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Suspicion of Motives Predicts Minorities' Responses to Positive Feedback in Interracial Interactions.

Strong social and legal norms in the United States discourage the overt expression of bias against ethnic and racial minorities, increasing the attributional ambiguity of Whites' positive behavior to ethnic minorities. Minorities who suspect that Whites' positive overtures toward minorities are motivated more by their fear of appearing racist than by egalitarian attitudes may regard positive feedback they receive from Whites as disingenuous. This may lead them to react to such feedback with feelings of uncertainty and threat. Three studies examined how suspicion of motives relates to ethnic minorities' responses to receiving positive feedback from a White peer or same-ethnicity peer (Experiment 1), to receiving feedback from a White peer that was positive or negative (Experiment 2), and to receiving positive feedback from a White peer who did or did not know their ethnicity (Experiment 3). As predicted, the more suspicious Latinas were of Whites' motives for behaving positively toward minorities in general, the more they regarded positive feedback from a White peer who knew their ethnicity as disingenuous and the more they reacted with cardiovascular reactivity characteristic of threat/avoidance, increased feelings of stress, heightened uncertainty, and decreased self-esteem. We discuss the implications for intergroup interactions of perceptions of Whites' motives for nonprejudiced behavior

Giant Quadrupole Resonances in 208Pb, the nuclear symmetry energy and the neutron skin thickness

Recent improvements in the experimental determination of properties of the Isovector Giant Quadrupole Resonance (IVGQR), as demonstrated in the A=208 mass region, may be instrumental for characterizing the isovector channel of the effective nuclear interaction. We analyze properties of the IVGQR in 208Pb, using both macroscopic and microscopic approaches. The microscopic method is based on families of non-relativistic and covariant Energy Density Functionals (EDF), characterized by a systematic variation of isoscalar and isovector properties of the corresponding nuclear matter equations of state. The macroscopic approach yields an explicit dependence of the nuclear symmetry energy at some subsaturation density, for instance S(\rho=0.1 fm^{-3}), or the neutron skin thickness \Delta r_{np} of a heavy nucleus, on the excitation energies of isoscalar and isovector GQRs. Using available data it is found that S(\rho=0.1 fm{}^{-3})=23.3 +/- 0.6 MeV. Results obtained with the microscopic framework confirm the correlation of the \Delta r_{np} to the isoscalar and isovector GQR energies, as predicted by the macroscopic model. By exploiting this correlation together with the experimental values for the isoscalar and isovector GQR energies, we estimate \Delta r_{np} = 0.14 +/- 0.03 fm for 208Pb, and the slope parameter of the symmetry energy: L = 37 +/- 18 MeV

Fire Effects on Three Trophic Levels in a Central Arkansas Grassland

We studied the effect of a late growing-season fire on the plant and foliar arthropod communities in a naturally occurring grassland. In central Arkansas, these grasslands are common on south-facing slopes where shallow soils and hot/dry weather conditions during the summer cannot support the growth of a forest community. Patches of grassland were burned in the autumn (4 November, late growing season), often the time of natural fires in Arkansas, and compared to unburned areas. Fire increased the biomass of forbs and decreased the biomass of grasses, although overall biomass was not different between treatments. Among the foliar arthropods, herbivores were significantly reduced by burning, especially the Homoptera. Carnivorous arthropods as a whole were not affected by burning, although spiders showed a small but significant reduction. The response of arthropods to fire occurred almost one year after the burn, showing that fire effects can be delayed for a substantial period of time. This experiment shows that fire occurring during the natural burning period in Arkansas can have substantial effects on grasslands communities. The response of plants in Arkansas is similar to that of plants in nearby grasslands on the Great Plains and southeastern United States which also show a great increase in forbs under late growing season burning regimes. The changes seen in this experiment demonstrate that the suppression of fire by humans has probably modified the structure of Arkansas grasslands. With the increasing use of fire as a management tool in Arkansas, changes to grassland systems are likely to be profound

Gender dimorphism and age of onset in malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor preclinical models and human patients.

BackgroundGender-based differences in disease onset in murine models of malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor (MPNST) and in patients with Neurofibromatosis type-1-(NF-1)-associated or spontaneous MPNST has not been well studied.MethodsForty-three mGFAP-Cre+;Ptenloxp/+;LSL-K-rasG12D/+ mice were observed for tumor development and evaluated for gender disparity in age of MPNST onset. Patient data from the prospectively collected UCLA sarcoma database (1974-2011, n = 113 MPNST patients) and 39 published studies on MPNST patients (n = 916) were analyzed for age of onset differences between sexes and between NF-1 and spontaneous MPNST patients.ResultsOur murine model showed gender-based differences in MPNST onset, with males developing MPNST significantly earlier than females (142 vs. 162 days, p = 0.015). In the UCLA patient population, males also developed MPNST earlier than females (median age 35 vs. 39.5 years, p = 0.048). Patients with NF-1-associated MPNST had significantly earlier age of onset compared to spontaneous MPNST (median age 33 vs. 39 years, p = 0.007). However, expanded analysis of 916 published MPNST cases revealed no significant age difference in MPNST onset between males and females. Similar to the UCLA dataset, patients with NF-1 developed MPNST at a significantly younger age than spontaneous MPNST patients (p < 0.0001, median age 28 vs. 41 years) and this disparity was maintained across North American, European, and Asian populations.ConclusionsAlthough our preclinical model and single-institution patient cohort show gender dimorphism in MPNST onset, no significant gender disparity was detected in the larger MPNST patient meta-dataset. NF-1 patients develop MPNST 13 years earlier than patients with spontaneous MPNST, with little geographical variance

One-pot multi-enzymatic synthesis of the four stereoisomers of 4-methylheptan-3-ol

The use of pheromones in the integrated pest management of insects is currently considered a sustainable and environmentally benign alternative to hazardous insecticides. 4-Methylheptan-3-ol is an interesting example of an insect pheromone, because its stereoisomers are active towards different species. All four possible stereoisomers of this compd. were prepd. from 4-methylhept-4-en-3-one by a one-pot procedure in which the two stereogenic centers were created during two sequential redns. catalyzed by an ene-reductase (ER) and an alc. dehydrogenase (ADH), resp

Investigation of the structure and catalytic activity in olefin cyclopropanation of neutral and cationic dicopper complexes of 3,5-bis(pyridinylimino)benzoic acid.

Three neutral and one cationic copper(I) complexes with 3,5-bis(pyridinylimino)benzoic acid are synthesized and characterized in solution and in the solid state by a variety of spectroscopic techniques and X-ray crystallography. The compounds are tested for their catalytic activity in olefin cyclopropanation reactions by means of ethyl diazoacetate decomposition and prove to be moderately active with the ionic one being the most active and the most promising since for cyclohexene it reveals a considerable diastereoselectivity and a 90:10 exo:endo ratio of the final product

Frontal Gray Matter Reduction After Breast Cancer Chemotherapy and Association With Executive Symptoms: A Replication and Extension Study

poster abstractCognitive changes related to cancer and its treatment have been intensely studied, and neuroimaging has begun to demonstrate brain correlates of these changes. We recently reported structural brain changes in a prospective longitudinal cohort of breast cancer patients. Decreased gray matter density, particularly in frontal regions, was detected one month after completion of chemotherapy and partially recovered over the next year. These findings helped confirm a neural basis for the cognitive symptoms reported by many prior studies, which most commonly involve executive and memory processes in which the frontal lobes are a critical component of underlying neural circuitry. Here we present data from an independent, larger and more demographically diverse cohort that is more generalizable to the breast cancer population. 3.0T MP-RAGE structural MRI scans were acquired on 27 breast cancer patients treated with chemotherapy, 28 breast cancer patients not treated with chemotherapy, and 24 matched healthy controls (all participants were female). Study measures were completed at baseline (after surgery but before radiation, chemotherapy, and/or anti-estrogen treatment) and one month following the completion of chemotherapy, or yoked intervals for the non-chemotherapy and control groups. Gray matter density was examined using optimized voxel-based morphometry (VBM) methods. Results showed decreased frontal gray matter after chemotherapy, as observed in our initial cohort, which was accompanied by self-reported difficulties in executive functioning. These findings provide confirmatory evidence of frontal morphometric changes that may be a pathophysiological basis for cancer and treatment-related cognitive dysfunction. Ongoing research into individual risk factors for such changes will be critical for development of treatment and prevention strategies