Macrophage Xanthine Oxidoreductase Links LPS Induced Lung Inflammatory Injury to NLRP3 Inflammasome Expression and Mitochondrial Respiration.

Acute lung injury (ALI) and the acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) remain poorly treated inflammatory lung disorders. Both reactive oxygen species (ROS) and macrophages are involved in the pathogenesis of ALI/ARDS. Xanthine oxidoreductase (XOR) is an ROS generator that plays a central role in the inflammation that contributes to ALI. To elucidate the role of macrophage-specific XOR in endotoxin induced ALI, we developed a conditional myeloid specific XOR knockout in mice. Myeloid specific ablation of XOR in LPS insufflated mice markedly attenuated lung injury demonstrating the essential role of XOR in this response. Macrophages from myeloid specific XOR knockout exhibited loss of inflammatory activation and increased expression of anti-inflammatory genes/proteins. Transcriptional profiling of whole lung tissue of LPS insufflated XOR fl/fl//LysM-Cre mice demonstrated an important role for XOR in expression and activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome and acquisition of a glycolytic phenotype by inflammatory macrophages. These results identify XOR as an unexpected link between macrophage redox status, mitochondrial respiration and inflammatory activation.

Armed robbery and the meanings of money.

In this study, we investigate the meanings active armed robbers give to money before, during, and after their crimes and how these meanings shape their offending. We do so by examining interviews undertaken from 1994 to 1995 with robbers in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. Prior to their robberies, the interviewees' desperation leads them to define money as essential to survival. Immediately following robberies and in looking back on them, they come to view this essential money in other ways as well-as too time-consuming to get, as "easy," or as guilt-free. These meanings facilitate the contradictory way robbers see money as "fast" after offences. We discuss how these shifting meanings of money shape and are shaped by robbers' structural positions, cultural outlooks, and social relations. In doing so, we also help to explain how the shifting meanings of money play into criminogenic cycles of predatory offending.

Reconsidering classic ideas in speech communication.

The papers in this special issue provide a critical look at some historical ideas that have had an influence on research and teaching in the field of speech communication. They also address widely used methodologies or address long-standing methodological challenges in the areas of speech perception and speech production. The goal is to reconsider and evaluate the need for caution or replacement of historical ideas with more modern results and methods. The contributions provide respectful historical context to the classic ideas, as well as new original research or discussion that clarifies the limitations of the original ideas.

Reconsidering commonly used stimuli in speech perception experiments.

This paper examines some commonly used stimuli in speech perception experiments and raises questions about their use, or about the interpretations of previous results. The takeaway messages are: 1) the Hillenbrand vowels represent a particular dialect rather than a gold standard, and English vowels contain spectral dynamics that have been largely underappreciated, 2) the /ɑ/ context is very common but not clearly superior as a context for testing consonant perception, 3) /ɑ/ is particularly problematic when testing voice-onset-time perception because it introduces strong confounds in the formant transitions, 4) /dɑ/ is grossly overrepresented in neurophysiological studies and yet is insufficient as a generalized proxy for "speech perception," and 5) digit tests and matrix sentences including the coordinate response measure are systematically insensitive to important patterns in speech perception. Each of these stimulus sets and concepts is described with careful attention to their unique value and also cases where they might be misunderstood or over-interpreted.

The Role of the Root in Spoken Word Recognition in Hebrew: An Auditory Gating Paradigm.

Very few studies have investigated online spoken word recognition in templatic languages. In this study, we investigated both lexical (neighborhood density and frequency) and morphological (role of root morpheme) aspects of spoken word recognition of Hebrew, a templatic language, using the traditional gating paradigm. Additionally, we compared the traditional gating paradigm with a novel, phoneme-based gating paradigm. The phoneme-based approach allows for better control of information available at each gate. We found lexical effects with high-frequency words and low neighborhood density words being recognized at earlier gates. We also found that earlier access to root-morpheme information enabled word recognition at earlier gates. Finally, we showed that both the traditional gating paradigm and gating by phoneme paradigm yielded equivalent results.

The genome sequence of the chicken of the woods fungus, Laetiporus sulphureus (Bull.) Murrill, 1920.

We present a genome assembly from an individual Laetiporus sulphureus (the chicken of the woods fungus; Basidiomycota; Agaricomycetes; Polyporales; Laetiporaceae). The genome sequence is 37.4 megabases in span. The complete assembly is scaffolded into 14 chromosomal pseudomolecules.

Conserved ancestral tropical niche but different continental histories explain the latitudinal diversity gradient in brush-footed butterflies.

The global increase in species richness toward the tropics across continents and taxonomic groups, referred to as the latitudinal diversity gradient, stimulated the formulation of many hypotheses to explain the underlying mechanisms of this pattern. We evaluate several of these hypotheses to explain spatial diversity patterns in a butterfly family, the Nymphalidae, by assessing the contributions of speciation, extinction, and dispersal, and also the extent to which these processes differ among regions at the same latitude. We generate a time-calibrated phylogeny containing 2,866 nymphalid species (~45% of extant diversity). Neither speciation nor extinction rate variations consistently explain the latitudinal diversity gradient among regions because temporal diversification dynamics differ greatly across longitude. The Neotropical diversity results from low extinction rates, not high speciation rates, and biotic interchanges with other regions are rare. Southeast Asia is also characterized by a low speciation rate but, unlike the Neotropics, is the main source of dispersal events through time. Our results suggest that global climate change throughout the Cenozoic, combined with tropical niche conservatism, played a major role in generating the modern latitudinal diversity gradient of nymphalid butterflies.

Brief report: The uricase mutation in humans increases our risk for cancer growth.

BACKGROUND: Recent studies suggest that fructose, as well as its metabolite, uric acid, have been associated with increased risk for both cancer incidence and growth. Both substances are known to cause oxidative stress to mitochondria and to reduce adenosine triphosphate (ATP) production by blocking aconitase in the Krebs cycle. The uricase mutation that occurred in the Miocene has been reported to increase serum uric acid and to amplify the effects of fructose to stimulate fat accumulation. Here we tested whether the uricase mutation can also stimulate tumor growth. METHODS: Experiments were performed in mice in which uricase was inactivated by either knocking out the gene or by inhibiting uricase with oxonic acid. We also studied mice transgenic for uricase. These mice were injected with breast cancer cells and followed for 4 weeks. RESULTS: The inhibition or knockout of uricase was associated with a remarkable increase in tumor growth and metastases. In contrast, transgenic uricase mice showed reduced tumor growth. CONCLUSION: A loss of uricase increases the risk for tumor growth. Prior studies have shown that the loss of the mutation facilitated the ability of fructose to increase fat which provided a survival advantage for our ancestors that came close to extinction from starvation in the mid Miocene. Today, however, excessive fructose intake is rampant and increasing our risk not only for obesity and metabolic syndrome, but also cancer. Obesity-associated cancer may be due, in part, to a mutation 15 million years ago that acted as a thrifty gene.

The evolution and stability of multi-ethnic residential neighbourhoods in England.

This paper analyses the most ethnically diverse spaces in England. We define multi-ethnic neighbourhoods as spaces where no one group is in a majority and at least five ethnic groups have representation. Around 4% of all English neighbourhoods (Lower Layer Super Output Areas) met these criteria in 2011. Often mislabelled as "segregated" spaces, the growth of ethnically diverse neighbourhoods helps benchmark increased inter-ethnic contact, yet we know very little about their spatial extent and the dynamics of their expansion. We use Census data for 1991, 2001, and 2011 to consider how neighbourhood-level diversity has changed during a period of substantial increase in ethnic diversity at the national scale. To what extent did these highly diverse areas grow, and what is the geography of that growth? Which types of areas did these neighbourhoods transition from? For example, were multi-ethnic neighbourhoods formerly low or moderately diverse, and which groups dominated these locales? We also consider if multi-ethnic neighbourhoods are here to stay, or if they are compositionally unstable. We reveal a surprising aspect in England's neighbourhood transitions: multi-ethnic neighbourhoods are highly stable, and increasingly so. Some 88% of neighbourhoods that were multi-ethnic in 1991 retained their high-diversity status in 2001, while over 95% of 2001 multi-ethnic neighbourhoods remained highly diverse by 2011. This is a different story to that of the USA, where high-diversity neighbourhoods have received more scholarly attention, and where these neighbourhoods have high attrition rates, functioning as stepping stones to another type of space. We explore the demographic and housing dynamics associated with this stability.

"A Labour of Love": Active Lifestyle Entrepreneurship (Occupational Devotion) During a Time of COVID-19.

The Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis management strategies adopted by world leaders across the globe in 2020 impacted the work-life balance of billions of people. Entire populations were forced to stay at home and maintain a safe distance from family members, friends, colleagues, and customers. Occupational devotion is defined as a feeling of strong, positive attachment to a form of self-enhancing employment, where achievement and fulfillment are high, and the core activity has such intense appeal that the line between this work and leisure is virtually erased. Although it is not a new concept, this area of the serious leisure perspective has been largely overlooked by scholars observing the world of sport events and entrepreneurship. Using Creative Analytical Practice (CAP), a post-qualitative methodology, we present the personal narrative of a New Zealand-based active lifestyle entrepreneur who, as a result of a nationwide COVID19 lockdown, was forced to re-assess his long-established occupational devotion. Our co-constructed story offers an emotive insight into the personal cost and consequences of finding yourself living in a lockdown.

Does the Speech Cue Profile Affect Response to Amplitude Envelope Distortion?

Purpose A broad area of interest to our group is to understand the consequences of the "cue profile" (a measure of how well a listener can utilize audible temporal and/or spectral cues for listening scenarios in which a subset of cues is distorted. The study goal was to determine if listeners whose cue profile indicated that they primarily used temporal cues for recognition would respond differently to speech-envelope distortion than listeners who utilized both spectral and temporal cues. Method Twenty-five adults with sensorineural hearing loss participated in the study. The listener's cue profile was measured by analyzing identification patterns for a set of synthetic syllables in which envelope rise time and formant transitions were varied. A linear discriminant analysis quantified the relative contributions of spectral and temporal cues to identification patterns. Low-context sentences in noise were processed with time compression, wide-dynamic range compression, or a combination of time compression and wide-dynamic range compression to create a range of speech-envelope distortions. An acoustic metric, a modified version of the Spectral Correlation Index, was calculated to quantify envelope distortion. Results A binomial generalized linear mixed-effects model indicated that envelope distortion, the cue profile, the interaction between envelope distortion and the cue profile, and the pure-tone average were significant predictors of sentence recognition. Conclusions The listeners with good perception of spectro-temporal contrasts were more resilient to the detrimental effects of envelope compression than listeners who used temporal cues to a greater extent. The cue profile may provide information about individual listening that can direct choice of hearing aid parameters, especially those parameters that affect the speech envelope.

Mixed measures: different definitions of racially diverse neighborhoods compared.

Focusing on neighborhoods that researchers consider particularly diverse, this paper assesses the ways scholars have characterized neighborhood racial diversity in the United States. Social scientists use a variety of methods to define and measure highly racially diverse places, resulting in a single label being used to capture very different aspects of a census tract's racial demography. We examine the criteria used to classify neighborhood racial diversity to bring perspective on the logic behind various approaches. We then group the range of schemas into several broad types from which we choose a representative four. These form the basis for a series of empirical comparisons using U.S. Census data to reveal the contexts where the taxonomies produce similar outcomes and those where they do not. The analysis goes on to consider the implications stemming from the choices social scientists make when they opt for one approach over another.

Recovering Better from COVID-19 Will Need a Rethink of Multilateralism.

The world economy is experiencing a deep recession amid a still unchecked pandemic. But the commitment to recovering better will not materialize if, as happened after the global financial crisis, the advanced economies resort to a policy mix of austerity, liberalization and quantitative easing. Such an approach will only worsen a whole set of pre-existing conditions and in particular, high inequality, excessive debt (both public and private and weak investment-that will lead to a lost decade, particularly for developing countries. What is needed instead is an expansionary plan for global recovery, that can credibly return even the most vulnerable countries to a stronger position than before the crisis. This paper sets out some of the key elements of such a plan and argues that its implementation will require systematic reforms to the multilateral trade and financial system if a more resilient recovery is to turn into a sustainable and inclusive future.

James Petiver's 1717 Papilionum Britanniae: an analysis of the first comprehensive account of British butterflies (Lepidoptera: Papilionoidea).

Although the contributions of James Petiver to the early development of systematic natural history are widely acknowledged, he is often criticized for scientific, curatorial and even social shortcomings. This rather dubious reputation is at odds with his standing among entomologists as 'the father of British butterflies'. Shortly before his death in 1718, Petiver published a densely packed eight-page pamphlet entitled Papilionum Britanniae. Analysis of this work, which at first sight makes an apparently exaggerated claim of accounting for 'above eighty English butterflies', reveals that Petiver was an original, perceptive and truly systematic entomologist, in several important respects ahead of his time.

Introduction to the special issue on the phonetics of under-documented languages.

As scientists, it is important to sample as broadly as possible; however, there is a bias in the research performed on the speech acoustics of the world's languages toward work on languages of convenience (e.g., English). This special issue seeks to initiate increased publication of acoustic research on the sounds of the world's languages. The special issue contains a sample of 25 under-documented languages. While large relative to previous work (particularly in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America), the 23 articles in this issue just scratch the surface. To have a better understanding of the fundamentals of speech communication, it is imperative, as a research community, to make a concerted effort to learn more about how speech sounds are perceived and produced in a wide variety of languages.

Contributions to Speech-Cue Weighting in Older Adults With Impaired Hearing.

Purpose In a previous paper (Souza, Wright, Blackburn, Tatman, & Gallun, 2015), we explored the extent to which individuals with sensorineural hearing loss used different cues for speech identification when multiple cues were available. Specifically, some listeners placed the greatest weight on spectral cues (spectral shape and/or formant transition), whereas others relied on the temporal envelope. In the current study, we aimed to determine whether listeners who relied on temporal envelope did so because they were unable to discriminate the formant information at a level sufficient to use it for identification and the extent to which a brief discrimination test could predict cue weighting patterns. Method Participants were 30 older adults with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss. The first task was to label synthetic speech tokens based on the combined percept of temporal envelope rise time and formant transitions. An individual profile was derived from linear discriminant analysis of the identification responses. The second task was to discriminate differences in either temporal envelope rise time or formant transitions. The third task was to discriminate spectrotemporal modulation in a nonspeech stimulus. Results All listeners were able to discriminate temporal envelope rise time at levels sufficient for the identification task. There was wide variability in the ability to discriminate formant transitions, and that ability predicted approximately one third of the variance in the identification task. There was no relationship between performance in the identification task and either amount of hearing loss or ability to discriminate nonspeech spectrotemporal modulation. Conclusions The data suggest that listeners who rely to a greater extent on temporal cues lack the ability to discriminate fine-grained spectral information. The fact that the amount of hearing loss was not associated with the cue profile underscores the need to characterize individual abilities in a more nuanced way than can be captured by the pure-tone audiogram.

The Instability of Highly Racially Diverse Residential Neighborhoods in the United States.

This research concerns the location and stability of highly racially diverse census tracts in the United States. Like some other scholars, the authors define such tracts conservatively, requiring the significant presence of at least three racialized groups. Of the approximately 65,000 tracts in the country, there were 197 highly diverse tracts in 1990 and 998 in 2010. Most were located in large metropolitan areas. Stably integrated highly diverse tracts were the exception rather than the rule. The vast majority of highly diverse tracts transitioned to that state from being predominantly White. Those that transitioned from being highly racially diverse were most likely to transition to being majority Latino. Although the absolute level of metropolitan racial diversity has no effect on the stability of high-diversity tracts, change in both metropolitan-scale racial diversity and population raise the probability of a tract's transitioning to high diversity. Metropolitan-scale racial diversity did not affect the stability of highly diverse tracts, but it did alter the patterns of succession from them. The authors also found that highly diverse tracts were unstable and less likely to form in metropolitan areas with high percentages of Blacks. Increased metropolitan-level diversity mutes this Black population share effect by reducing the probability of high-diversity tract succession to a Black majority.

Effect of Two Complementary Mass-Scale Media Interventions on Handwashing with Soap among Mothers.

Poor handwashing behavior is a major cause of morbidity and mortality globally. We evaluated two complementary mass-scale media interventions targeting mothers to increase the frequency of handwashing with soap; one using TV advertising, and the other mobile phone messaging. Television Commercials (TVCs): Mothers of 4-12 year-old children (n = 756) were randomly allocated among four arms: Three different branded TVCs and a fourth, control TVC unrelated to handwashing. TVCs were embedded in blocks of unrelated commercials and shown once a week over four weeks in participants' own homes. Mobile messages: New mothers (n = 598) and mothers of 4-7 year-old children (n = 501) were enrolled in a treatment or control arm. Mothers in the treatment arm received branded mobile phone messages twice weekly for 8 weeks (new mothers) or 4 weeks (mothers of 4-7 year-olds). For TVCs, there were higher rates of handwashing with soap at key occasions in the first (RR: 1.33, p = .002) and second (RR: 1.26, p = .041) of three treatment arms, or 0.4 additional handwashes with soap on key occasions daily. In the mobile study, new mothers (adj-RR: 1.04, p = .035) and general mothers (RR: 1.07, p = .007) receiving the intervention were more likely to wash their hands with soap on key occasions than those in the control group, corresponding to 1.3 and 1.0 more occasions daily. These interventions were associated with significantly greater handwashing with soap, consistent with the hypothesis that branded mass communications can impact habitual lifestyle behaviors relevant to public health.

Using 'Theories of Change' and responsive feedback to design a digital service business for patent and proprietary medicine vendors in Nigeria.

In a paper titled "Responsive feedback: Towards a new paradigm to enhance intervention effectiveness", Viswanath et al. argue that dominant models of intervention design do not account for the complexity and unpredictability of implementation challenges.  Particularly in the behavioural sciences, intervention designs need to consider many factors that will be uncertain, or unknown, at the beginning of a new project.   This letter describes how we were able to respond to feedback during the design phase of a proof-of-concept project to create a digital service business for Nigerian patent and proprietary medicine vendors (PPMVs).  Our approach was to create an initial 'Theory of Change' (ToC) based on a similar project with Kenyan shopkeepers.  This ToC was revised following user feedback and a landscape analysis with key stakeholders.  The new ToC required us to access additional funding to create a 'digital ordering' facility for the PPMVs.  Digital ordering provides a mechanism whereby we can reduce the prevalence of counterfeit medicines, offer the PPMVs credit and group-buying facilities, and reduce supply chain costs through co-distribution with fast-moving consumer goods.  An important learning point was that while our focus was on designing a platform to meet users' needs, changes in regulation meant that we spent considerably more time than anticipated meeting the needs of multiple stakeholders. However, the importance of ensuring stakeholders' continued buy-in cannot be underestimated and has likely increased the sustainability of the project in the longer term.  As Viswanath et al. suggest, for responsive approaches to be widely adopted needs more flexibility than exists in current funding models and project plans.  Both funding bodies and grantees will need to be more responsive to feedback coming from the field.

Where science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) graduates move: Human capital, employment patterns, and interstate migration in the United States.

This research investigates the interstate migration of workers in the United States who have earned an undergraduate STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) degree compared with those who have not. We build on previous studies that (a) classified "skilled" workers as having earned an undergraduate degree (b) used net migration gain or loss as a yardstick of relative destination attraction, and (c) advanced the idea that physical amenities play an outsized role in labour market preferences for skilled workers. We calibrate the attractivity of states for three levels of human capital and then evaluate these assessments of relative attractivity to show that workers with different types of human capital respond to different labour market signals in contradictory ways. Amenity, measured by heating degree days, has little to do with the state-to-state migration of workers who have a STEM degree, yet helps explain the migration patterns of workers with no undergraduate degree. Employment growth in a state influences migration for degreed workers in the recessionary years but not in the period of recovery. The opposite holds for workers without a degree. States with high percentages of any type of degreed workers attract both STEM and non-STEM degreed migrants but not those without a degree. States with a large share of STEM degreed workers in their degreed workforce are especially attractive for STEM degreed migrants. The conclusions discuss what the findings imply about diverging access to labour market opportunity by human capital and state higher education policy.