implication and fill a gap in the extant literature by examining the impact of both formal and informal employment on delinquency and substance use. Because work patterns tend to be very different by gender and race or ethnicity, the authors estimate separate models for these subgroups. The authors use longitudinal data to deal with the possibility that there are unobserved differences between those that work and those that do not.
Mouse models of lupus: what they tell us and what they don’t

Lupus is a complex heterogeneous disease characterised by autoantibody production and immune complex deposition followed by damage to target tissues. Animal models of human diseases are an invaluable tool for defining pathogenic mechanisms and testing of novel therapeutic agents. There are perhaps more applicable murine models of lupus than any other human disease. There are spontaneous models of lupus, inducible models of lupus, transgenic-induced lupus, gene knockout induced lupus and humanised mouse models of lupus. These mouse models of lupus have contributed significantly to our knowledge of the pathogenesis of lupus and served as valuable preclinical models for proof of concept for new therapies. Despite their utility, mouse models of lupus have their distinct limitations. Although similar, mouse and human immune systems are different and thus one cannot assume a mechanism for disease in one is translatable to the other. Efficacy and toxicity of compounds can vary significantly between humans and mice, also limiting direct translation. Finally, the heterogeneous aspects of human lupus, both in clinical presentation, underlying pathogenesis and genetics, are not completely represented in current mouse models. Thus, proving a therapy or mechanism of disease in one mouse model is similar to proving a mechanism/therapy in a limited subset of human lupus. These limitations, however, do not marginalise the importance of animal models nor the significant contributions they have made to our understanding of lupus.
Identification and Characterization of a Putative Arginine Kinase Homolog from Myxococcus xanthus Required for Fruiting Body Formation and Cell Differentiation

ABSTRACT Arginine kinases catalyze the reversible transfer of a high-energy phosphoryl group from ATP to l-arginine to form phosphoarginine, which is used as an energy buffer in insects, crustaceans, and some unicellular organisms. It plays an analogous role to that of phosphocreatine in vertebrates. Recently, putative arginine kinases were identified in several bacterial species, including the social Gram-negative soil bacterium Myxococcus xanthus. It is still unclear what role these proteins play in bacteria and whether they have evolved to acquire novel functions in the species in which they are found. In this study, we biochemically purified and characterized a putative M. xanthus arginine kinase, Ark, and demonstrated that it has retained the ability to catalyze the phosphorylation of arginine by using ATP. We also constructed a null mutation in the ark gene and demonstrated its role in both certain stress responses and development.
Neotectonic architecture of Taiwan and its implications for future large earthquakes

The disastrous effects of the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake in Taiwan demonstrated an urgent need for better knowledge of the island's potential earthquake sources. Toward this end, we have prepared a neotectonic map of Taiwan. The map and related cross sections are based upon structural and geomorphic expression of active faults and folds both in the field and on shaded relief maps prepared from a 40-m resolution digital elevation model, augmented by geodetic and seismologic data. The active tandem suturing and tandem disengagement of a volcanic arc and a continental sliver to and from the Eurasian continental margin have created two neotectonic belts in Taiwan. In the southern part of the orogen both belts are in the final stage of consuming oceanic crust. Collision and suturing occur in the middle part of both belts, and postcollisional collapse and extension dominate the island's northern and northeastern flanks. Both belts consist of several distinct neotectonic domains. Seven domains (Kaoping, Chiayi, Taichung, Miaoli, Hsinchu, Ilan, and Taipei) constitute the western belt, and four domains (Lutao-Lanyu, Taitung, Hualien, and Ryukyu) make up the eastern belt. Each domain is defined by a distinct suite of active structures. For example, the Chelungpu fault (source of the 1999 earthquake) and its western neighbor, the Changhua fault, are the principal components of the Taichung Domain, whereas both its neighboring domains, the Chiayi and Miaoli Domains, are dominated by major blind faults. In most of the domains the size of the principal active fault is large enough to produce future earthquakes with magnitudes in the mid-7 values.
Strategic conversation

Models of conversation that rely on a strong notion of cooperation don’t apply to strategic conversation — that is, to conversation where the agents’ motives don’t align, such as courtroom cross examination and political debate. We provide a game-theoretic framework that provides an analysis of both cooperative and strategic conversation. Our analysis features a new notion of safety that applies to implicatures: an implicature is safe when it can be reliably treated as a matter of public record. We explore the safety of implicatures within cooperative and non cooperative settings. We then provide a symbolic model enabling us (i) to prove a correspondence result between a characterisation of conversation in terms of an alignment of players’ preferences and one where Gricean principles of cooperative conversation like Sincerity hold, and (ii) to show when an implicature is safe and when it
Transferable skills for online peer learning

Efforts to enhance learning through peer interaction in an electronic forum are now commonplace. However, facilitation and moderation of such a forum by academic staff can be of limited effectiveness and very time‐consuming. The skills required by peer learners to effectively manage such distributed discourse for themselves have rarely been clearly identified. This paper compares the social, organizational and cognitive characteristics of effective peer learning interactions in face‐to‐face and online environments (with particular reference to peer tutoring and peer assessment). This leads to a specification of transferable skills for online peer learning, at the macro and micro levels, with commentary on areas needing particular attention. The implications for assessment of such online distributed discourse process skills are explored with reference to professional practice and future research.
Polarization of the C. elegans zygote proceeds via distinct establishment and maintenance phases

Polarization of the C. elegans zygote along the anterior-posterior axis depends on cortically enriched (PAR) and cytoplasmic (MEX-5/6) proteins, which function together to localize determinants (e.g. PIE-1) in response to a polarizing cue associated with the sperm asters. Using time-lapse microscopy and GFP fusions, we have analyzed the localization dynamics of PAR-2, PAR-6, MEX-5, MEX-6 and PIE-1 in wild-type and mutant embryos. These studies reveal that polarization involves two genetically and temporally distinct phases. During the first phase (establishment), the sperm asters at one end of the embryo exclude the PAR-3/PAR-6/PKC3 complex from the nearby cortex, allowing the ring finger protein PAR-2 to accumulate in an expanding `posterior' domain. Onset of the establishment phase involves the non-muscle myosin NMY-2 and the 14-3-3 protein PAR-5. The kinase PAR-1 and the CCCH finger proteins MEX-5 and MEX-6 also function during the establishment phase in a feedback loop to regulate growth of the posterior domain. The second phase begins after pronuclear meeting, when the sperm asters begin to invade the anterior. During this phase (maintenance), PAR-2 maintains anterior-posterior polarity by excluding the PAR-3/PAR-6/PKC3 complex from the posterior. These findings provide a model for how PAR and MEX proteins convert a transient asymmetry into a stably polarized axis.
Distinguishing traumatic, vicarious and routine operational stressor exposure and attendant adverse consequences in a sample of police officers

Problems in studying occupational stress within the police service are identified and the paucity of work on operational duties as potential stressors are discussed. The present study reports the results of a factor analysis of operational stressors (N = 601 serving British police officers) that revealed three factors: exposure to death and disaster; violence and injury; sexual crime. These were demonstrated to be reliable scales and were included in logistic regression models together with a range of demographic and psychological variables. Models were applied to men and women separately, which showed there to be different predictors of the likelihood of suffering distress (measured by the General Health Questionnaire, GHQ) in terms of the officer's gender and operational role. Overall the model for women officers was better at predicting psychological distress than that for men. These findings are related to aspects of the police occupational culture. Further discussion is offered that conceptualizes po.
Organizing principles for the cerebral cortex network of commissural and association connections

Significance The cerebral cortex supports cognition and is a structure common to all mammals. The major cortical subdivisions (its gray matter regions) are connected by a complex network of axonal connections that includes connections between regions in the same hemisphere (association connections on the right or left side) and those between hemispheres (commissural connections between opposite sides). A database of over 5,000 connections in the cortical network was extracted from the literature, and network analysis revealed three identical cortical modules (neural subsystems) on each side. One appears to deal especially with the external world, one with the viscera, and one with planning, prioritization, and self-awareness. A set of general organizing principles for association and commissural connections also emerged from the analysis. Cognition is supported by a network of axonal connections between gray matter regions within and between right and left cerebral cortex. Global organizing principles of this circuitry were examined with network analysis tools applied to monosynaptic association (within one side) and commissural (between sides) connections between all 77 cortical gray matter regions in each hemisphere of the rat brain. The analysis used 32,350 connection reports expertly collated from published pathway tracing experiments, and 5,394 connections of a possible 23,562 were identified, for a connection density of 23%—of which 20% (1,084) were commissural. Network community detection yielded a stable bihemispheric six-module solution, with an identical set in each hemisphere of three modules topographically forming a lateral core and medial shell arrangement of cortical regions. Functional correlations suggest the lateral module deals preferentially with environmental sensory-motor interactions and the ventromedial module deals preferentially with visceral control, affect, and short-term memory, whereas the dorsomedial module resembles the default mode network. Analysis of commissural connections revealed a set of unexpected rules to help generate hypotheses. Most notably, there is an order of magnitude more heterotopic than homotopic projections; all cortical regions send more association than commissural connections, and for each region, the latter are always a subset of the former; the number of association connections from each cortical region strongly correlates with the number of its commissural connections; and the module (dorsomedial) lying closest to the corpus callosum has the most complete set of commissural connections—and apparently the most complex function.
Cooperative Spectrum Sharing: A Contract-Based Approach

Providing economic incentives to all parties involved is essential for the success of dynamic spectrum access. Cooperative spectrum sharing is one effective way to achieve this, where secondary users (SUs) relay traffics for primary users (PUs) in exchange for dedicated spectrum access time for SUs' own communications. In this paper, we study the cooperative spectrum sharing under incomplete information, where SUs' wireless characteristics are private information and not known by a PU. We model the PU-SU interaction as a labor market using contract theory. In contract theory, the employer generally does not completely know employees' private information before the employment and needs to offers employees a contract under incomplete information. In our problem, the PU and SUs are, respectively, the employer and employees, and the contract consists of a set of items representing combinations of spectrum accessing time (i.e., reward) and relaying power (i.e., contribution). We study the optimal contract design for both weakly and strongly incomplete information scenarios. In the weakly incomplete information scenario, we show that the PU will optimally hire the most efficient SUs and the PU achieves the same maximum utility as in the complete information benchmark. In the strongly incomplete information scenario, however, the PU may conservatively hire less efficient SUs as well. We further propose a decompose-and-compare (DC) approximate algorithm that achieves a close-to-optimal contract. We further show that the PU's average utility loss due to the suboptimal DC algorithm and the strongly incomplete information are relatively small (less than 2 and 1.3 percent, respectively, in our numerical results with two SU types).
Different Strokes in the Applicant Pool: Some Refinements in a Model of Student College Choice.

College attendance and college choice have received considerable scholarly attention during the past decade. Initial interest came from sociologists who were examining processes of social mobility and occupational attainment [1, 18, 19, 20] and from economists who were concerned with public policy in an area that involved enormous numbers of people and amounts of public funds [9, 17]. These social scientists constructed elaborate statistical models of the structural phenomena and personal and institutional attributes that affect the outcomes of decisions to attend college and the selection of a specific college by an individual. Jackson [8] reviews these models for their public policy implications. More recently other social scientists have examined the college selection process because it represents an example of an interesting genre of decision making-first-time, complex decisions of major importance to the decision makers [11]-or because it provides a focus for the study of family decision making regarding major purchases [22]. Most recently researchers of higher education and college administrators have developed an intense interest in the college selection process. The marketing challenges presented by imminent and long-term demographic and economic conditions lead these persons to believe that a better understanding of the college-selection process will help them manage an institution's involvement in these processes more effectively. Chapman [3] recently provided a review of the college selection literature and developed a model that is intended "(1) to assist college administrators responsible for recruitment policy to identify the pressures and influences they need to consider in developing institutional recruiting
Mieux comprendre la fidélité des consommateurs

L'objectif de cet article est de proposer une synthèse d'un concept primordial en marketing, aussi bien d'un point de vue managérial que conceptuel: la fidélité. Après avoir analysé les définitions de la fidélité et leur évolution, un panorama des explications théoriques est dressé. Quatre grands processus fondés sur des théories différentes peuvent être identifiés. L'objectif est de comprendre comment les intégrer dans un modèle général, afin de pouvoir faire émerger de nouvelles pistes de réflexion.
Demographic factors, temperament and the quality of the preschool environment as predictors of daily cortisol changes among Finnish six-year-old children

A young child's stress-sensitive neurobiological system is immature and open to being shaped by experience. When children enter preschool, external demands on them to adjust are different from the demands they experience at day care. In Finland, the last year before children transfer to the comprehensive school is called preschool. The preschool year is far more academically demanding than earlier day care years, emphasizing school-like activities along with age-appropriate social and cognitive challenges. The first aim of the present study was to study whether the preschool year (six-year-old children) has an effect on the children's cortisol reactivity. To examine the changes in stress regulation, cortisol reactivity was investigated both in the autumn and in the spring. The second aim of the study was to explore whether demographic factors, temperament and the quality of preschool environment have an effect on the daily variation of the cortisol level among the participants of the study. Five day care centres in metropolitan Helsinki, Finland, participated in this study and 91 six-year-old preschool children served as participants. Our results showed that the children displayed typical cortisol reactivity during the autumn as expected, whereas their cortisol values were significantly higher in the spring. The autumn measurements revealed a significant relationship between the cortisol effects and the temperament characteristics of sadness, anger/frustration and perceptual sensitivity. These characteristics were not as evident when measured during the spring. Additionally, the results indicated that quality of learning environment affects changes in children's cortisol reactivity.
Rational Expectations and Learning from Experience

I. Introduction, 47. —II. The model, 49. —III. Conclusions, 54. The universal form of conscious behavior is thus action designed to change a future situation inferred from a present one. It involves perception and, in addition, twofold inference. We must infer what the future situation would have been without our interference, and what change will be wrought in it by our action. Fortunately or unfortunately, none of these processes is infallible, or indeed ever accurate and complete (Knight, 1921, pp. 201–02). The correspondence of expectations that makes it possible for all parties to achieve what they are striving for is in fact brought about by a process of learning by trial and error which must involve a constant disappointment of some expectations. The process of adaptation operates, as do the adjustments of any self-organizing system, by what cybernetics has taught us to call negative feedback: responses to the differences between the expected and the actual results of actions so that these differences will be reduced (Hayek, 1976, pp. 124–25).
Interest organizations, information, and policy innovation in the U.S. congress

Interest organizations are hypothesized to strongly affect public policy, but the evidence that they do so is mixed. This article argues that one reason for the disparity is a gap between theory and research: theory suggests that information provided by interest organizations should strongly influence elected officials, but there is no systematic research on its impact. We examine a potentially important source of information for members of the U.S. Congress—testimony at committee hearings—to ascertain if it affects the enactment of policy proposals. The data, based on content analysis of almost 1,000 testimonies on a stratified random sample of policy proposals, describe who testifies, their arguments, and the evidence they provide. Supporters of a proposal emphasize the importance of the problem being addressed, while opponents claim the proposed policy will be ineffective and try to reframe the debate. Information—particularly information regarding policy effectiveness—does affect the likelihood that a policy proposal will be enacted.