As president of the American Psychological Association in 1998, I organized researchers and practitioners to work on building well-being, not just on the traditional task of reducing ill-being. ...Substantial research then found that well-being causes many external benefits, including better physical and mental health. Among the applications of Positive Psychology are national psychological accounts of well-being, Positive Psychotherapy, the classification of strengths and virtues, Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, and Positive Education. Positive Psychology has spread beyond psychology into neuroscience, health, psychiatry, theology, and even to the humanities. Positive Psychology has many critics, and I comment on the strongest criticisms. I conclude with the hope that the building of well-being will become a cornerstone of morality, politics, and religion.
The concept of early termination as an important means of transcriptional control has long been established. Even so, its role in metazoan gene expression is underappreciated. Recent technological ...advances provide novel insights into premature transcription termination (PTT). This process is frequent, widespread, and can occur close to the transcription start site (TSS), or within the gene body. Stable prematurely terminated transcripts contribute to the transcriptome as instances of alternative polyadenylation (APA). Independently of transcript stability and function, premature termination opposes the formation of full-length transcripts, thereby negatively regulating gene expression, especially of transcriptional regulators. Premature termination can be beneficial or harmful, depending on its context. As a result, multiple factors have evolved to control this process.
PTT is widespread in metazoans. It can occur close to the TSS or further downstream in the gene body.PTT generates transcripts that, depending on the circumstances, are either rapidly degraded, or are stabilised by polyadenylation, thus contributing to transcriptome diversification.Stable premature transcripts can have independent functions as noncoding (nc)RNA or mRNA encoding proteins with different properties compared with those generated by the full-length transcript.PTT can negatively regulate expression of the full-length transcript and especially controls genes encoding transcriptional regulators.Factors triggering PTT include not only canonical RNA 3′ processing and termination factors, but also other players. Many metazoan factors oppose PTT, thus limiting its damaging potential.
Multiple bench-scale filtration campaigns of Hanford tank waste supernatant on a backpulseable dead-end filtration skid have provided greater insight into the solids that cause fouling and reduce ...filter performance. The solids collected during each campaign were concentrated from the backpulse solutions and examined using automated particle analysis (APA) methods with scanning electron microscopy and X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy to categorize particle types and their morphological characteristics. We show that with APA, thousands of particles can be analyzed to provide accurate insight into the phases that may be impacting filter performance.
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•APA successfully characterized many particles from supernate tank waste samples.•Solid samples showed evidence of the impact of the water addition.•Effective APA depends on careful sample preparation to reduce bias in particles distribution.•Analysis shows that gibbsite and calcite particles tend to be larger than the metal hydroxide phases.
The American Psychological Association Publications and Communications Board Working Group on Journal Article Reporting Standards for Qualitative Research (JARS-Qual Working Group) was charged with ...examining the state of journal article reporting standards as they applied to qualitative research and with generating recommendations for standards that would be appropriate for a wide range of methods within the discipline of psychology. These standards describe what should be included in a research report to enable and facilitate the review process. This publication marks a historical moment-the first inclusion of qualitative research in APA Style, which is the basis of both the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA, 2010) and APA Style CENTRAL, an online program to support APA Style. In addition to the general JARS-Qual guidelines, the Working Group has developed standards for both qualitative meta-analysis and mixed methods research. The reporting standards were developed for psychological qualitative research but may hold utility for a broad range of social sciences. They honor a range of qualitative traditions, methods, and reporting styles. The Working Group was composed of a group of researchers with backgrounds in varying methods, research topics, and approaches to inquiry. In this article, they present these standards and their rationale, and they detail the ways that the standards differ from the quantitative research reporting standards. They describe how the standards can be used by authors in the process of writing qualitative research for submission as well as by reviewers and editors in the process of reviewing research.
Targeting the control in emissions of post-combustion carbon dioxide capture from large point sources, a simulation approach towards the estimation of important thermodynamic property parameters ...useful in designing of carbon capture and sequestration technologies is being proposed. In the current work, simulation is carried out for modeling the gas – liquid equilibrium of CO2 in two aqueous mixtures of ionic liquid 1-butyl-3-methyl imidazolium acetate (bmimAc) and amines viz. (bmimAc + 1-(2-aminoethyl) piperazine) (AEP) and (bmimAc + bis (3-aminopropyl) amine) (APA). The experimental CO2 solubilities were taken from our previously published work and is regressed with electrolyte–Non-Random Two Liquid (e-NRTL) model for the liquid phase while Redlich-Kwong (RK) equations of state (EOS) was used to model the gas phase. Various thermodynamic parameters of importance and concentration of species in the mixtures were regressed in the model using Aspen Plus 14.
Following a review of extant reporting standards for scientific publication, and reviewing 10 years of experience since publication of the first set of reporting standards by the American ...Psychological Association (APA; APA Publications and Communications Board Working Group on Journal Article Reporting Standards, 2008), the APA Working Group on Quantitative Research Reporting Standards recommended some modifications to the original standards. Examples of modifications include division of hypotheses, analyses, and conclusions into 3 groupings (primary, secondary, and exploratory) and some changes to the section on meta-analysis. Several new modules are included that report standards for observational studies, clinical trials, longitudinal studies, replication studies, and N-of-1 studies. In addition, standards for analytic methods with unique characteristics and output (structural equation modeling and Bayesian analysis) are included. These proposals were accepted by the Publications and Communications Board of APA and supersede the standards included in the 6th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA, 2010).
The tissue-specific deployment of highly extended neural 3’ UTR isoforms, generated by alternative polyadenylation (APA), is a broad and conserved feature of metazoan genomes. However, the factors ...and mechanisms that control neural APA isoforms are not well-understood. Here, we show that three ELAV/Hu RNA binding proteins (Elav, Rbp9 and Fne) have similar capacities to induce a lengthened 3’ UTR landscape in an ectopic setting. These factors promote accumulation of chromatin-associated, 3’ UTR-extended, nascent transcripts, through inhibition of proximal polyadenylation site (PAS) usage. Notably, Elav represses an unannotated splice isoform of
fne
, switching the normally cytoplasmic Fne towards the nucleus in
elav
mutants. We use genomic profiling to reveal strong and broad loss of neural APA in
elav/fne
double mutant CNS, the first genetic background to largely abrogate this distinct APA signature. Overall, we demonstrate how regulatory interplay and functionally overlapping activities of neural ELAV/Hu RBPs drives the neural APA landscape.
Neurons express much longer 3’ UTRs than other celltypes. Here, Wei and Lee et al. determine that roles of
Drosophila
ELAV/Hu RNA binding proteins are necessary and sufficient to determine the extended 3’ UTR landscape. Moreover, their compensatory functions involve splicing and subcellular regulation between ELAV/Hu members.
Obesity's complex etiology due to the interplay of environment and genetics makes it a more challenging research and health problem. Some of the contributing genetic factors that have not yet been ...examined in detail entail mRNA polyadenylation (PA). Genes with multiple PA sites express mRNA isoforms differing in coding sequence or 3′UTR through alternative polyadenylation (APA). Alterations in PA have been associated with various diseases; however, its contribution to obesity is not well-researched. Following an 11-week high-fat diet, the APA sites in the hypothalamus of two unique mouse models for polygenic obesity (Fat line) and healthy leanness (Lean line) were determined using whole transcriptome termini site sequencing (WTTS-seq). We found 17 genes of interest with differentially expressed APA (DE-APA) isoforms, among which seven were previously associated with obesity or obesity-related traits (Pdxdc1, Smyd3, Rpl14, Copg1, Pcna, Ric3, Stx3) but have not yet been studied in the context of APA. The remaining ten genes (Ccdc25, Dtd2, Gm14403, Hlf, Lyrm7, Mrpl3, Pisd-ps3, Sbsn, Slx1b, Spon1) represent novel candidates associated with obesity/adiposity due to variability brought about by differential usage of APA sites. Our results provide insights into the relationship between PA and the hypothalamus in the context of obesity, by being the first study of DE-APA sites and DE-APA isoforms in these mouse models. Future studies are needed further to explore the role of APA isoforms in polygenic obesity by expanding the scope of research to other metabolically important tissues (such as liver and adipose tissues) and investigating the potential for targeting PA as a therapeutic strategy for obesity management.
•First alternative polyadenylation (APA) study in the hypothalamus of mouse models for polygenic obesity and leanness.•Identified 574 differentially expressed APA (DE-APA) sites between the Fat and Lean selection mouse lines on HFD.•17 genes had multiple DE-APA sites producing DE-APA isoforms of the same gene.•Seven genes with DE-APA isoforms have been previously associated with obesity or related traits.•Ten genes with DE-APA isoforms represent new obesity/adiposity candidates due to differential APA site usage.
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