Development of technologies aiding large-tissue engineering

Apoptosis associated oligonucleosomal fragmentation of DNA can result from the activation of endonucleases that exhibit different pH optima and are either sensitive or insensitive to divalent cations. DNA fragmentation due to activation of cation sensitive endonucleases occurs in the absence of a change in intracellular pH whereas intracellular acidification is a feature of apoptosis characterized by activation of cation insensitive acidic endonuclease. We have reported earlier that somatostatin (SST) induced DNA fragmentation and apoptosis is signaled in a receptor subtype selective manner uniquely via human somatostatin receptor subtype 3 (hSSTR3). In the present study we investigated the pH dependence and cation sensitivity of endonuclease induced in hSSTR3 expressing CHO-K1 cells by the SST agonist octreotide (OCT) and its effect on intracellular pH. We show that OCT induced apoptosis is associated with selective stimulation of a divalent cation insensitive acidic endonuclease. The intracellular pH of of cells undergoing OCT induced apoptosis was 0.9 pH units lower than that of control cells. The effect of OCT on endonuclease and pH was inhibited by orthovanadate as well as by pretreatment with pertussis toxin, suggesting that hSSTR3 initiated cytotoxic signaling is protein tyrosine phosphatase mediated and is G protein dependent. These findings suggest that intracellular acidification and activation of acidic endonuclease mediate wild type p53 associated apoptosis signaled by hormones acting via G protein coupled receptors.     

Negative cognitive styles, dysfunctional attitudes, and the remitted depression paradigm: A search for the elusive cognitive vulnerability to depression factor among remitted depressives.

Results from studies using a behavioral high-risk design and approximations to it generally have corroborated the cognitive vulnerability hypothesis of depression, whereas results from remitted depression studies typically have not. Suspecting that design features of previously conducted remitted designs likely precluded them from detecting maladaptive cognitive patterns, the authors conducted a study featuring the remitted design that has been successful in studies of a biological vulnerability for depression. Participants' current depressive symptoms, negative cognitive styles (hopelessness theory), dysfunctional attitudes (Beck's theory), and lifetime prevalence of clinically significant depression were assessed. Participants who had remitted from an episode of clinically significant depression had more negative cognitive styles, but not greater levels of dysfunctional attitudes, than did never depressed individuals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Gender, nonverbal behavior, and perceived dominance: A test of the theory.

We evaluated Henley's (1973, 1977) and Goffman's (1976, 1979) theories about the relation between gender, nonverbal behavior, and perceived dominance in three studies. Our ratings of 1,106 media portrayals (Study 1) and observations of 1,257 people in public settings (Study 2) revealed few gender differences in frequency of head canting or body canting but some gender differences in frequency of smiling. In Study 3, we rated 96 advertisements that included all levels of gender, head cant, body cant, and smiling on five personality dimensions; we obtained only one predicted relation with dominance. It may be that the head canting, body canting, and smiling behaviors of females and males are actually more similar than was previously recognized and, contrary to hypotheses, dominance may not be strongly associated with these behaviors. We used previously suggested notions of gender as a categorizing strategy and as a diffuse status characteristic to explain why hypotheses that associate nonverbal behaviors with dominance and gender have had an acceptance unwarranted by the data. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotional state and the use of stimulus dimensions in judgment.

Previous studies have demonstrated that, when they are emotional, individuals are more likely to attend to emotional stimuli. However, such work has not established that individuals attend to the emotional dimensions of complex stimuli or that such changes in focus of attention affect judgments. In the present experiments a multidimensional scaling analysis was used to assess the weights that happy, sad, and neutral-emotion participants gave to emotional and nonemotional dimensions of face stimuli in judgments of similarity. Compared to neutral-emotion participants, those in emotional states gave more weight to the emotional dimension of the faces, less weight to other face dimensions, and rated pairs of faces that expressed the same emotion as more similar. Emotion-congruent dimension use was also observed in one experiment. Results are discussed with respect to emotional response categories (P. M. Niedenthal & J. B. Halberstadt, 1995), the tendency for stimuli to cohere as categories on the basis of the emotional response they elicit in the perceiver. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Masculinity and femininity in children: Development of the Children's Personal Attributes Questionnaire.

Achildren's version of the Personal Attributes Questionnaire was developed and employed with 89 elementary school children. This instrument, which has long and short forms, assesses masculinity (instrumentality) and femininity (socioemotional orientation) on separate unipolar dimensions and also contains a bipolar Femininity–Masculinity scale. Equivalence of the children's forms with the long and short adult forms was demonstrated. In addition to psychometric data, evidence for the construct validity of the children's instrument is presented. Children's self-ratings correlated positively with parents' ratings. Gender differences agreed with expectations. The proportions of children of 4 gender-role types were similar to those reported among high school students who used the adult form; Correlations with intellectual ability were not strong. Children's positive self-concept was associated with more masculine responding. Longitudinal analyses showed differential change in directions consistent with the social desirability of masculine and feminine attributes. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Heterogeneity of cognitive style among depressed inpatients.

An inference from the cognitive theories of depression is that only a subset of depressed individuals should exhibit distinctively negative cognitive styles. Although this inference has been supported by previous research, attempts to characterize these depressives have yielded few identifying variables. This study of psychiatric inpatients and normal control subjects identified several characteristics of depressives with very negative cognitive styles by (a) examining traditional depression subtypes, (b) grouping depressives on the basis of clinical observations, and (c) asking whether sex, developmental events, and history and severity of depression predict cognitive styles. We found that borderline personality disorder, negative family dynamics during childhood, a history of sexual abuse, and severity of depression predict cognitive styles. We speculate that aversive developmental events may contribute to cognitive vulnerability to depression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reasoning and the weighting of attributes in attitude judgments.

Two experiments examined processes by which analyzing reasons may influence attitude judgments. Participants made multiple liking judgments on sets of stimuli that varied along 6 a priori dimensions. In Study 1, the stimulus set consisted of 64 cartoon faces with 6 binary-valued attributes (e.g., a straight vs a crooked nose). In Study 2, the stimuli were 60 digitized photographs from a college yearbook that varied along 6 dimensions uncovered through multidimensional scaling. In each experiment, half of the participants were instructed to think about the reasons why they liked each face before making their liking rating. Participants' multiple liking ratings were then regressed on the dimension values to determine how they weighted each dimension in their liking judgments. The results support a process whereby reasoning leads to increased variability and inconsistency in the weighting of stimulus information. Wilson's model of the disruptive effects of reasoning on attitude judgments ( e.g., T. D. Wilson, D. S. Dunn, D. Kraft, & D. J. Lisle, 1989 ) is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developments in Light Sources for Filming and Projection

The paper is a review of recent developments in light sources for filming and projection in both the amateur and the professional fields. Three recent major technical advances are described, namely: Halogen Lamps, Sealed Beam Lamps and Dichroic coating, as applied to lamps, are dealt with in some detail. The most important lamp designs for each particular application are also reviewed     

Who's getting the message? Children's nonverbal skill and their evaluation by teachers.

A review of 22 previous studies shows that a small but significant positive relationship exists between cognitive ability (as assessed by standard tests and school performance) and ability to identify nonverbal expressions of emotion. In the present study, 74 children in Grades 3–5 were given a motion picture test, the Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity, to assess nonverbal judging skills. Results replicate the aforementioned positive relationship and provide evidence that teachers' impressions of children's cognitive skills may be influenced by the children's sensitivity to nonverbal communication. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The face of aging: Sensitivity to facial feature relations changes with age.

Fundamental to face processing is the ability to encode information about the spatial relations among facial features (configural information). Using a bizarreness rating paradigm, we found older adults differed from young adults in rating configurally distorted faces (eyes, mouth inverted) as less bizarre across all tested orientations (0° to 180°), and were more vulnerable to orientation effects when faces were rotated beyond 90°. No age-related differences in perception of either unaltered faces or featurally distorted faces (eyes whitened, teeth blackened) occurred. These findings identify changes in sensitivity to configural information as an important factor in age-related differences in face perception. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)