bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Hybridization and gene flow in the mega-pest lineage of moth,
Helicoverpa
Authors: Anderson Craig J. , Oakeshott John G. , Tay Wee Tek , Gordon Karl H. J. , Zwick Andreas , Walsh Tom K.
Published: April 2018

Significance

Helicoverpa armigera
is a major agricultural and horticultural pest that recently spread from its historical distribution throughout much of the Old World to the Americas, where it is already causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage every year. The species is notoriously quick to generate and disseminate pesticide resistance throughout its range and has a wider host range than the native
Helicoverpa zea
. Hybridization between the two species increases the opportunity for novel, agriculturally problematic ecotypes to emerge and spread through the Americas.
Robust, linear correlations between growth rates and β-lactam–mediated lysis rates
Authors: Lee Anna J. , Wang Shangying , Meredith Hannah R. , Zhuang Bihan , Dai Zhuojun , You Lingchong
Published: April 2018

Significance

How fast bacteria grow influences the efficacy of β-lactams, one of the most commonly used classes of antibiotics. However, the quantitative nature of this correlation is not well established. With precise measurements and analyses enabled by experimental automation, we found a robust relationship between growth and lysis rates that is generally applicable to diverse pairs of β-lactams and bacteria. That is, the growth rate of population serves as a reliable predictor for the lysis rate in response to a β-lactam. This quantitative correlation lays the foundation for predicting bacterial population dynamics during β-lactam treatments. This predictive capability is critical for designing effective antibiotic dosing protocols, in addressing the rising antibiotic resistance crisis.
Direct electrochemical observation of glucosidase activity in isolated single lysosomes from a living cell
Authors: Pan Rongrong , Xu Mingchen , Burgess James D. , Jiang Dechen , Chen Hong-Yuan
Published: April 2018

Significance

The quantification of protein activity in individual lysosomes in living cells is realized using a nanocapillary designed to electrochemically analyze internal solution, in which a single lysosome is sorted from the cell and the target protein is reacted with the corresponding kit components to generate hydrogen peroxide for measurement. The ability to sort and assay multiple lysosomes from the same cell allows direct study of protein function at subcellular resolution and provides unprecedented information about the homogeneity within the lysosomal population of a single cell.
Evolutionary emergence of the
rac3b
/
rfng
/
sgca
regulatory cluster refined mechanisms for hindbrain boundaries formation
Authors: Letelier Joaquín , Terriente Javier , Belzunce Ivan , Voltes Adria , Undurraga Cristian Alberto , Polvillo Rocio , Devos Lucie , Tena Juan J. , Maeso Ignacio , Retaux Sylvie , Gomez-Skarmeta José Luis , Martínez-Morales Juan R. , Pujades Cristina
Published: April 2018

Significance

Evolution of organismal complexity and species diversity depends on the emergence of novel gene functions. Nevertheless, evolution rarely produces novelties from scratch but works on the weak promiscuous preexisting activities or appears by genomic tinkering. We provide evidence of how rearrangement of conserved regulatory blocks can act as a driving force for gene cooption and evolution of novel developmental mechanisms at the base of important ecological adaptations. We gain insight into a crucial system for segregation of neuronal progenitors within the hindbrain: the evolutionary origin of the actomyosin-dependent cell-sorting mechanism, with
rac3b
as a main effector. We unveil that the
rac3b
/
rfng
/
sgca
regulatory cluster—specifically expressed at boundaries—emerged by establishment of novel long-range
cis
-regulatory interactions, allowing the evolution of a backup regulatory mechanism for cell segregation.
High-accuracy lagging-strand DNA replication mediated by DNA polymerase dissociation
Authors: Maslowska Katarzyna H. , Makiela-Dzbenska Karolina , Mo Jin-Yao , Fijalkowska Iwona J. , Schaaper Roel M.
Published: April 2018

Significance

The accuracy (fidelity) by which cells are able to duplicate their chromosomal DNA before cell division is an important factor in the frequency at which they accumulate mutations. Because mutations are generally harmful, organisms have developed various mechanisms to minimize the frequency of errors during DNA replication. Replication is generally performed by large multiple subunit complexes (replicases), which simultaneously and in a coordinated fashion copy the two DNA strands. Due to the antiparallel nature of the two DNA strands, the replication enzymology of the two individual strands is slightly different, and our study demonstrates that the two strands are copied with different accuracies. Specifically, the discontinuous lagging strand is significantly more accurate than the more processive leading strand.
Learned immunosuppressive placebo responses in renal transplant patients
Authors: Kirchhof Julia , Petrakova Liubov , Brinkhoff Alexandra , Benson Sven , Schmidt Justine , Unteroberdörster Maike , Wilde Benjamin , Kaptchuk Ted J. , Witzke Oliver , Schedlowski Manfred
Published: April 2018

Significance

Akin to other physiological responses, immune functions can be modified in humans through associative conditioning procedures as part of a learned placebo response. However, it is unclear whether learned immune responses can be produced in patient populations already receiving an immunosuppressive regimen. In the present study, we demonstrate in renal transplant patients who were already receiving immunosuppressive treatment that learned immunosuppressive placebo responses increased efficacy of immunosuppressive medication. These data demonstrate that behavioral conditioning of drug responses may be a promising tool that could be used as a placebo-based dose-reduction strategy in an ongoing immunopharmacological regimen, the aim being to limit unwanted drug adverse effects and to improve treatment efficacy.
Topological order in the pseudogap metal
Authors: Scheurer Mathias S. , Chatterjee Shubhayu , Wu Wei , Ferrero Michel , Georges Antoine , Sachdev Subir
Published: April 2018

Significance

The copper oxide-based high-temperature superconductors display a mysterious “pseudogap” metal phase at temperatures just above the critical temperature in a regime of low hole density. Extensive experimental and numerical studies have yielded much information on the nature of the electron corrections, but a fundamental theoretical understanding has been lacking. We show that a theory of a metal with topological order and emergent gauge fields can model much of the numerical data. Our study opens up a route to a deeper understanding of the long-range quantum entanglement in these superconductors and to the direct detection of the topological characteristics of the many-body quantum state.
Soft self-assembly of Weyl materials for light and sound
Authors: Fruchart Michel , Jeon Seung-Yeol , Hur Kahyun , Cheianov Vadim , Wiesner Ulrich , Vitelli Vincenzo
Published: April 2018

Significance

Soft materials self-assemble into complex structures that can replicate on a larger scale the symmetric arrangements of atomic crystals. Harnessing soft self-assembly for material synthesis requires controlling the symmetries of such structures, a job tailored for group-theoretical methods traditionally used to describe crystal symmetries and their breaking. We illustrate this approach by providing a blueprint for self-assembled materials with an exotic feature of wave propagation known as Weyl points. The presence of such topological objects means that, at certain wavelengths, light or sound can only propagate inside the material in a handful of directions. Most crucially, sound and light waves can propagate on the material surface without backscattering from imperfections.
Observation of acetyl phosphate formation in mammalian mitochondria using real-time in-organelle NMR metabolomics
Authors: Xu Wen Jun , Wen He , Kim Han Sun , Ko Yoon-Joo , Dong Seung-Mo , Park In-Sun , Yook Jong In , Park Sunghyouk
Published: April 2018

Significance

We introduce an in-organelle live NMR metabolomics approach that allows for real-time metabolic monitoring of live human mitochondria. The approach also features more than an order of magnitude higher sensitivity and much less overlap than conventional methods. The real-time monitoring capability identified acetyl phosphate in human mitochondria and showed its biphasic kinetic profile typical of a reaction intermediate. The method also allowed for estimation of pyruvate dehydrogenase enzyme activity in live mitochondria according to p53 status, independent of competing cytosolic metabolism. Our approach should be very useful in studies on mitochondrial-specific contributions to cancer metabolism, and can be straightforwardly extended to studies on other diseases with altered mitochondrial metabolism.
Identification of long-lived synaptic proteins by proteomic analysis of synaptosome protein turnover
Authors: Heo Seok , Diering Graham H. , Na Chan Hyun , Nirujogi Raja Sekhar , Bachman Julia L. , Pandey Akhilesh , Huganir Richard L.
Published: April 2018

Significance

The majority of cellular proteins undergo rapid degradation and synthesis to minimize the toxic effect to cells and tissues and to guarantee normal cellular functions. It has been appreciated that proteins with longer half-lives exist in certain cells and tissues. Here we identify synaptic long-lived proteins by high-resolution mass spectrometry. In general, synaptic proteins exhibit slower turnover than cytosolic proteins, and synaptic protein turnover from mouse brain is enhanced by enriched environment exposure. Moreover, protein half-lives are dynamically regulated during changes in neuronal activity. These findings demonstrate the existence of long-lived proteins in synapses in the brain and support a potential role for them in synaptic plasticity and learning and memory.
Constraining the climate and ocean pH of the early Earth with a geological carbon cycle model
Authors: Krissansen-Totton Joshua , Arney Giada N. , Catling David C.
Published: April 2018

Significance

The climate and ocean pH of the early Earth are important for understanding the origin and early evolution of life. However, estimates of early climate range from below freezing to over 70 °C, and ocean pH estimates span from strongly acidic to alkaline. To better constrain environmental conditions, we applied a self-consistent geological carbon cycle model to the last 4 billion years. The model predicts a temperate (0–50 °C) climate and circumneutral ocean pH throughout the Precambrian due to stabilizing feedbacks from continental and seafloor weathering. These environmental conditions under which life emerged and diversified were akin to the modern Earth. Similar stabilizing feedbacks on climate and ocean pH may operate on earthlike exoplanets, implying life elsewhere could emerge in comparable environments.
Complete biosynthesis of noscapine and halogenated alkaloids in yeast
Authors: Li Yanran , Li Sijin , Thodey Kate , Trenchard Isis , Cravens Aaron , Smolke Christina D.
Published: April 2018

Significance

We demonstrate yeast’s capacity for biosynthesis of complex plant natural products by reconstructing a de novo noscapine biosynthetic pathway and optimizing noscapine production toward scalable manufacturing. Engineered strain contains 25 heterologous plant, bacteria, and mammalian genes and 6 mutant or overexpressed yeast genes. The noscapine biosynthetic pathway incorporates seven endomembrane-localized plant enzymes, highlighting yeast’s ability to functionally express and properly localize large numbers of heterologous enzymes into the endoplasm reticulum. Noscapine titers were improved by 18,000-fold (to low mg/L levels) via a combination of enzyme engineering, pathway and strain engineering, and fermentation optimization. We demonstrated that microbial fermentation can be used to produce halogenated alkaloid derivatives, which can ultimately serve as potential drug leads, through feeding amino acid derivatives to strains.
Structural characterization of a non-heme iron active site in zeolites that hydroxylates methane
Authors: Snyder Benjamin E. R. , Böttger Lars H. , Bols Max L. , Yan James J. , Rhoda Hannah M. , Jacobs Ariel B. , Hu Michael Y. , Zhao Jiyong , Alp E. Ercan , Hedman Britt , Hodgson Keith O. , Schoonheydt Robert A. , Sels Bert F. , Solomon Edward I.
Published: April 2018

Significance

Understanding the structure of iron active sites that form in zeolites is critical to understanding the extreme reactivity of Fe-zeolite catalysts, which show promise in important industrial applications. This study defines the geometric structure of an Fe-zeolite active site that cleaves the inert C–H bond of methane at room temperature to form methanol. The high reactivity of this site derives from a constrained coordination geometry enforced by the rigid matrix of the catalyst. This insight into the relationship between catalyst structure and function is an important step toward cost-effective methanol fuels and chemical feedstocks derived from natural gas.
Distinct MHC class I-like interacting invariant T cell lineage at the forefront of mycobacterial immunity uncovered inXenopus
Authors: Edholm Eva-Stina , Banach Maureen , Hyoe Rhoo Kun , Pavelka Martin S. , Robert Jacques
Published: April 2018

Significance

Contrasting with the dominance of conventional adaptive T cells in adult frogs,Xenopustadpoles prominently rely on innate-like T (iT) cells expressing invariant TCRα rearrangements to combat pathogens. Here, we use three complementary loss-of-function approaches combining RNA interference with transgenesis or CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing to unveil an ancestral antimycobacterial immune surveillance system represented by MHC-like interacting innate-like T cells. Notably, this MHC-like (XNC4)/iVα45T cell system is critical for host defense against mycobacteria and distinctive from the key antiviral MHC-like XNC10-restricted iVα6T cells previously identified. These findings imply diversification and specialization of an ancestral innate-like T cell recognition system that is evolutionarily convergent to that of mammals.
Molecular excitonic seesaws
Authors: Wilhelm Philipp , Schedlbauer Jakob , Hinderer Florian , Hennen Daniel , Höger Sigurd , Vogelsang Jan , Lupton John M.
Published: April 2018

Significance

Transformation of light into electronic excitation energy and the spatial redistribution of this energy within a complex of molecular units constitute the processes central to photochemical energy conversion in photosynthesis. Excitations migrate downward in energy between molecules, ultimately localizing at a global energetic minimum. But, how does energy flow in a system with built-in bistability, a local and a global energetic minimum? A molecular excitonic seesaw structure probes such fundamental intramolecular bistability. Much like watching a pen balanced on its tip fall randomly, in single molecules, energy flows nondeterministically to one or the other energetic minimum. Such a labile excitonic seesaw makes energy transfer highly susceptible to external stimuli and can be controlled, for example, by the incident light polarization.
Multiple nuclear-replicating viruses require the stress-induced protein ZC3H11A for efficient growth
Authors: Younis Shady , Kamel Wael , Falkeborn Tina , Wang Hao , Yu Di , Daniels Robert , Essand Magnus , Hinkula Jorma , Akusjärvi Göran , Andersson Leif
Published: April 2018

Significance

There is a strong need for the development of new antiviral therapies, and this study sheds light on a host–virus interaction that is significant for a number of medically important human viruses. The study also suggests that the RNA-binding zinc finger CCCH-type containing 11A (ZC3H11A) protein takes part in a mechanism that facilitates nuclear export of mRNA, particularly under cellular stress, a mechanism that has been “hijacked” by several nuclear-replicating viruses to promote their replication. ZC3H11A is therefore a potential target for development of an antiviral therapy.
SAMHD1 suppresses innate immune responses to viral infections and inflammatory stimuli by inhibiting the NF-κB and interferon pathways
Authors: Chen Shuliang , Bonifati Serena , Qin Zhihua , St. Gelais Corine , Kodigepalli Karthik M. , Barrett Bradley S. , Kim Sun Hee , Antonucci Jenna M. , Ladner Katherine J. , Buzovetsky Olga , Knecht Kirsten M. , Xiong Yong , Yount Jacob S. , Guttridge Denis C. , Santiago Mario L. , Wu Li
Published: April 2018

Significance

Although the host protein SAMHD1 has been studied as a restriction factor to inhibit retroviral infection, it is unknown whether and how SAMHD1 regulates antiviral innate immune responses. Using
SAMHD1
-silenced human monocytic cell lines and primary macrophages, and primary splenocytes from
SAMHD1
-knockout mice, we revealed new functions and mechanisms of SAMHD1-mediated negative regulation of innate immune responses to viral infections and inflammatory stimuli. We also identified protein interactions between SAMHD1 and several key proteins in cellular signaling pathways that regulate inflammation and antiviral innate immune responses. Overall, we discovered an important role of SAMHD1 in regulating innate immune responses and defined the underlying mechanisms, which suggest that SAMHD1 might be a therapeutic target in controlling viral infections and inflammatory diseases.
Contemporary Fiction and Modernism
Authors: Trimm Ryan
Published: April 2018

Modernism stands as the signal literary upheaval of the long 20th century, and yet the tenuousness of its appeal to “make it new,” as Ezra Pound commanded, entails the period or periods that follow are likewise uncertain save in their reference to modernism. However, even here there is ambivalence: contemporary authors might be charted regarding their modernist literary forebears, yet many explicitly reject modernist methods altogether; others continue this legacy, and still more look to complexly incorporate and negotiate modernist methods. Likewise, theoretical accounts of postwar fiction mark what comes after in reference to modernism: postmodernism, post-postmodernism, and the like. Modernism’s outsize shadow stems from its association with literary experimentation, aesthetic innovations elevating its austere emphasis on form above such traditional concerns as telling stories and creating characters. Though swaths of Anglophone fiction reject these modernist impulses and return to realist narratives, contemporary fiction must also be viewed as occurring within an era in which modernism has become institutionalized in university reading lists and the practices of their creative writing programs. Fiction after modernism thus might be best viewed as encompassing competing impulses, often within the same text or author: to revert to traditional modes of storytelling and thereby reject modernism; to borrow aspects of modernist technique but develop them so form might convey not only a sense of interior experience or textuality but also situate characters and texts socially (and globally); and to return afresh to those literary experiments, investing them with new relevance. These divided relations between contemporary fiction and aesthetic modernism underscore a complex and conflicted temporality operative within the very conceptions of both modernism and the contemporary.
Australian Women’s Poetry and Feminism
Authors: Vickery Ann
Published: April 2018

“Women’s poetry” as a marketing and pedagogic category emerged in the 1970s alongside second-wave feminism. To map the emergence of women’s poetry in and of Australia requires exploring the role of gender in poetic authorship and how the field of Australian poetry has changed in light of feminist movements and theories. Women have used poetry to cross between public and private spheres, to assert an individual and often collective voice, and to critique gender’s intersection with other constitutive identities such as nation and race. While poetry has provided a highly significant means of linguistic transformation and social activism, it has sometimes been viewed as too limiting for feminist writers. Similarly, while the category of “women’s poetry” was strategically empowering in particular periods, it has also been viewed as generating exclusions and marginalization. Feminism has developed both historically and culturally, with the valency of various feminisms in Australia being tested through processes of institutionalization and social change at both a local and global level.
Animal Studies and the Contemporary Novel
Authors: Cohn Elisha
Published: April 2018

Animals have prowled literature from its beginnings in the ancient world through medieval bestiaries and out from the margins of the novel in the modern era. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, animals’ literary presence has generated increasing critical interest. Animal studies, a relatively new interdisciplinary field, calls attention to the accelerating exploitation of animals in the period of industrial modernity and questions what it is possible to know about animals’ own experiences. Foundational theoretical approaches to understanding the historical and philosophical condition of thinking about animals—John Berger’s “Why Look at Animals?” (1972), Thomas Nagel’s “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” (1974), and Jacques Derrida’s “The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow)” (2002)—propose a fundamental aporia or gap between human and animal experiences, and they caution against the projection of anthropocentric categories onto animal lives. Many novels from this recent period likewise treat animals as charismatic strangers. Yet other contemporary literature sometimes reimagines human-animal relationships to insist on affinity and continuity. In such novels, animals prompt diverse and often experimental stylistic choices that put pressure on the novel’s traditional association with everyday life, the individual self, the boundaries of the nation, and empirical observation more broadly. Still, many recent novels remain essentially committed to a realist tradition. Some of these—most notably by J. M. Coetzee—depict relations of care between humans and often vulnerable or dependent animals that prompt reflection on the meaning of ethical action. In novels that purport to narrate from animals’ own perspective, writers likewise meditate on the ethics of interspecies relations as they use language innovatively in an effort to realistically evoke the sensorium of another species. Pushing the boundaries of realism, other novels reinvent the animal fable, using varying degrees of fantasy to imagine wild or domesticated animals as tropes that reflect upon human embodiment, community, and politics. Whether realist or fabulist, the novels of contemporary postcolonial and world literature particularly explore the power and limits of mapping histories of human belonging and domination onto animal figures, even as they often highlight the limitations of these comparisons. Not all of these approaches are equally invested in creating a literature that could materially impact the lives of animals in an era of diminishing biodiversity. However, uniting this varied and ever-growing array of novels is a question of how literature can represent the lives of intimately entangled bodies in a globalizing world.
The Presence of Coloniality in Central American-American Fictions
Authors: Siu Oriel María
Published: April 2018

The Spanish invasion of 1492 was the first marker and constitutive element of coloniality. The presence of coloniality is critical for the explication and reflection on racialized and subalternized relations of dominance/subordination in the Americas and all other places affected by European colonization. In 1992, Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano introduced the category of coloniality of power, further developed in 2000 by Walter Mignolo in his work Local Histories/Global Designs. Coloniality not only constituted a pattern of continual production of racialized identities, and an unequal hierarchy whereby European identities and knowledge were considered superior to all others in what amounted to a caste system; it also generated mechanisms of social domination that preserved this social classification into the present. Coloniality is not limited to the colonial period, which ended for most of Latin America in the first quarter of the 19th century. Despite political independences from Spain and Portugal, the pattern articulated by Quijano continues to our day, structuring processes of racialization, subalternization, and knowledge production. This is the reason Mignolo labels coloniality a “matrix of power.” The literature examined in this article concerns itself with revealing the markers of coloniality on the Central American social body in diaspora. This article contends that diasporic Central American literatures produced within the United States represent not only the experience of exile and migration, but also an experience of continued war and perpetual violence, as Central American bodies discover in this US diasporic landscape, the racialization of their bodies, and how they in turn become disposable as a result of their status.
Social Movements and Their Impact on Business and Management
Authors: Soule Sarah A.
Published: April 2018

Do the activities of social movements (e.g., public protest, shareholder activism, boycotts, and sabotage) impact businesses, and if so, how do they impact businesses? When confronted by activist demands, how do firms respond, and does this response vary depending on who the activists are and what their relationship is to the firm? Answering these questions is critical for businesses and activists alike, as we move into an era of heightened activism directed at firms. A growing area of research that is situated at the intersection of economic and political sociology, social movement studies, history, and organizational theory, tackles these questions, in an increasingly methodologically sophisticated and nuanced manner. As a result, a number of important articles and books have been published, and several high-profile, interdisciplinary conferences have been held. This body of research shows that social movements have both direct and indirect effects on businesses, and that these effects are amplified by media attention to activism. For example, we know that activism impacts the financial performance of firms, as well as their reputation. And, we know that the activities of social movements have consequences on firm policies and practices. In turn, businesses have developed a varied repertoire of ways to respond to activist demands. While some businesses ignore activists, others decide to retaliate against activists. Increasingly, businesses concede to the demands of activists in material ways by changing policies and practices that are criticized, while others devise symbolic ways to respond to activist demands, thereby preserving their reputation without necessarily changing their activities.
Business Groups as an Organizational Model
Authors: Colpan Asli M. , Cuervo-Cazurra Alvaro
Published: April 2018

Business groups are an organizational model in which collections of legally independent firms bounded together with formal and informal ties use collaborative arrangements to enhance their collective welfare. Among the different varieties of business groups, diversified business groups that exhibit unrelated product diversification under central control, and often containing chains of publicly listed firms, are the most-studied type in the management literature. The reason is that they challenge two traditionally held assumptions. First, broad and especially unrelated diversification have a negative impact on performance, and thus business groups should focus on a narrow scope of related businesses. Second, such diversification is only sustainable in emerging economies in which market and institutional underdevelopment are more common and where business groups can provide a solution to such imperfections. However, a historical perspective indicates that diversified business groups are a long-lived organizational model and are present in emerging and advanced economies, illustrating how business groups adapt to different market and institutional settings. This evolutionary approach also highlights the importance of going beyond diversification when studying business groups and redirecting studies toward the evolution of the group structure, their internal administrative mechanisms, and other strategic actions beyond diversification such as internationalization.
Néstor García Canclini and Communication Studies
Authors: Miller Toby
Published: April 2018

Néstor García Canclini is an anthropologist and philosopher of culture whose work in Latin America has pioneered ideas of interculturalism, hybridity, consumption, and citizenship, both regionally and globally. His collaborative and individual research has provided extensive empirical and theoretical insights into the daily lives of ordinary people, as well as the significance of indigenous and avant-garde art and the role of the popular in building nations and sustaining them under circumstances of globalization.
Constructing Records of Storminess
Authors: Feser Frauke
Published: April 2018

Storms are characterized by high wind speeds; often large precipitation amounts in the form of rain, freezing rain, or snow; and thunder and lightning (for thunderstorms). Many different types exist, ranging from tropical cyclones and large storms of the midlatitudes to small polar lows, Medicanes, thunderstorms, or tornadoes. They can lead to extreme weather events like storm surges, flooding, high snow quantities, or bush fires. Storms often pose a threat to human lives and property, agriculture, forestry, wildlife, ships, and offshore and onshore industries. Thus, it is vital to gain knowledge about changes in storm frequency and intensity. Future storm predictions are important, and they depend to a great extent on the evaluation of changes in wind statistics of the past.

To obtain reliable statistics, long and homogeneous time series over at least some decades are needed. However, wind measurements are frequently influenced by changes in the synoptic station, its location or surroundings, instruments, and measurement practices. These factors deteriorate the homogeneity of wind records. Storm indexes derived from measurements of sea-level pressure are less prone to such changes, as pressure does not show very much spatial variability as wind speed does. Long-term historical pressure measurements exist that enable us to deduce changes in storminess for more than the last 140 years. But storm records are not just compiled from measurement data; they also may be inferred from climate model data.

The first numerical weather forecasts were performed in the 1950s. These served as a basis for the development of atmospheric circulation models, which were the first generation of climate models or general-circulation models. Soon afterward, model data was analyzed for storm events and cyclone-tracking algorithms were programmed. Climate models nowadays have reached high resolution and reliability and can be run not just for the past, but also for future emission scenarios which return possible future storm activity.
Self and Identity
Authors: Talaifar Sanaz , Swann William
Published: April 2018

Active and stored mental representations of the self include both global and specific qualities as well as conscious and nonconscious qualities. Semantic and episodic memory both contribute to a self that is not a unitary construct comprising only the individual as he or she is now, but also past and possible selves. Self-knowledge may overlap more or less with others’ views of the self. Furthermore, mental representations of the self vary whether they are positive or negative, important, certain, and stable. The origins of the self are also manifold and can be considered from developmental, biological, intrapsychic, and interpersonal perspectives. The self is connected to core motives (e.g., coherence, agency, and communion) and is manifested in the form of both personal identities and social identities. Finally, just as the self is a product of proximal and distal social forces, it is also an agent that actively shapes its environment.
Social Comparison
Authors: Krizan Zlatan
Published: April 2018

Social comparison activity is one of the most important spheres of human functioning; it is necessary for appraising where one stands within his or her community and for establishing viable routes for connecting with others. Social comparison is thus a critical psychological phenomenon essential to understanding both social behavior and formation of identity. To this end, individuals look to similar others to evaluate their own abilities and opinions, look to those better than themselves for inspiration and guidance, and evaluate others depending on similarities and distinctions with the self. In addition, they evaluate their own position in life with reference to other’s positions, look to others for information about social norms and for clues about how to behave, and experience feelings toward others based on implications of mutual differences for their relationship. This renders the nature of social comparisons complex; they take horizontal forms that focus on connections or distinction, as well as vertical forms that focus on superiority or inferiority. Moreover, they may be experienced through interaction, subjectively constructed in one’s mind, or deliberately orchestrated in order to impact others.

Complexities of social comparison activity are commensurate with multiple functions that they serve. First, people compare with others in order to gain self-knowledge and reduce uncertainty. Comparisons that fulfill this function typically occur with similar others, are biased toward comparing with those slightly better off, and are sensitive to diagnosticity that information about others carries for oneself. Second, people compare with others in order to self-enhance and protect well-being. Comparisons that fulfill this function often involve contrasting oneself from those worse off, although they can also involve perceiving similarities with superior others, especially when these are role models or close others. Third, people compare in order to self-improve, namely, boost their skills and abilities. Such comparisons typically occur with others that are better, yet similar in relevant attributes, and in domains that leave room for personal progress. Fourth and final, people compare in order to connect socially with others. Such comparisons occur through regular social interaction as individuals emphasize mutual similarities, through creation of comparisons to protect or embolden others, and through selection of social identities that maximize a sense of group belonging.
Social Categorization
Authors: McGarty Craig
Published: April 2018

Categorization is a process whereby we make sense of the world around us by separating things into different classes or groups. When we learn which categories that objects belong to, we also learn about relationships between those objects. Social categorization involves applying that same process to people, including ourselves. It is not only a cognitive process for understanding and explaining the world, but it is part of the way we organize the world. That is, the groups we belong to such as genders, ethnicities, religions, and nations are based on social categories, and thus phenomena such as stereotyping and person perception rest on social categorization. The study of social categorization has drawn heavily on the study of object categorization and many of the core insights from that field are relevant, but there are also some important differences that suggest social categorization is more, indeed much more, than object categorization. The first key difference is that social categories, unlike object categories, are made up of people who can choose to unite or divide. Social categorization can help us not only to understand why other people are similar to each other and different from us but also to predict when they will be similar and different to us. The second key difference is that when we categorize ourselves, we learn who we can cooperate with, who shares our goals and interests, and who we might cooperate with. It is hard to imagine effective human functioning without the abilities that social categorization grants us.
Biodiversity Metrics in Lifespan Developmental Methodology
Authors: Benson Lizbeth , Ram Nilam
Published: April 2018

In ecological sciences, biodiversity is the dispersion of organisms across species and is used to describe the complexity of systems where species interact with each other and the environment. Some argue that biodiversity is important to cultivate and maintain because higher levels are indicative of health and resilience of the ecosystem. Because each species performs functional roles, more diverse ecosystems have greater capability to respond, maintain function, resist damage, and recover quickly from perturbations or disruptions. In the behavioral sciences, diversity-type constructs and metrics are being defined and operationalized across a variety of functional domains (socioemotional, self, cognitive, activities and environment, stress, and biological). Emodiversity, for instance, is the dispersion of an individual’s emotion experiences across emotion types (e.g., happy, anger, sad). Although not always explicitly labeled as such, many core propositions in lifespan developmental theory—such as differentiation, dedifferentiation, and integration—imply intraindividual change in diversity and/or interindividual differences in diversity. For example, socioemotional theories of aging suggest that as individuals get older, they increasingly self-select into more positive valence and low arousal emotion inducing experiences, which might suggest that diversity in positive and low arousal emotion experiences increases with age. When conceptualizing and studying diversity, important considerations include that diversity (a) provides a holistic representation of human systems, (b) differs in direction, interpretation, and linkages to other constructs such as health (c) exists at multiple scales, (d) is context-specific, and (e) is flexible to many study designs and data types. Additionally, there are also a variety of methodological considerations in study of diversity-type constructs including nuances pertaining theory-driven or data-driven approaches to choosing a metric. The relevance of diversity to a broad range of phenomena and the utility of biodiversity metrics for quantifying dispersion across categories in multivariate and/or repeated measures data suggests further use of biodiversity conceptualizations and methods in studies of lifespan development.
Awareness of Aging Processes
Authors: Dutt Anne Josephine , Wahl Hans-Werner , Diehl Manfred
Published: April 2018

The term Awareness of Aging (AoA) incorporates all aspects of individuals’ perceptions, behavioral experiences, and subjective interpretations related to their process of growing older. In this regard, AoA goes beyond objective descriptions of the aging process, such as calendar age or biological age. Commonly used AoA constructs referring to the ongoing experience of the aging process encompass concepts such as subjective age, attitudes toward one’s own aging, self-perceptions of aging, and awareness of age-related change. AoA also incorporates elements that are more pre-conscious in nature, such as age stereotypes and culturally held notions about the aging process. Despite their theoretically broad common foundation, AoA constructs differ according to their specific frames of reference, such as whether and how they take into account the multidimensionality and multi-directionality of development. Examining the existing body of empirical work identifies several antecedents of AoA, such as sociodemographic “background” variables, physical health and physical functioning, cognition, psychological well-being and mental health, psychological variables (e.g., personality, anxiety), and life events. In general, more positive manifestations on these variables are accompanied by a more positive perception and evaluation of the aging process. Moreover, AoA is longitudinally linked to important developmental outcomes, such as health, cognition, subjective well-being, and mortality. Overall, the study of AoA has developed as a promising area of psychological aging research that has grown in its conceptual and empirical rigor during recent years.
Crime Hot Spots
Authors: Weisburd David , Wire Sean
Published: April 2018

Hot spots of crime, and the criminology of place more generally, deviate from the traditional paradigm of criminology, in which the primary assumption and goal is to explain who is likely to commit crime and their motivations, and to explore interventions aimed at reducing individual criminality. Alternatively, crime hot spots account for the “where” of crime, specifically referring to the concentration of crime in small geographic areas. The criminology of place demands a rethinking in regard to how we understand the crime problem and offers alternate ways to predict, explain, and prevent crime. While place, as large geographic units, has been important since the inception of criminology as a discipline, research examining crime concentrations at a micro-geographic level has only recently begun to be developed. This approach has been facilitated by improvements to data availability, technology, and the understanding of crime as a function of the environment. The new crime and place paradigm is rooted in the past three decades of criminological research centered on routine activity theory, crime concentrations, and hot spots policing.

The focus on crime hot spots has led to several core empirical findings. First, crime is meaningfully concentrated, such that a large proportion of crime events occur at relatively few places within larger geographies like cities. This may be termed the law of crime concentration at places (see Weisburd, 2015). Additionally, most hot spots of crime are stable over time, and thus present promising opportunities for crime prevention. Crime hot spots vary within higher geographic units, suggesting both that there is a loss of information at higher levels of aggregation and that there are clear “micro communities” within the larger conceptualization of a neighborhood. Finally, crime at place is predictable, which is important for being able to understand why crime is concentrated in one place and not another, as well as to develop crime prevention strategies. These empirical characteristics of crime hot spots have led to the development of successful police interventions to reduce crime. These interventions are generally termed hot spots policing.
Intensive Supervision Probation
Authors: Barnes Geoffrey C. , Hyatt Jordan M.
Published: April 2018

Intensive Supervision Probation (ISP) is a form of community supervision that employs smaller caseloads, more frequent contacts, and a variety of other mechanisms to increase the level of surveillance and control for those on criminal probation. While this approach has seen successive waves of research interest, the evidence on its effectiveness seems relatively disappointing. Most existing studies have shown that ISP produces very little reduction in recidivism, while also being more costly to deliver. In addition, ISP’s surveillance mechanisms result in more frequent detection of technical violations, leading to a greater use of incarceration. Despite these disappointing findings, however, there is some potential for ISP to be used in a positive way. Recent developments in assessing both the risk of offending and the criminogenic needs of individual probationers, combined with shifts in the philosophical foundations of community supervision, suggest that ISP could prove to be a useful and productive tool when targeted at the most advantageous population of criminal offenders.
Guardianship and Informal Social Control
Authors: Reynald Danielle M.
Published: April 2018

This article provides a critical overview of the concepts of guardianship and informal social control. The discussion compares these fundamental criminological concepts and highlights areas where there is overlap, as well as key points of departure. The relationship between these concepts is scrutinized to illustrate their distinct origins as well as the distinctive ways each of these concepts have developed within the criminological literature. This article focuses on informal social control as a multi-level community process, and on guardianship as a multi-dimensional situational concept comprising, in its most fundamental form, the presence or availability of guardians, inadvertent and/or purposive supervision and direct or indirect intervention. In doing so it showcases the dimensions of guardianship which bear close resemblance to aspects of informal social control, while simultaneously emphasizing that there are important distinctions to consider when comparing some of these dimensions and the levels at which they operate. One core distinction is that informal social control is dependent on neighborhood social ties and collectively shared expectations. On the other hand, while guardianship can be strengthened by social ties at the street-block or neighborhood level, it does not necessarily require such ties to function effectively at the microlevel. Although these concepts do coincide the discussion stresses that theoretical and empirical clarification about what makes them distinct is important. In conclusion, this article shows how each concept makes a unique contribution to criminological understanding about the role of informal citizens in crime control at places.
The Eurogang Program of Research
Authors: Esbensen Finn-Aage , Maxson Cheryl L.
Published: April 2018

The Eurogang Program of Research is a loosely knit network of researchers and policymakers with an interest in better understanding troublesome youth groups. While the group is guided by a steering committee, that is the extent of the organizational structure. Members of the network volunteer to host the website, maintain the electronic mail service, organize workshops, and engage in research that adopts the Eurogang definition, instruments, and methodologies.

The Eurogang Program has as its primary goal the fostering of multisite, multi-method, comparative research on street gangs. Since 2000, this group of more than 200 scholars has convened 21 international workshops in Europe and the United States. The Eurogang Program does not have a steady funding source; however, over the years various network members have written proposals for funding to government agencies, sought support from non-profit organizations and foundations, and requested funding from their universities. Through a series of workshops from 1998 through 2004, the Eurogang group developed common definitional approaches, an integrated research design, and model research instruments. From 2005 through 2023, the group has continued to host substantively focused workshops that examine research informed by the Eurogang framework. Since its inception, this Eurogang group has spawned several retrospective cross-national studies, articles in professional journals, six edited volumes of scholarship, and a manual that provides a history of the group and its guiding principles as well as information on the development and use of the five Eurogang research instruments (i.e., city-level descriptors, expert survey, youth survey, ethnography guidelines, and prevention/intervention program inventory). The Eurogang Program Manual and instruments are available on the Eurogang website. While much has been accomplished, much remains to be learned.