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As competition over peer status becomes intense during adolescence, some adolescents develop insecure feelings regarding their social standing among their peers (i.e., social status insecurity). 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 (CU) 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 (49.2% girls; Mage = 12.44 years; age range from 11 to 14 years) 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.
The effects of exercise interventions on unspecific chronic low back pain (CLBP) have been investigated in many studies, but the results are inconclusive regarding exercise types, efficiency, and sustainability. This may be because the influence of psychosocial factors on exercise induced adaptation regarding CLBP is neglected. Therefore, this study assessed psychosocial characteristics, which moderate and mediate the effects of sensorimotor exercise on LBP. A single-blind 3-arm multicenter randomized controlled trial was conducted for 12-weeks. Three exercise groups, sensorimotor exercise (SMT), sensorimotor and behavioral training (SMT-BT), and regular routines (CG) were randomly assigned to 662 volunteers. Primary outcomes (pain intensity and disability) and psychosocial characteristics were assessed at baseline (M1) and follow-up (3/6/12/24 weeks, M2-M5). Multiple regression models were used to analyze whether psychosocial characteristics are moderators of the relationship between exercise and pain, meaning that psychosocial factors and exercise interact. Causal mediation analysis were conducted to analyze, whether psychosocial characteristics mediate the exercise effect on pain. A total of 453 participants with intermittent pain (mean age = 39.5 ± 12.2 years, f = 62%) completed the training. It was shown, that depressive symptomatology (at M4, M5), vital exhaustion (at M4), and perceived social support (at M5) are significant moderators of the relationship between exercise and the reduction of pain intensity. Further depressive mood (at M4), social-satisfaction (at M4), and anxiety (at M5 SMT) significantly moderate the exercise effect on pain disability. The amount of moderation was of clinical relevance. In contrast, there were no psychosocial variables which mediated exercise effects on pain. In conclusion it was shown, that psychosocial variables can be moderators in the relationship between sensorimotor exercise induced adaptation on CLBP which may explain conflicting results in the past regarding the merit of exercise interventions in CLBP. Results suggest further an early identification of psychosocial risk factors by diagnostic tools, which may essential support the planning of personalized exercise therapy.
Level of Evidence: Level I.
Clinical Trial Registration: DRKS00004977, LOE: I, MiSpEx: grant-number: 080102A/11-14. https://www.drks.de/drks_web/navigate.do?navigationId=trial.HTML&TRIAL_ID=DRKS00004977.
Grand Theft Auto V
(2020)
To meet the demands of a growing world population while reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, it is necessary to capture CO2 and convert it into value-added compounds. In recent years, metabolic engineering of microbes has gained strong momentum as a strategy for the production of valuable chemicals. As common microbial feedstocks like glucose directly compete with human consumption, the one carbon (C1) compound formate was suggested as an alternative feedstock. Formate can be easily produced by various means including electrochemical reduction of CO2 and could serve as a feedstock for microbial production, hence presenting a novel entry point for CO2 to the biosphere and a storage option for excess electricity. Compared to the gaseous molecule CO2, formate is a highly soluble compound that can be easily handled and stored. It can serve as a carbon and energy source for natural formatotrophs, but these microbes are difficult to cultivate and engineer. In this work, I present the results of several projects that aim to establish efficient formatotrophic growth of E. coli – which cannot naturally grow on formate – via synthetic formate assimilation pathways. In the first study, I establish a workflow for growth-coupled metabolic engineering of E. coli. I demonstrate this approach by presenting an engineering scheme for the PFL-threonine cycle, a synthetic pathway for anaerobic formate assimilation in E. coli. The described methods are intended to create a standardized toolbox for engineers that aim to establish novel metabolic routes in E. coli and related organisms. The second chapter presents a study on the catalytic efficiency of C1-oxidizing enzymes in vivo. As formatotrophic growth requires generation of both energy and biomass from formate, the engineered E. coli strains need to be equipped with a highly efficient formate dehydrogenase, which provides reduction equivalents and ATP for formate assimilation. I engineered a strain that cannot generate reducing power and energy for cellular growth, when fed on acetate. Under this condition, the strain depends on the introduction of an enzymatic system for NADH regeneration, which could further produce ATP via oxidative phosphorylation. I show that the strain presents a valuable testing platform for C1-oxidizing enzymes by testing different NAD-dependent formate and methanol dehydrogenases in the energy auxotroph strain. Using this platform, several candidate enzymes with high in vivo activity, were identified and characterized as potential energy-generating systems for synthetic formatotrophic or methylotrophic growth in E. coli. In the third chapter, I present the establishment of the serine threonine cycle (STC) – a synthetic formate assimilation pathway – in E. coli. In this pathway, formate is assimilated via formate tetrahydrofolate ligase (FtfL) from Methylobacterium extorquens (M. extorquens). The carbon from formate is attached to glycine to produce serine, which is converted into pyruvate entering central metabolism. Via the natural threonine synthesis and cleavage route, glycine is regenerated and acetyl-CoA is produced as the pathway product. I engineered several selection strains that depend on different STC modules for growth and determined key enzymes that enable high flux through threonine synthesis and cleavage. I could show that expression of an auxiliary formate dehydrogenase was required to achieve growth via threonine synthesis and cleavage on pyruvate. By overexpressing most of the pathway enzymes from the genome, and applying adaptive laboratory evolution, growth on glycine and formate was achieved, indicating the activity of the complete cycle. The fourth chapter shows the establishment of the reductive glycine pathway (rGP) – a short, linear formate assimilation route – in E. coli. As in the STC, formate is assimilated via M. extorquens FtfL. The C1 from formate is condensed with CO2 via the reverse reaction of the glycine cleavage system to produce glycine. Another carbon from formate is attached to glycine to form serine, which is assimilated into central metabolism via pyruvate. The engineered E. coli strain, expressing most of the pathway genes from the genome, can grow via the rGP with formate or methanol as a sole carbon and energy source.
Silent Hill 2
(2020)
During the National Multiplication Training in Kenya in 2018, participants raised concerns about attrition, completion rates and quality of PhD programmes in Kenya’s public universities. This led the authors of this article to further examine the question of PhD completion rates. Available data underlined that PhD students across various disciplines in Kenya’s public universities take unnecessarily long to complete their studies due to a myriad of factors that are related to their supervisors, university guidelines for post-graduate studies, or the students themselves. This article examines inertia areas along the PhD training pathway at three public universities in Kenya and provides suggestions on structural and operational changes universities must make to shorten completion periods.
Sediment archives in the terrestrial and marine realm are regularly analyzed to infer changes in climate, tectonic, or anthropogenic boundary conditions of the past. However, contradictory observations have been made regarding whether short period events are faithfully preserved in stratigraphic archives; for instance, in marine sediments offshore large river systems. On the one hand, short period events are hypothesized to be non-detectable in the signature of terrestrially derived sediments due to buffering during sediment transport along large river systems. On the other hand, several studies have detected signals of short period events in marine records offshore large river systems. We propose that this apparent discrepancy is related to the lack of a differentiation between different types of signals and the lack of distinction between river response times and signal propagation times. In this review, we (1) expand the definition of the term ‘signal’ and group signals in sub-categories related to hydraulic grain size characteristics, (2) clarify the different types of ‘times’ and suggest a precise and consistent terminology for future use, and (3) compile and discuss factors influencing the times of signal transfer along sediment routing systems and how those times vary with hydraulic grain size characteristics. Unraveling different types of signals and distinctive time periods related to signal propagation addresses the discrepancies mentioned above and allows a more comprehensive exploration of event preservation in stratigraphy – a prerequisite for reliable environmental reconstructions from terrestrially derived sedimentary records.
Papers, Please
(2020)
We investigate whether political ideology has an observable effect on decarbonization ambition, renewable power aims, and preferences for power system balancing technologies in four European countries. Based on the Energy Logics framework, we identify ideologically different transition strategies (state-centered, market-centered, grassroots-centered) contained in government policies and opposition party programs valid in 2019. We compare these policies and programs with citizen poll data. We find that ideology has a small effect: governments and political parties across the spectrum have similar, and relatively ambitious, decarbonization and renewables targets. This mirrors citizens' strong support for ambitious action regardless of their ideological self-description. However, whereas political positions on phasing out fossil fuel power are clear across the policy space, positions on phasing in new flexibility options to balance intermittent renewables are vague or non-existent. As parties and citizens agree on strong climate and renewable power aims, the policy ambition is likely to remain high, even if governments change.
We investigate whether political ideology has an observable effect on decarbonization ambition, renewable power aims, and preferences for power system balancing technologies in four European countries. Based on the Energy Logics framework, we identify ideologically different transition strategies (state-centered, market-centered, grassroots-centered) contained in government policies and opposition party programs valid in 2019. We compare these policies and programs with citizen poll data. We find that ideology has a small effect: governments and political parties across the spectrum have similar, and relatively ambitious, decarbonization and renewables targets. This mirrors citizens' strong support for ambitious action regardless of their ideological self-description. However, whereas political positions on phasing out fossil fuel power are clear across the policy space, positions on phasing in new flexibility options to balance intermittent renewables are vague or non-existent. As parties and citizens agree on strong climate and renewable power aims, the policy ambition is likely to remain high, even if governments change.