Characterization of extended-spectrum beta-lactamase-producing from recreational water in Athens, GA, using an undergraduate laboratory module.

We present a laboratory module that uses isolation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria from locally collected stream water samples to introduce undergraduate students to basic microbiological culture-based and molecular techniques. This module also educates them on the global public health threat of antibiotic-resistant organisms. Through eight laboratory sessions, students are involved in quality testing of water sources from their neighborhoods, followed by isolation of extended-spectrum beta-lactamase-producing .

Microbial transcriptional responses to host diet maintain gut microbiome homeostasis in the American cockroach.

Diet is considered a key determinant of gut microbiome composition and function. However, studies in the American cockroach have revealed surprising stability in hindgut microbiome taxonomic composition following shifts in host diet. To discover microbial activities underlying this stability, we analyzed microbial community transcriptomes from hindguts of cockroaches fed diverse diets.

ICE in dentistry: a medic's perspective.

The consultation skill of eliciting a patient's ideas, concerns and expectations has been around in medicine since 1984. This article looks at what this skill may offer to dentistry and the challenges and benefits it may face.

The cooperation link: Power and context moderate verbal mimicry.

Drawing on theories of mimicry as a schema-driven process, we tested whether the degree of verbal mimicry is dependent on the congruence between interactants' power dynamic (symmetric versus asymmetric), task type (cooperative versus competitive), and interaction context (negotiation versus social). Experiment 1 found higher verbal mimicry among dyads who successfully completed a cooperative problem-solving task compared with those who did not, but only under conditions of symmetric, not asymmetric, power. Experiment 2 had dyads complete either a cooperative or a competitive negotiation task, under conditions of symmetric versus asymmetric power.

The roles of action selection and actor selection in joint task settings.

Studies on joint task performance have proposed that co-acting individuals co-represent the shared task context, which implies that actors integrate their co-actor's task components into their own task representation as if they were all their own task. This proposal has been supported by results of joint tasks in which each actor is assigned a single response where selecting a response is equivalent to selecting an actor. The present study used joint task switching, which has previously shown switch costs on trials following the actor's own trial (intrapersonal switch costs) but not on trials that followed the co-actor's trial (interpersonal switch costs), suggesting that there is no task co-representation.

Action-effect sharing induces task-set sharing in joint task switching.

A central issue in the study of joint task performance has been one of whether co-acting individuals perform their partner's part of the task as if it were their own. The present study addressed this issue by using joint task switching. A pair of actors shared two tasks that were presented in a random order, whereby the relevant task and actor were cued on each trial.

Emojis: Insights, Affordances, and Possibilities for Psychological Science.

We live in a digital society that provides a range of opportunities for virtual interaction. Consequently, emojis have become popular for clarifying online communication. This presents an exciting opportunity for psychologists, as these prolific online behaviours can be used to help reveal something unique about contemporary human behaviour.

Sharing tasks or sharing actions? Evidence from the joint Simon task.

In a joint Simon task, a pair of co-acting individuals divide labors of performing a choice-reaction task in such a way that each actor responds to one type of stimuli and ignores the other type that is assigned to the co-actor. It has been suggested that the actors share the mental representation of the joint task and perform the co-actor's trials as if they were their own. However, it remains unclear exactly which aspects of co-actor's task-set the actors share in the joint Simon task.

No evidence for shared representations of task sets in joint task switching.

It has been suggested that actors co-represent a shared task context when they perform a task in a joint fashion. The present study examined the possibility of co-representation in joint task switching, in which two actors shared two tasks that switched randomly across trials. Experiment 1 showed that when an actor performed the tasks individually, switch costs were obtained if the actors responded on the previous trial (go trial), but not if they did not respond (no-go trial).