Showing 1001 - 1010 of 2039 Items

Cross-cultural temperamental differences in infants, children, and adults in the United States of America and Finland

Date: 2012-04-01

Creator: Larissa M. Gaias

Katri Räikkönen

Niina Komsi

Maria A. Gartstein

Philip A., Fisher

Samuel P. Putnam

Access: Open access

Cross-cultural differences in temperament were investigated between infants (n=131, 84 Finns), children (n=653, 427 Finns), and adults (n=759, 538 Finns) from the United States of America and Finland. Participants from both cultures completed the Infant Behavior Questionnaire, Childhood Behavior Questionnaire and the Adult Temperament Questionnaire. Across all ages, Americans received higher ratings on temperamental fearfulness than Finnish individuals, and also demonstrated higher levels of other negative affects at several time points. During infancy and adulthood, Finns tended to score higher on positive affect and elements of temperamental effortful control. Gender differences consistent with prior studies emerged cross-culturally, and were found to be more pronounced in the US during childhood and in Finland during adulthood. © 2012 The Authors. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology © 2012 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations.


Private forest governance, public policy impacts: The Forest Stewardship Council in Russia and Brazil

Date: 2017-11-16

Creator: Lisa Mc Intosh Sundstrom

Laura A. Henry

Access: Open access

Under what conditions do private forest governance standards influence state policy and behavior to become more oriented toward sustainability? We argue that governance schemes targeting firms may indirectly shape state behavior, even when designed to bypass state regulation. Through an examination of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) in Russia and Brazil, we find that the FSC has influenced domestic rhetoric, laws, and enforcement practices. FSC has had a more disruptive and consequential impact on Russia's domestic forest governance; in Brazil, earlier transnational environmental campaigns had already begun to shift domestic institutions toward sustainability. Based on interview data and textual analysis of FSC and government documents, we identify the mechanisms of indirect FSC influence on states-professionalization, civil society mobilization, firm lobbying, and international market pressure, and argue that they are likely to be activated under conditions of poor and decentralized governance, overlapping and competing regulations and high foreign market demand for exports.


Destabilization of cortical dendrites and spines by BDNF

Date: 1999-01-01

Creator: Hadley Wilson Horch

Alex Krüttgen

Stuart D. Portbury

Lawrence C. Katz

Access: Open access

Particle-mediated gene transfer and two-photon microscopy were used to monitor the behavior of dendrites of individual cortical pyramidal neurons coexpressing green fluorescent protein (GFP) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). While the dendrites and spines of neurons expressing GFP alone grew modestly over 24-48 hr, coexpressing BDNF elicited dramatic sprouting of basal dendrites, accompanied by a regression of dendritic spines. Compared to GFP-transfected controls, the newly formed dendrites and spines were highly unstable. Experiments utilizing Trk receptor bodies, K252a, and overexpression of nerve growth factor (NGF) demonstrated that these effects were mediated by secreted BDNF interacting with extracellular TrkB receptors. Thus, BDNF induces structural instability in dendrites and spines, which, when restricted to particular portions of a dendritic arbor, may help translate activity patterns into specific morphological changes.


Deciphering the bacterial glycocode: Recent advances in bacterial glycoproteomics

Date: 2013-02-01

Creator: Scott A. Longwell

Danielle H. Dube

Access: Open access

Bacterial glycoproteins represent an attractive target for new antibacterial treatments, as they are frequently linked to pathogenesis and contain distinctive glycans that are absent in humans. Despite their potential therapeutic importance, many bacterial glycoproteins remain uncharacterized. This review focuses on recent advances in deciphering the bacterial glycocode, including metabolic glycan labeling to discover and characterize bacterial glycoproteins, lectin-based microarrays to monitor bacterial glycoprotein dynamics, crosslinking sugars to assess the roles of bacterial glycoproteins, and harnessing bacterial glycosylation systems for the efficient production of industrially important glycoproteins. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.


Non-intrusive load identification for smart outlets

Date: 2015-01-12

Creator: Sean Barker

Mohamed Musthag

David Irwin

Prashant Shenoy

Access: Open access

An increasing interest in energy-efficiency combined with the decreasing cost of embedded networked sensors is lowering the cost of outlet-level metering. If these trends continue, new buildings in the near future will be able to install 'smart' outlets, which monitor and transmit an outlets power usage in real time, for nearly the same cost as conventional outlets. One problem with the pervasive deployment of smart outlets is that users must currently identify the specific device plugged into each meter, and then manually update the outlets meta-data in software whenever a new device is plugged into the outlet. Correct meta-data is important in both interpreting historical outlet energy data and using the data for building management. To address this problem, we propose Non-Intrusive Load Identification (NILI), which automatically identifies the device attached to a smart outlet without any human intervention. In particular, in our approach to NILI, we identify an intuitive and simple-to-compute set of features from time-series energy data and then employ well-known classifiers. Our results achieve accuracy of over 90% across 15 device types on outlet-level energy traces collected from multiple real homes.


A strategy for the selective imaging of glycans using caged metabolic precursors

Date: 2010-07-21

Creator: Pamela V. Chang

Danielle H. Dube

Ellen M. Sletten

Carolyn R. Bertozzi

Access: Open access

Glycans can be imaged by metabolic labeling with azidosugars followed by chemical reaction with imaging probes; however, tissue-specific labeling is difficult to achieve. Here we describe a strategy for the use of a caged metabolic precursor that is activated for cellular metabolism by enzymatic cleavage. An N-azidoacetylmannosamine derivative caged with a peptide substrate for the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) protease was converted to cell-surface azido sialic acids in a PSA-dependent manner. The approach has applications in tissue-selective imaging of glycans for clinical and basic research purposes. © 2010 American Chemical Society.


Arginine methylation of yeast mRNA-binding protein Npl3 directly affects its function, nuclear export, and intranuclear protein interactions

Date: 2005-09-02

Creator: Anne E. McBride

Jeffrey T. Cook

Elizabeth A. Stemmler

Kate L. Rutledge

Kelly A., McGrath

Jeffrey A. Rubens

Access: Open access

Arginine methylation can affect both nucleocytoplasmic transport and protein-protein interactions of RNA-binding proteins. These effects are seen in cells that lack the yeast hnRNP methyltransferase (HMT1), raising the question of whether effects on specific proteins are direct or indirect. The presence of multiple arginines in individual methylated proteins also raises the question of whether overall methylation or methylation of a subset of arginines affects protein function. We have used the yeast mRNA-binding protein Npl3 to address these questions in vivo. Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization Fourier transform mass spectrometry was used to identify 17 methylated arginines in Npl3 purified from yeast: whereas 10 Arg-Gly-Gly (RGG) tripeptides were exclusively dimethylated, variable levels off methylation were found for 5 RGG and 2 RG motif arginines. We constructed a set of Npl3 proteins in which subsets of the RGG arginines were mutated to lysine. Expression of these mutant proteins as the sole form of Npl3 specifically affected growth of a strain that requires Hmtl. Although decreased growth generally correlated with increased numbers of Arg-to-Lys mutations, lysine substitutions in the N terminus of the RGG domain showed more severe effects. Npl3 with all 15 RGG arginines mutated to lysine exited the nucleus independent of Hmtl, indicating a direct effect of methylation on Npl3 transport. These mutations also resulted in a decreased, methylation-independent interaction of Npl3 with transcription elongation factor Tho2 and inhibited Npl3 self-association. These results support a model in which arginine methylation facilitates Npl3 export directly by weakening contacts with nuclear proteins. © 2005 by The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Inc.


Materiality

Date: 2018-01-01

Creator: Aviva Briefel

Access: Open access



Using landscape metrics to characterize towns along an urban-rural gradient

Date: 2021-10-01

Creator: Abigail Kaminski

Dana Marie Bauer

Kathleen P. Bell

Cynthia S. Loftin

Erik J., Nelson

Access: Open access

Context: Urban-rural gradients are useful tools when examining the influence of human disturbances on ecological, social and coupled systems, yet the most commonly used gradient definitions are based on single broad measures such as housing density or percent forest cover that fail to capture landscape patterns important for conservation. Objectives: We present an approach to defining urban–rural gradients that integrates multiple landscape pattern metrics related to ecosystem processes important for natural resources and wildlife sustainability. Methods: We develop a set of land cover composition and configuration metrics and then use them as inputs to a cluster analysis process that, in addition to grouping towns with similar attributes, identifies exemplar towns for each group. We compare the outcome of the cluster-based urban-rural gradient typology to outcomes for four commonly-used rule-based typologies and discuss implications for resource management and conservation. Results: The resulting cluster-based typology defines five town types (urban, suburban, exurban, rural, and agricultural) and notably identifies a bifurcation along the gradient distinguishing among rural forested and agricultural towns. Landscape patterns (e.g., core and islet forests) influence where individual towns fall along the gradient. Designations of town type differ substantially among the five different typologies, particularly along the middle of the gradient. Conclusions: Understanding where a town occurs along the urban-rural gradient could aid local decision-makers in prioritizing and balancing between development and conservation scenarios. Variations in outcomes among the different urban-rural gradient typologies raise concerns that broad-measure classifications do not adequately account for important landscape patterns. We suggest future urban-rural gradient studies utilize more robust classification approaches.


CO2 induced phase transitions in diamine-appended metal-organic frameworks

Date: 2015-06-15

Creator: Bess Vlaisavljevich

Samuel O. Odoh

Sondre K. Schnell

Allison L. Dzubak

Kyuho, Lee

Nora Planas

Jeffrey B. Neaton

Laura Gagliardi

Berend Smit

Access: Open access

Using a combination of density functional theory and lattice models, we study the effect of CO2 adsorption in an amine functionalized metal-organic framework. These materials exhibit a step in the adsorption isotherm indicative of a phase change. The pressure at which this step occurs is not only temperature dependent but is also metal center dependent. Likewise, the heats of adsorption vary depending on the metal center. Herein we demonstrate via quantum chemical calculations that the amines should not be considered firmly anchored to the framework and we explore the mechanism for CO2 adsorption. An ammonium carbamate species is formed via the insertion of CO2 into the M-Namine bonds. Furthermore, we translate the quantum chemical results into isotherms using a coarse grained Monte Carlo simulation technique and show that this adsorption mechanism can explain the characteristic step observed in the experimental isotherm while a previously proposed mechanism cannot. Furthermore, metal analogues have been explored and the CO2 binding energies show a strong metal dependence corresponding to the M-Namine bond strength. We show that this difference can be exploited to tune the pressure at which the step in the isotherm occurs. Additionally, the mmen-Ni2(dobpdc) framework shows Langmuir like behavior, and our simulations show how this can be explained by competitive adsorption between the new model and a previously proposed model.