Living Within the Macrophage: Dimorphic Fungal Pathogen Intracellular Metabolism.

and are related thermally dimorphic fungal pathogens that cause deadly mycoses (i.e., histoplasmosis and paracoccidioidomycosis, respectively) primarily in North, Central, and South America.

Ensemble size judgments account for size constancy.

The natural environment is full of redundant information that the visual system compresses into an ensemble representation by averaging features of groups of items. Ensemble perception has been shown to operate with remarkable flexibility, efficiently integrating information across a variety of visual domains. In the current set of experiments, we tested whether average size representations reflect the physical size of objects displayed on a screen or perceptual transformations due to size constancy.

Manganese import protects Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium against nitrosative stress.

Nitric oxide (NO˙) is a radical molecule produced by mammalian phagocytic cells as part of the innate immune response to bacterial pathogens. It exerts its antimicrobial activity in part by impairing the function of metalloproteins, particularly those containing iron and zinc cofactors. The pathogenic Gram-negative bacterium Salmonella enterica serovar typhimurium undergoes dynamic changes in its cellular content of the four most common metal cofactors following exposure to NO˙ stress.

Contextual factors shaping diverse political action: A commentary on the special issue on adolescent political development.

This timely special issue on political development broadens the empirical conversation around how adolescents are engaging politically and civically, what factors shape their involvement, how their involvement impacts their wellbeing, and how to engage diverse populations of youth in the political system. From the perspectives of critical consciousness and sociopolitical development, we reflect on two themes in particular: the importance of context and the various ways in which political development and involvement is conceptualized and defined. We conclude with suggestions for future empirical work and implications for policy and practice.

Shifting perceptions of social class: Race-based shifts in class-related occupations.

Based on social expectations associating White and Black racial categories with higher and lower ends of the social hierarchy, respectively, the criteria used in interpersonal judgments of social class categorizations should differ between White and Black targets, with Black targets needing objectively lower criteria than White targets to achieve a particular subjective level of social class. In an analysis of the occupations assigned to Working- and Middle-Class targets, respondents assigned occupations of higher financial and educational attainment, higher social status, more influence, and greater desirability to a White target than to a comparably described Black target. Despite this pattern, however, respondents judged the occupations assigned to a Black target as lower in prestige than those they assigned to a White target.

Sexual Orientation Complexity and Psychosocial/Health Outcomes.

Individuals whose sexual attraction or behavior varies from others' expectations based on their sexual identity were initially described as exhibiting sexual orientation discordance. This conceptualization has been challenged as inaccurate and value-laden, and "branchedness" has been suggested as a value-neutral description. Using a United States national sample of 4,530 participants from the 2013-2014 Center for Collegiate Mental Health database, we challenge the empirical distinctness of the phenomenon of sexual orientation discordance by 1) replicating previous work that indicates that branched individuals evidence unique psychosocial and health outcomes relative to non-branched individuals and 2) using stepwise regression to demonstrate that these differences in outcomes can be accounted for by variation in sexual attraction, behavior, and identity and that "discordance" between indicators failed to explain additional variation in outcomes.

Optimization Rules for SARS-CoV-2 M Antivirals: Ensemble Docking and Exploration of the Coronavirus Protease Active Site.

Coronaviruses are viral infections that have a significant ability to impact human health. Coronaviruses have produced two pandemics and one epidemic in the last two decades. The current pandemic has created a worldwide catastrophe threatening the lives of over 15 million as of July 2020.

The Aspergillus nidulans IQGAP orthologue SepG is required for constriction of the contractile actomyosin ring.

In this research we report that the sepG1 mutation in Aspergillus nidulans resides in gene AN9463, which is predicted to encode an IQGAP orthologue. The genetic lesion is predicted to result in a G-to-R substitution at residue 1637 of the 1737-residue protein in a highly conserved region of the RasGAP-C-terminal (RGCT) domain. When grown at restrictive temperature, strains expressing the sepG (sepG1) allele are aseptate, with reduced colony growth and aberrantly formed conidiophores.

Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation in Mathematics and Biology Education.

With advances in computing, agent-based models (ABMs) have become a feasible and appealing tool to study biological systems. ABMs are seeing increased incorporation into both the biology and mathematics classrooms as powerful modeling tools to study processes involving substantial amounts of stochasticity, nonlinear interactions, and/or heterogeneous spatial structures. Here we present a brief synopsis of the agent-based modeling approach with an emphasis on its use to simulate biological systems, and provide a discussion of its role and limitations in both the biology and mathematics classrooms.

LeafMachine: Using machine learning to automate leaf trait extraction from digitized herbarium specimens.

Premise: Obtaining phenotypic data from herbarium specimens can provide important insights into plant evolution and ecology but requires significant manual effort and time. Here, we present LeafMachine, an application designed to autonomously measure leaves from digitized herbarium specimens or leaf images using an ensemble of machine learning algorithms.

Methods And Results: We trained LeafMachine on 2685 randomly sampled specimens from 138 herbaria and evaluated its performance on specimens spanning 20 diverse families and varying widely in resolution, quality, and layout.

Ultrasonic Bone Assessment Using the Backscatter Amplitude Decay Constant.

Ultrasonic backscatter techniques are being developed to detect changes in bone caused by osteoporosis. The present study introduces a new technique that measures the exponential decay in the amplitude of the backscatter signal quantified by a parameter called the backscatter amplitude decay constant (BADC). Measurements were performed on 54 specimens of cancellous bone from 14 human femurs using a 3.

Emotional judgments of scenes are influenced by unintentional averaging.

Background: The visual system uses ensemble perception to summarize visual input across a variety of domains. This heuristic operates at multiple levels of vision, compressing information as basic as oriented lines or as complex as emotional faces. Given its pervasiveness, the ensemble unsurprisingly can influence how an individual item is perceived, and vice versa.

The Influence of Gender on Perceptions of Culpability and Victim Status in Statutory Rape Offenses Involving Teachers.

Perceptions of child sexual abuse and statutory rape vary based on the gender of the victim, the perpetrator, and the combination of both. We extend existing research to examine attributions of responsibility and punitive preferences for student victims in student-teacher sexual relationships contingent on the gender dyad of the student and teacher and the interaction between the gender dyad and respondent gender. Participants ( = 648) were randomly assigned to vignettes wherein the gender of the student and teacher were manipulated (female teacher/male student; female teacher/female student; male teacher/female student; male teacher/male student).

Design and synthesis of diazine-based panobinostat analogues for HDAC8 inhibition.

Guided by computational analysis, herein we report the design, synthesis and evaluation of four novel diazine-based histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACis). The targets of interest (TOI) are analogues of panobinostat, one of the most potent and versatile HDACi reported. By simply replacing the phenyl core of panobinostat with that of a diazine derivative, docking studies against HDAC2 and HDAC8 revealed that the four analogues exhibit inhibition activities comparable to that of panobinostat.

What Variables Correlate With Different Clinical Outcomes of Abusive Head Injury?

Background: The spectrum of injury severity for abusive head trauma (AHT) severity is broad, but outcomes are unequivocally worse than accidental trauma. There are few publications that analyze different outcomes of AHT.

Objective: To determine variables associated with different outcomes of AHT.

Correction to: Charting How Wealth Shapes Educational Pathways from Childhood to Early Adulthood: A Developmental Process Model.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Sexually Transmitted Infections and Contraceptive Use in Adolescents.

Introduction: Although a number of contraception methods exist, long-acting reversible contraceptives have been recommended for female adolescents owing to their low failure rates. However, concern exists that the increasing use of long-acting reversible contraceptive among female adolescents may have unintended consequences of decreasing condom use for the prevention of sexually transmitted infections. Despite this concern, few studies have directly explored the relationship between the use of long-acting reversible contraceptive versus other forms of contraception and diagnosis of sexually transmitted infections in female adolescents.

Precipitation, landscape properties and land use interactively affect water quality of tropical freshwaters.

Globally, conversion of pristine areas to anthropogenic landscapes is one of the main causes of ecosystem service losses. Land uses associated with urbanization and farming can be major sources of pollution to freshwaters promoting artificial inputs of several elements, leading to impaired water quality. However, how the effects of land use on freshwater quality are contingent on properties of the local landscape and climate is still poorly understood.

Flexible target templates improve visual search accuracy for faces depicting emotion.

Theories of visual attention hypothesize that target selection depends upon matching visual inputs to a memory representation of the target - i.e., the target or attentional template.

Design of Novel Histone Deacetylase 4 Inhibitors: Design Guidelines for Improved Binding Affinity.

Histone deacetylases (HDAC) are being targeted for a number of diseases such as cancer, inflammatory disease, and neurological disorders. Within this family of 18 isozymes, HDAC4 is a prime target for glioma, one of the most aggressive brain tumors reported. Thus, the development of HDAC4 inhibitors could present a novel therapeutic route for glioma.

Predictive sampling effort and species-area relationship models for estimating richness in fragmented landscapes.

Loss of habitat, specifically deforestation, is a major driver of biodiversity loss. Species-area relationship (SAR) models traditionally have been used for estimating species richness, species loss as a function of habitat loss, and extrapolation of richness for given areas. Sampling-species relationships (SSRs) are interrelated yet separate drivers for species richness estimates.

Synthesis and Characterization of Strongly Solvatochromic Molybdenum(III) Complexes.

A series of seven molybdenum(III) complexes with the general formula of [Mo(diimine)Cl] were synthesized and characterized by X-ray diffraction, IR, cyclic voltammetry (CV), and UV-vis. The complexes were discovered to be highly solvatochromic, showing shifts in λ between ∼120 and 170 nm in solvents ranging from water to acetone. Varying the substituents on the diimine ligand influenced the absorption energy such that electron-withdrawing groups induced a red shift while electron-donating groups exhibited the opposite effect.

Propargylglycine-based antimicrobial compounds are targets of TolC-dependent efflux systems in Escherichia coli.

A library of novel l-propargylglycine-based compounds were designed and synthesized with the goal of inhibiting the growth of Gram-negative bacteria by targeting LpxC, a highly conserved Gram-negative enzyme which performs an essential step in the lipid A biosynthetic pathway. These compounds were designed with and without a nucleoside and had varying tail structures, which modulate their lipophilicity. The synthetic scheme was improved compared to previous methods: a methyl ester intermediate was converted to a hydroxamic acid, which obviated the need for a THP protecting group and improved the yields and purity of the final compounds.

Exploring Relationships between the Density of Charged Tracts within Disordered Regions and Phase Separation.

Biomolecular condensates form through a process termed phase separation and play diverse roles throughout the cell. Proteins that undergo phase separation often have disordered regions that can engage in weak, multivalent interactions; however, our understanding of the sequence grammar that defines which proteins phase separate is far from complete. Here, we show that proteins that display a high density of charged tracts within intrinsically disordered regions are likely to be constituents of electrostatically organized biomolecular condensates.