As competition over peer status becomes intense during adolescence, some adolescents develop insecure feelings regarding their social standing among their peers. These adolescents sometimes use aggression to defend or promote their status. The aim of this study was to examine the relationships among social status insecurity, callous-unemotional traits, and popularity-motivated aggression and prosocial behaviors among adolescents, while controlling for gender. Another purpose was to examine the potential moderating role of CU traits in these relationships. Participants were 1,047 in the 7th (...) or 8th grades from a large Midwestern city. They completed questionnaires on social status insecurity, CU traits, and popularity-motivated relational aggression, physical aggression, cyberaggression, and prosocial behaviors. A structural regression model was conducted, with gender as a covariate. The model had adequate fit. Social status insecurity was associated positively with callousness, unemotional, and popularity-motivated aggression and related negatively to popularity-motivated prosocial behaviors. High social status insecurity was related to greater popularity-motivated aggression when adolescents had high callousness traits. The findings have implications for understanding the individual characteristics associated with social status insecurity. (shrink)

At metaphase, DNA in a human chromosome is estimated to be compacted at least 10,000 fold in length.1,2 However, the higher order mechanisms by which the chromosomes are organized in interphase and subsequently further condensed in mitosis have largely remained elusive. One generally overlooked participant in chromosome condensation is DNA replication. Many early studies of eukaryotic chromosome organization and cell fusions have suggested that DNA replication plays a role in chromosome compaction. Recent phenotypic analysis of Drosophila DNA replication mutants has (...) revitalized this old idea. In this review, the role of DNA replication in chromosome condensation will be examined. BioEssays 24:411–418, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Previous research on youths’ online risky experiences has mostly utilized quantitative designs. However, some of this research does not account for youths’ views and perceptions. This qualitative study fills this gap by describing online problematic situations from the perspectives of European youths, focuses on classifying online problematic situations based on youths’ perspectives and interrelates these with their developmental contexts. As a theoretical framework, the co-construction model was adopted, which proposes that youths’ online and offline worlds are interconnected. Interviews and focus (...) groups were conducted with youths between the ages of 9 and 16 from Belgium, the Czech Republic, Greece, Malta, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Youths’ responses reflected the complexity of the various problematic situations online they encountered or indirectly experienced, and how such experiences were interconnected with the developmental contexts of peer relationships, parent-child relationships, romantic relationships, school, sexuality, identity, health, and morality. We recommend the development of complex educational programs focused on youths about problematic situations online, which discuss the possible situations they may encounter and how to deal with them. (shrink)

To provide the three-way comparisons needed to test existing theories, we compared (1) most-stressful memories to other memories and (2) involuntary to voluntary memories (3) in 75 community dwelling adults with and 42 without a current diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Each rated their three most-stressful, three most-positive, seven most-important and 15 word-cued autobiographical memories, and completed tests of personality and mood. Involuntary memories were then recorded and rated as they occurred for 2 weeks. Standard mechanisms of cognition and (...) affect applied to extreme events accounted for the properties of stressful memories. Involuntary memories had greater emotional intensity than voluntary memories, but were not more frequently related to traumatic events. The emotional intensity, rehearsal, and centrality to the life story of both voluntary and involuntary memories, rather than incoherence of voluntary traumatic memories and enhanced availability of involuntary traumatic memories, were the properties of autobiographical memories associated with PTSD. (shrink)

Academic dishonesty has serious consequences for human lives, social values, and economy. The main aim of the study was to explore a model of relations between personal and cultural variables and academic dishonesty. The participants in the study were N = 2,586 individuals from nine countries (Pakistan, Israel, Italy, India, the USA, Peru, Romania, Ghana, and Poland). The authors administered the Academic Dishonesty Scale to measure academic dishonesty, the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale to measure distress, the Almost Perfect Scale – (...) Revised to measure perfectionism, the Brief Self-Control Scale to measure self-control, and the Singelis Scale to measure independent self-construal. The results showed that the theoretical model was well fitted to the dataset in six countries: Pakistan, the United States, Romania, Ghana, Israel, and Poland. However, it was not well fitted in Italy, India, and Peru. Our results also showed that perfectionism significantly predicted academic dishonesty, but not in all countries. Self-control significantly predicted cheating, falsification, and plagiarism in the USA. Moreover, we found that distress was related to cheating o0nly in Ghana. Finally, independent self-construal predicted academic dishonesty. Our findings provide a cross-cultural contribution to the debate on academic dishonesty by highlighting its significant predictors and may inform interventions aimed at eliminating it. Our results can be used in preventing and curbing academic dishonesty. Knowledge on cross-cultural differences can be useful in international education for example, as an indicator accepting or relaxing attitude toward academic dishonesty in students from different countries. (shrink)

This rich and varied collection of essays addresses some of the most fundamental human questions through the lenses of philosophy, literature, religion, politics, and theology. Peter Augustine Lawler and Dale McConkey have fashioned an interdisciplinary consideration of such perennial and enduring issues as the relationship between nature and history, nature and grace, reason and revelation, classical philosophy and Christianity, modernity and postmodernity, repentance and self-limitation, and philosophy and politics.

Activity in the prefrontal cortex may distinguish the meta-awareness experienced during lucid dreams from its absence in normal dreams. To examine a possible relationship between dream lucidity and prefrontal task performance, we carried out a prospective study in 28 high school students. Participants performed the Wisconsin Card Sort and Iowa Gambling tasks, then for 1 week kept dream journals and reported sleep quality and lucidity-related dream characteristics. Participants who exhibited a greater degree of lucidity performed significantly better on the task (...) that engages the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, but degree of lucidity achieved did not distinguish performance on the task that engages the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, nor did it distinguish self-reported sleep quality or baseline characteristics. The association between performance on the Iowa Gambling Task and lucidity suggests a connection between lucid dreaming and ventromedial prefrontal function. (shrink)

In this article, Peter and Rowland explore the role of implicit statistical learning in syntactic development. It is often accepted that the processes observed in classic implicit learning or statistical learning experiments play an important role in the acquisition of natural language syntax. As Peter and Rowland point out, however, the results from neither research strand can be used to fully explain how children's syntax becomes adult‐like. They propose to address this shortcoming by using the structural priming paradigm.

The scientific study of consciousness emerged as an organized field of research only a few decades ago. As empirical results have begun to enhance our understanding of consciousness, it is important to find out whether other factors, such as funding for consciousness research and status of consciousness scientists, provide a suitable environment for the field to grow and develop sustainably. We conducted an online survey on people’s views regarding various aspects of the scientific study of consciousness as a field of (...) research. 249 participants completed the survey, among which 80% were in academia, and around 40% were experts in consciousness research. Topics covered include the progress made by the field, funding for consciousness research, job opportunities for consciousness researchers, and the scientific rigor of the work done by researchers in the field. The majority of respondents (78%) indicated that scientific research on consciousness has been making progress. However, most participants perceived obtaining funding and getting a job in the field of consciousness research as more difficult than in other subfields of neuroscience. Overall, work done in consciousness research was perceived to be less rigorous than other neuroscience subfields, but this perceived lack of rigor was not related to the perceived difficulty in finding jobs and obtaining funding. Lastly, we found that, overall, the global workspace theory was perceived to be the most promising (around 28%), while most non-expert researchers (around 22% of non-experts) found the integrated information theory (IIT) most promising. We believe the survey results provide an interesting picture of current opinions from scientists and researchers about the progresses made and the challenges faced by consciousness research as an independent field. They will inspire collective reflection on the future directions regarding funding and job opportunities for the field. (shrink)

Lee emphasizes the need to better understand the moral relationship between researchers and participants connoted by precision medicine, with the framework of “the gift” offering bioethics a...

Although there is great concern about protecting those who participate in research, little if any concern has been expressed in the literature about protecting “decliners”—individuals who were invited to participate, but did not. However, there are several situations in which potential participants may experience negative consequences if they choose not to participate—for example, the prison setting, where the power imbalance is obvious and the history of research is not a positive one. We offer several options to protect decliners from possible (...) adverse consequences. (shrink)

BackgroundA fundamental ethical challenge in conducting genomics research is the question of what and how individual level genetic findings and aggregate genomic results should be conveyed to research participants and communities. This is within the context of minimal guidance, policies, and experiences, particularly in Africa. The aim of this study was to explore the perspectives of key stakeholders' on returning genomics research results to participants in Kenya.MethodsThis qualitative study involved focus group discussions (FGDs) and in-depth interviews (IDIs) with 69 stakeholders. (...) The purposively selected participants, included research ethics committee (REC) members (8), community members (44), community resource persons (8), and researchers (9). A semi-structured interview guide was used to facilitate discussions. Six FGDs and twenty-five (IDIs) were conducted among the different stakeholders. The issues explored in the interviews included: (1) views on returning results, (2) kind of results to be returned, (3) value of returning results to participants, and (4) challenges anticipated in returning results to participants and communities. The interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and coded in Nvivo 12 pro. Thematic and content analysis was conducted.ResultsParticipants agreed on the importance of returning genomic results either as individual or aggregate results. The most cited reasons for returning of genomic results included recognizing participants' contribution to research, encouraging participation in future research, and increasing the awareness of scientific progress. Other aspects on how genomic research results should be shared included sharing easy to understand results in the shortest time possible and maintaining confidentiality when sharing sensitive results.ConclusionsThis study identified key stakeholders’ perspectives on returning genomic results at the individual and community levels in two urban informal settlements of Nairobi. The majority of the participants expect to receive feedback about their genomic results, and it is an obligation for researchers to see how to best fulfil it. (shrink)

BackgroundPalliative sedation and analgesia are employed in patients with refractory and intractable symptoms at the end of life to reduce their suffering by lowering their level of consciousness. The doctrine of double effect, a philosophical principle that justifies doing a “good action” with a potentially “bad effect,” is frequently employed to provide an ethical justification for this practice. Main textWe argue that palliative sedation and analgesia do not fulfill the conditions required to apply the doctrine of double effect, and therefore (...) its use in this domain is inappropriate. Furthermore, we argue that the frequent application of the doctrine of double effect to palliative sedation and analgesia reflects physicians’ discomfort with the complex moral, intentional, and causal aspects of end-of-life care. ConclusionsWe are concerned that this misapplication of the doctrine of double effect can consequently impair physicians’ ethical reasoning and relationships with patients at the end of life. (shrink)

Mucoidy and cytotoxicity arise from two independent modifications of the phenotype of the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa that contribute to the mortality and morbidity of cystic fibrosis. We show that, even though the transcriptional regulatory networks controlling both processes are quite different from a molecular or mechanistic point of view, they may be identical from a dynamic point of view: epigenesis may in both cases be the cause of the acquisition of these new phenotypes. This was highlighted by the identity of (...) formal graphs modelling these networks. A mathematical framework based on formal methods from computer science was defined and implemented with a software environment. It allows an easy and rigorous validation and certification of these models and of the experimental methods that can be proposed to falsify or validate the underlying hypothesis. (shrink)

The conviction, due to previous failures, that bacteriology and darwinism were incompatible, has postponed the application of molecular phylogenesis to bacteria. But once introduced, this new field has led to a profound revolution of this science. A stable classification of the bacteria is at last possible; a new domain, the Archae, as distant from the Bacteria as from the Eukarya, has been discovered; noncultivable new species can be identified from the environment. It may even be possible to unravel the pathway (...) of early evolution after the common ancestor. However, controversies on this subject are already disregarded by the new paradigm. (shrink)

Intellectual property in biotechnology invention provides important incentives for research and development leading to advances in genetic tests and treatments. However, there have been numerous concerns raised regarding the negative effect patents on gene sequences and their practical applications may have on clinical research and the availability of new medical tests and procedures. One concern is that licensing policies attempting to capture for the benefit of the licensor valuable rights to downstream research results and products may increase the financial risks (...) and cliniinish potential payoffs of — and therefore motivation for — performing downstream research and development. In addition, very broad patent claims allowed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the sheer growth in patents claiming genetic sequences, and threats of overlapping patents create a veritable minefield for researchers in both academia and industry. The concern is that research may be stifled because of the high cost and hassle of negotiating access. (shrink)

Intellectual property in biotechnology invention provides important incentives for research and development leading to advances in genetic tests and treatments. However, there have been numerous concerns raised regarding the negative effect patents on gene sequences and their practical applications may have on clinical research and the availability of new medical tests and procedures. One concern is that licensing policies attempting to capture for the benefit of the licensor valuable rights to downstream research results and products may increase the financial risks (...) and cliniinish potential payoffs of — and therefore motivation for — performing downstream research and development. In addition, very broad patent claims allowed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the sheer growth in patents claiming genetic sequences, and threats of overlapping patents create a veritable minefield for researchers in both academia and industry. The concern is that research may be stifled because of the high cost and hassle of negotiating access. (shrink)

The negative emotions generated following stressful life events can increase one’s risk of depressive symptoms and promote higher levels of perceived stress. The process model of emotion regulation can help distinguish between adaptive and maladaptive emotion regulation strategies to determine who may be at the greatest risk of worse psychological health across the lifespan. Heart rate variability may affect these relationships as it indexes aspects of self-regulation, including emotion and behavioral regulation, that enable an individual to dynamically adapt to the (...) changing demands of both internal and external environments. In this study, we expected individual differences in resting vagally mediated HRV to moderate the influence of emotion regulatory strategies among our sample of 267 adults. We found support for the hypothesis that higher vagally mediated HRV buffers against the typical adverse effects of expressive suppression when evaluating depressive symptoms and found weak support when considering perceived stress. There was no evidence for an interaction between cognitive reappraisal and vagally mediated HRV but there was a significant, negative association between cognitive reappraisal and depressive symptoms and perceived stress. Future work may determine if intervening on either emotion regulation strategies or HRV may change these within-persons over time. (shrink)