1,178 results match your criteria: "Wellesley College.[Affiliation]"

Range edges of North American marine species are tracking temperature over decades.

Glob Chang Biol

July 2021

Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA.

Understanding the dynamics of species range edges in the modern era is key to addressing fundamental biogeographic questions about abiotic and biotic drivers of species distributions. Range edges are where colonization and extirpation processes unfold, and so these dynamics are also important to understand for effective natural resource management and conservation. However, few studies to date have analyzed time series of range edge positions in the context of climate change, in part because range edges are difficult to detect.

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  • Under nitrogen limitation, plants focus more on growing roots than shoots, but how different root structures help them gather nitrogen is still unclear.
  • In a study with maize, nodal root number and root cross-sectional area showed an inverse relationship, meaning as one increased, the other decreased, regardless of nitrogen levels.
  • Maize plants with fewer, thicker nodal roots performed better in low nitrogen conditions due to their deeper rooting ability, suggesting that certain root traits might be key to improving nutrient uptake and stress adaptability in crops.
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Concept Inventories as a Complement to Learning Progressions.

CBE Life Sci Educ

June 2021

Chemistry Department, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA 02481.

Learning progressions (LPs) are descriptions of students' growing sophistication in the understanding of a particular construct through a curricular sequence. They are particularly useful for organizing complex constructs for which students do not necessarily connect concepts as taught in different courses. However, they are challenging to construct, because they attempt to linearize students' inherently nonlinear learning.

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Female scientists, who are more likely than their male counterparts to study women and report findings by sex/gender, fare worse in the article peer review process. It is unknown whether the gender of research participants influences the recommendation to publish an article describing the study. Reviewers were randomly assigned to evaluate one of three versions of an article abstract describing a clinical study conducted in men, women, or individuals.

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The assumption of near-universal bacterial detection by pattern recognition receptors is a foundation of immunology. The limits of this pattern recognition concept, however, remain undefined. As a test of this hypothesis, we determined whether mammalian cells can recognize bacteria that they have never had the natural opportunity to encounter.

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Theoretical accounts of moral decision making imply distinct ways in which episodic memory processes may contribute to judgments about moral dilemmas that entail high conflict between a harmful action and a greater good resulting from such action. Yet, studies examining the status of moral judgment in amnesic patients with medial temporal lobe (MTL) lesions have yielded inconsistent results. To examine whether and how episodic processes contribute to high conflict moral decisions, amnesic patients with MTL damage and control participants were asked to judge the moral acceptability of a harmful action across two conditions that differed in the framing of the moral question.

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Racism, disease, and vaccine refusal: People of color are dying for access to COVID-19 vaccines.

PLoS Biol

March 2021

Women's and Gender Studies, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts, United States of America.

As the vaccines against COVID are slowly becoming available, we need to consider the paradox of why so many people of color are dying from the disease yet cannot get the vaccinations. Concerns focus on vaccine refusal but lack of access is the bigger problem.

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Observations that iconicity diminishes over time in sign languages pose a puzzle--why should something so evidently useful and functional decrease? Using an archival dataset of signs elicited over 15 years from 4 first-cohort and 4 third-cohort signers of an emerging sign language (Nicaraguan Sign Language), we investigated changes in pantomimic (body-to-body) and perceptual (body-to-object) iconicity. We make three key observations: (1) there is greater variability in the signs produced by the first cohort compared to the third; (2) while both types of iconicity are evident, pantomimic iconicity is more prevalent than perceptual iconicity for both groups; and (3) across cohorts, pantomimic elements are dropped to a greater proportion than perceptual elements. The higher rate of pantomimic iconicity in the first-cohort lexicon reflects the usefulness of body-as-body mapping in language creation.

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It has been a traditionally held view that winged insects stop molting after they reach adulthood. We observed a fascinating phenomenon of a post-imago molt occurring in the neotenic females of a firefly species in Taiwan over the last two years. By rearing Lamprigera minor larvae to adults, four out of the five unmated females studied were found undergoing an extra molt 8-18 days after adult eclosion.

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Objective: It is critical to examine the powerful socializing effects of networked media on early adolescents when social media use, body self-consciousness, and social comparisons are at their peak.

Method: Using 2 subsamples (N = 374 and N = 396) of those aged 11 to 14 years from a larger survey sample of 700 middle school participants in the Northeast United States, we conducted a cross-sectional pilot survey using brief, descriptive body dissatisfaction measures directly related to social media use.

Results: Within our body dissatisfaction subsample, 19% reported dissatisfaction to body image issues.

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Objective: To examine whether children who are deaf or hard of hearing who have hearing parents can develop age-level vocabulary skills when they have early exposure to a sign language.

Study Design: This cross-sectional study of vocabulary size included 78 children who are deaf or hard of hearing between 8 and 68 months of age who were learning American Sign Language (ASL) and had hearing parents. Children who were exposed to ASL before 6 months of age or between 6 and 36 months of age were compared with a reference sample of 104 deaf and hard of hearing children who have parents who are deaf and sign.

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The phosphorylation state of both hERG and KvLQT1 mediates protein-protein interactions between these complementary cardiac potassium channel alpha subunits.

Biochim Biophys Acta Biomembr

April 2021

Department of Biological Sciences and Biochemistry Program, Wellesley College, 106 Central St., Wellesley, MA 02481, United States of America. Electronic address:

KvLQT1 and hERG are the α-subunits of the voltage-gated K channels which carry the cardiac repolarizing currents IKs and IKr, respectively. These currents function in vivo with some redundancy to maintain appropriate action potential durations (APDs) in cardiomyocytes. As such, protein-protein interactions between hERG and KvLQT1 may be important in normal cardiac electrophysiology, as well as in arrhythmia and sudden cardiac death.

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People frequently gesture when a word is on the tip of their tongue (TOT), yet research is mixed as to whether and why gesture aids lexical retrieval. We tested three accounts: the lexical retrieval hypothesis, which predicts that semantically related gestures facilitate successful lexical retrieval; the cognitive load account, which predicts that matching gestures facilitate lexical retrieval only when retrieval is hard, as in the case of a TOT; and the motor movement account, which predicts that any motor movements should support lexical retrieval. In Experiment 1 (a between-subjects study; N = 90), gesture inhibition, but not neck inhibition, affected TOT resolution but not overall lexical retrieval; participants in the gesture-inhibited condition resolved fewer TOTs than participants who were allowed to gesture.

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This study compared the extent to which Hispanic teenagers talk with mothers, fathers and extended family members about risks of sex, protection and relational sex, as well as the moderating role of teenagers' gender on the association between sexuality communication and risky sexual behaviours. Analysis is based upon 474 Hispanic young people's responses to a school-based survey recruited from six New England high schools. We (1) calculated descriptive statistics and tests of difference by teenagers' gender, and (2) ran logistic regression models for three sexual behaviours (vaginal sex, oral sex and number of sex partners) separately by gender.

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Article Synopsis
  • Fine roots and mycorrhizal fungi can either speed up or slow down leaf litter decomposition by influencing other decomposers through nutrient access and competition.
  • In a study conducted in a northern hardwood forest in New Hampshire, researchers reduced fine roots and mycorrhizal fungi to observe their effects on leaf litter decay.
  • The results showed that litter decomposed faster in areas with fine roots and mycorrhizal hyphae, indicating that both arbuscular mycorrhizal and ectomycorrhizal roots enhance decomposition, depending on the nature of their interactions with other fungi.
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Understanding connections between ecosystem nitrogen (N) cycling and invasive insect defoliation could facilitate the prediction of disturbance impacts across a range of spatial scales. In this study we investigated relationships between ecosystem N cycling and tree defoliation during a recent 2015-18 irruption of invasive gypsy moth caterpillars (), which can cause tree stress and sometimes mortality following multiple years of defoliation. Nitrogen is a critical nutrient that limits the growth of caterpillars and plants in temperate forests.

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Honey bees (genus Apis) are well known for the impressive suite of nest defenses they have evolved to protect their abundant stockpiles of food and the large colonies they sustain. In Asia, honey bees have evolved under tremendous predatory pressure from social wasps in the genus Vespa, the most formidable of which are the giant hornets that attack colonies in groups, kill adult defenders, and prey on brood. We document for the first time an extraordinary collective defense used by Apis cerana against the giant hornet Vespa soror.

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  • Thermoelectrics can convert waste heat into electricity, but achieving efficiency at low temperatures has been difficult due to reduced electronic behavior.
  • Topological materials, especially quantum limit topological semimetals, show promise in improving thermoelectric performance by maintaining high thermopower and unique conductivity properties.
  • In this study, researchers successfully demonstrated these benefits in tantalum phosphide (TaP), achieving significant thermopower and a quantized Hall effect around 40 K, indicating potential for low-temperature energy harvesting.
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Individuals of the marine chelicerate lineage Pycnogonida (sea spiders) show considerable regenerative capabilities after appendage injury or loss. In their natural habitats, especially the long legs of sea spiders are commonly lost and regenerated, as is evidenced by the frequent encounter of specimens with missing or miniature legs. In contrast to this, the collection of individuals with abnormally developed appendages or trunk regions is comparably rare.

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Objective: This study explores the effect of Donald Trump's candidacy, and first year in office, on Asian-American linked fate. We argue that the use of anti-Asian and anti-immigrant messaging during the 2016 election, and the enactment of discriminatory policies once elected, increased feelings of panethnic linked fate among Asian Americans.

Method: To test our hypotheses, we assess Asian Americans' levels of linked fate before the 2016 election, immediately after the 2016 election, and one year after the 2016 election with several time-series surveys.

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Pierce's disease (PD) in grapevine (Vitis vinifera) is caused by the bacterial pathogen Xylella fastidiosa. X. fastidiosa is limited to the xylem tissue and following infection induces extensive plant-derived xylem blockages, primarily in the form of tyloses.

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  • The study aims to help primary care providers identify and prevent major depression in adolescents by analyzing how they describe their symptoms.
  • Researchers conducted interviews with 37 adolescents aged 13-18 who showed signs of elevated depression, focusing on three main areas: stress sources, expressions of sadness, and help-seeking behaviors.
  • Findings highlight that adolescents from different ethnic backgrounds express similar themes related to subthreshold depression, providing insights that can aid healthcare providers in early identification and support of at-risk youth.
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Quantity, Content, and Context Matter: Associations Among Social Technology Use and Sleep Habits in Early Adolescents.

J Adolesc Health

July 2021

Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts; Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.

Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the associations of social technology access and content, bedtime behaviors, parental phone restrictions, and timing and duration of sleep on school nights in early adolescents.

Methods: Adolescents (aged 11-15 years, n = 772) in the Northeast U.S.

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Background: Adolescent depression carries a high burden of disease worldwide, but access to care for this population is limited. Prevention is one solution to curtail the negative consequences of adolescent depression. Internet interventions to prevent adolescent depression can overcome barriers to access, but few studies examine long-term outcomes.

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