Sexuality and Affection among Elderly German Men and Women in Long-Term Relationships: Results of a Prospective Population-Based Study

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.The study was funded by the German Federal Ministry for Families, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (AZ 314-1722-102/16; AZ 301-1720-295/2), the Ministry for Science, Research and Art Baden-Württemberg, and the University of Rostock (FORUN 989020; 889048)

Differing views - can chimpanzees do level 2 perspective-taking?

We gratefully acknowledge financial support by the German National Academic Foundation.Although chimpanzees understand what others may see, it is unclear if they understand how others see things (Level 2 perspective-taking). We investigated whether chimpanzees can predict the behavior of a conspecific which is holding a mistaken perspective that differs from their own. The subject competed with a conspecific over two food sticks. While the subject could see that both were the same size, to the competitor one appeared bigger than the other. In a previously established game, the competitor chose one stick in private first and the subject chose thereafter, without knowing which of the sticks was gone. Chimpanzees and 6-year-old children chose the ‘riskier’ stick (that looked bigger to the competitor) significantly less in the game than in a nonsocial control. Children chose randomly in the control, thus showing Level 2 perspective-taking skills; in contrast, chimpanzees had a preference for the ‘riskier’ stick here, rendering it possible that they attributed their own preference to the competitor to predict her choice. We thus run a follow-up in which chimpanzees did not have a preference in the control. Now they also chose randomly in the game. We conclude that chimpanzees solved the task by attributing their own preference to the other, while children truly understood the other’s mistaken perspective.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Responding by exclusion in temporal discrimination tasks

Responding by exclusion, one of the most robust phenomena in Experimental Psychology, consists of choosing an undefined comparison stimulus given an undefined sample, when the comparison stimulus is presented next to other experimentally defined stimuli. The goal of the present study was to determine whether responding by exclusion could be obtained using samples that varied along a single dimension. Using a double temporal bisection task, ten university students learned to choose visual comparisons (colored circles) based on the duration of a tone. In tests of exclusion, sample stimuli with new durations were followed by comparison sets that included one previously trained, defined comparison (colored circle) and one previously untrained, undefined comparison (geometric shape). Subjects preferred the defined comparisons following the defined samples and the undefined comparisons following the undefined samples, the choice pattern typical of responding by exclusion. The use of samples varying along a single dimension allows us to study the interaction between stimulus generalization gradients and exclusion in the control of conditional responding.The first author was supported by a master's degree fellowship by the Ministry of Education (CAPES). Armando Machado was supported by grant PTDC/MHC-PCN/3540/2012 from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology. Camila Domeniconi had a post-doctoral fellowship from the Foundation for Research Support in the State of Sao Paulo (FAPESP, 2009/18479-5). She is currently affiliated with the National Institute of Science and Technology on Behavior, Cognition and Teaching. Grants: FAPESP (08/57705-8) and CNPq (573972/2008-7). She has a research productivity fellowship by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq, 301623/2012-0)

Clonal integration and ramet development in quaking aspen

Clonal plants are important contributors to natural environments and can have disproportionate effects on ecosystem function. In the mountain west, the clonal species Populus tremuloides (quaking aspen) is critical in helping to regulate ecosystem function; healthy aspen stands support a diverse group of plants and animals. Aspen are in decline across the west, due to climate change (increased drought), changing fire cycles, and increasing pressure from herbivores like deer and elk. Understanding the natural processes that enable aspen to survive and grow will help us protect aspen in the future. Clonality, or the ability to reproduce asexually through root suckering, is a hallmark trait of aspen that is not fully understood. Aspen can share nutrients between different trees (called ramets) in a clone through an interconnected root system. However, the degree of nutrient sharing, or clonal integration, may vary throughout the developmental stages of ramets. The relative importance of nutrient sharing at each developmental stage is unknown. In this study, we addressed the question of how nursing affects ramet development across different stages of development. We used physical separation of ramets to test the importance of the nursing effect in growth, mortality rate, and photosynthesis rate. Results show that clonal integration affects some – but not all – aspects of ramet health and the effects are dependent on ramet size

Severing family ties: The role of clonal Aspen root connections on tree growth and function

Clonal root integration in Aspen trees has been shown to promote resource sharing among interconnected individuals; however, whether the influence of integration on the physiology of individual ramets (Aspen offspring) changes throughout their developmental life stages is poorly understood.https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/library_studentposters_2022/1018/thumbnail.jp

Search for anomalous Wtb couplings and flavour-changing neutral currents in t-channel single top quark production in pp collisions at root s=7 and 8 TeV

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Jet energy scale and resolution in the CMS experiment in pp collisions at 8 TeV

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Comparing dogs and great apes in their ability to visually track object transpositions

Knowing that objects continue to exist after disappearing from sight and tracking invisible object displacements are two basic elements of spatial cognition. The current study compares dogs and apes in an invisible transposition task. Food was hidden under one of two cups in full view of the subject. After that both cups were displaced, systematically varying two main factors, whether cups were crossed during displacement and whether the cups were substituted by the other cup or instead cups were moved to new locations. While the apes were successful in all conditions, the dogs had a strong preference to approach the location where they last saw the reward, especially if this location remained filled. In addition, dogs seem to have especial difficulties to track the reward when both containers crossed their path during displacement. These results confirm the substantial difference that exists between great apes and dogs with regard to mental representation abilities required to track the invisible displacements of objects

3 years of liraglutide versus placebo for type 2 diabetes risk reduction and weight management in individuals with prediabetes: a randomised, double-blind trial

Background Liraglutide 3\ub70 mg was shown to reduce bodyweight and improve glucose metabolism after the 56-week period of this trial, one of four trials in the SCALE programme. In the 3-year assessment of the SCALE Obesity and Prediabetes trial we aimed to evaluate the proportion of individuals with prediabetes who were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Methods In this randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, adults with prediabetes and a body-mass index of at least 30 kg/m2, or at least 27 kg/m2 with comorbidities, were randomised 2:1, using a telephone or web-based system, to once-daily subcutaneous liraglutide 3\ub70 mg or matched placebo, as an adjunct to a reduced-calorie diet and increased physical activity. Time to diabetes onset by 160 weeks was the primary outcome, evaluated in all randomised treated individuals with at least one post-baseline assessment. The trial was conducted at 191 clinical research sites in 27 countries and is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT01272219. Findings The study ran between June 1, 2011, and March 2, 2015. We randomly assigned 2254 patients to receive liraglutide (n=1505) or placebo (n=749). 1128 (50%) participants completed the study up to week 160, after withdrawal of 714 (47%) participants in the liraglutide group and 412 (55%) participants in the placebo group. By week 160, 26 (2%) of 1472 individuals in the liraglutide group versus 46 (6%) of 738 in the placebo group were diagnosed with diabetes while on treatment. The mean time from randomisation to diagnosis was 99 (SD 47) weeks for the 26 individuals in the liraglutide group versus 87 (47) weeks for the 46 individuals in the placebo group. Taking the different diagnosis frequencies between the treatment groups into account, the time to onset of diabetes over 160 weeks among all randomised individuals was 2\ub77 times longer with liraglutide than with placebo (95% CI 1\ub79 to 3\ub79, p<0\ub70001), corresponding with a hazard ratio of 0\ub721 (95% CI 0\ub713\u20130\ub734). Liraglutide induced greater weight loss than placebo at week 160 (\u20136\ub71 [SD 7\ub73] vs 121\ub79% [6\ub73]; estimated treatment difference 124\ub73%, 95% CI 124\ub79 to 123\ub77, p<0\ub70001). Serious adverse events were reported by 227 (15%) of 1501 randomised treated individuals in the liraglutide group versus 96 (13%) of 747 individuals in the placebo group. Interpretation In this trial, we provide results for 3 years of treatment, with the limitation that withdrawn individuals were not followed up after discontinuation. Liraglutide 3\ub70 mg might provide health benefits in terms of reduced risk of diabetes in individuals with obesity and prediabetes. Funding Novo Nordisk, Denmark

Measurement of tt‾\mathrm {t}\overline{\mathrm {t}} t t ¯ production with additional jet activity, including b\mathrm {b} b quark jets, in the dilepton decay channel using pp collisions at s=8 TeV\sqrt{s} = 8\,\text {TeV} s = 8 TeV

Jet multiplicity distributions in top quark pair ( ${{\rm t}}{\rm {\overline{t}}}$ ) events are measured in pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV with the CMS detector at the LHC using a data set corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 $\,\text {fb}^\text {-1}$ . The measurement is performed in the dilepton decay channels ( $\mathrm {e}^+\mathrm {e}^-$ , $\mathrm {\mu ^+}\mathrm {\mu ^-}$ , and $\mathrm {e}^{\pm }\mathrm {\mu }^{\mp }$ ). The absolute and normalized differential cross sections for $\mathrm {t}\overline{\mathrm {t}}$ production are measured as a function of the jet multiplicity in the event for different jet transverse momentum thresholds and the kinematic properties of the leading additional jets. The differential $\mathrm {\mathrm {t} \overline{\mathrm {t}} \mathrm {b}}$ and $\mathrm {\mathrm {t} \overline{\mathrm {t}} \mathrm {b} \overline{\mathrm {b}}}$ cross sections are presented for the first time as a function of the kinematic properties of the leading additional $\mathrm {b}$ jets. Furthermore, the fraction of events without additional jets above a threshold is measured as a function of the transverse momenta of the leading additional jets and the scalar sum of the transverse momenta of all additional jets. The data are compared and found to be consistent with predictions from several perturbative quantum chromodynamics event generators and a next-to-leading order calculation