Distance Preferences Research Articles

Decision-making in honeybee swarms based on quality and distance information of candidate nest sites

In the nest-site selection process of honeybee swarms, an individual bee performs a waggle dance to communicate information about direction, quality, and distance of a discovered site to other bees at the swarm. Initially, different groups of bees dance to represent different potential sites, but eventually the swarm usually reaches an agreement for only one site. Here, we model the nest-site selection process in honeybee swarms of Apis mellifera and show how the swarms make adaptive decisions based on a trade-off between the quality and distance to candidate nest sites. We use bifurcation analysis and stochastic simulations to reveal that the swarm’s site distance preference is moderate>near>far when the swarms choose between low quality sites. However, the distance preference becomes near>moderate>far when the swarms choose between high quality sites. Our simulations also indicate that swarms with large population size prefer nearer sites and, in addition, are more adaptive at making decisions based on available information compared to swarms with smaller population size.

Research on the Dominate Transport Distance of High-Speed Railway

High-speed railway is recognized as a fast, safe, comfortable, low-power, and large volumes of new transportation mode. This paper proposes a dominate transport distance model with the consideration of origin-destination distance, travelling purpose, income, time value and transport preference. A numerical experiment indicates that km is the most attractive distance for the high-speed railway. In km, the air plane occupies most passenger market. The high-speed railway has no advantage when the distance is longer than 1600 km.

Comparison of depressive behaviors induced by three stress paradigms in rats

Depression is a severe psychiatric disorder, which is a huge burden on both the individual and society as a whole. Neurobiological studies of depression on humans are limited by ethics. Animal models established by stressor stimulation are currently effective tools for the neurobiological study of depression. In this study, we comparatively analyzed behavioral heterogeneity, gender, and individual differences in animal models reflecting early life stress, adverse events in adulthood, or combined early life stress and stressful events in adulthood. Results demonstrated that these three different stressors induced dissimilar depressive behaviors. Maternal deprivation (MD) induced severe anhedonia. Chronic unpredictable stress (CUPS) induced the most severe decrease in desperation behavior, moderate anhedonia, and moderate loss of interest in exploration of the surroundings. Dural stress (DS) exposure caused the most severe decline in interest in exploring the surroundings. Male rats all exhibited some form of depressive behavior after they were exposed to MD, CUPS and DS. In contrast, no depressive performance was observed in female rats after they were exposed to MD, and the CUPS only decreased the total distance the rats crawled in the open field test. Rats exhibited more obvious individual differences in floating time than in the vertical activity, total distance and sucrose preference rate when experiencing stress. Our study suggests that different stressors may induce different depression subtypes and that the observed differences in the prevalence of depression between genders in the clinic may be due to effect of psychosocial factors which affects humans more strongly than rats. Our study also suggests that individual difference is more obvious in desperation behaviors than that in exploratory interest and anhedonia when the individual experienced stress.

Urban travel behavior analyses and route prediction based on floating car data

The lack of sufficient data is the result of the inherent complexity of gathering and subsequently analyzing route choice behavior, which unfortunately hasn’t been revealed much by existing literatures. With the assistance of GIS technology and taxi-based floating car data, the authors found that the majority of urban drivers would not travel along the shortest or the fastest paths. This paper studies the factors that influence commuters’ route choice and route switching based on objective real-world observations of travel behavior. Possible factors that may affect driver’s route choice are then analyzed and regression methods were introduced to attain if there existing a clear quantitative relationship between drivers’ route choice and these factors. The result indicates that such connection is difficult to be established. Consequently, eight scenarios were proposed to quantify the influence of various potential factors. Analysis shows that travel distance, travel time and road preference have comparable higher influence on drivers’ route choice. To this end, a new route prediction model is proposed, adopting the road usage as the weight and the shortest route’s length and the fastest route’s time as the constraints. The proposed model was implemented and validated using the FCD data of Shenzhen, China. The results indicate that by combining the external influence with the driver’s personal preference, the predicted travel route has a higher matching ratio with the actual one, which consequently indicates the effectiveness of the model.

Distance, Transaction Costs, and Preferences in European Trade

Beckerman (1956) and Linder (1961) have suggested that international trade is not determined by supply-side factors alone—perceptions about foreign countries and country preferences matter. We explore the relation between exports, cultural distance, and country preferences in Europe. The results show that several distance and preference-related variables, based on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, income gaps, and voting patterns in the Eurovision Song Contest, are significantly related to bilateral trade. We conclude that cultural distance and preferences influence trade through several channels, both indirectly through transaction costs and more directly, as countries seem to prefer some trade partners before others.

A Virtual Joy-Stick Study of Emotional Responses and Social Motivation in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

A new virtual reality task was employed which uses preference for interpersonal distance to social stimuli to examine social motivation and emotion perception in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders. Nineteen high function children with higher functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder (HFASD) and 23 age, gender, and IQ matched children with typical development (TD) used a joy stick to position themselves closer or further from virtual avatars while attempting to identify six emotions expressed by the avatars, happiness, fear, anger, disgust, sadness, and surprise that were expressed at different levels of intensity. The results indicated that children with HFASD displayed significantly less approach behavior to the positive happy expression than did children with TD, who displayed increases in approach behavior to higher intensities of happy expressions. Alternatively, all groups tended to withdraw from negative emotions to the same extent and there were no diagnostic group differences in accuracy of recognition of any of the six emotions. This pattern of results is consistent with theory that suggests that some children with HFASD display atypical social-approach motivation, or sensitivity to the positive reward value of positive social-emotional events. Conversely, there was little evidence that a tendency to withdraw from social-emotional stimuli, or a failure to process social emotional stimuli, was a component of social behavior task performance in this sample of children with HFASD.

From Schelling to Schools: A Comparison of a Model of Residential Segregation with a Model of School Segregation

We address theoretically whether and under what conditions Schelling's celebrated result of 'self-organized' unintended residential segregation may also apply to school segregation. We propose here a computational model of school segregation that is aligned with a corresponding Schelling-type model of residential segregation. To adapt the model for application to school segregation, we move beyond previous work by combining two preference arguments in modeling parents' school choice, preferences for the ethnic composition of a school and preferences for minimizing the travelling distance to the school. In a set of computational experiments we assessed the effects of population composition and distance preferences in the school model. We found that a preference for nearby schools can suppress the trend towards self-organized segregation obtained in a baseline condition where parents were indifferent towards distance. We then investigated the joint effects of the variation of agents' 'tolerance' for out-group members and distance preference. We found that integrated distributions were preserved under a much broader range of conditions than in the absence of a preference for nearby schools. We conclude that parents' preferences for nearby schools may be an important factor in tempering for school choice the segregation dynamics known from models of residential segregation.

MD Simulation Trajectories of Multiple Intrinsically Disordered Proteins Reveal Order to Disorder Transitions that Bear Functional Significance

Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) explore a dynamic ensemble of conformations and yet retain a functional role inside the cell. However, the correlation of backbone chain dynamics of an IDP correlated with its cellular function is not fully understood. Here in this work we analyze the MD simulation trajectories (12500 timesteps of total 10 nanosecond duration) of one ordered protein (catalytic domain of MutY from E. Coli, pdb code: 1MUN), one partially ordered protein (Apoptosis regulator Bcl-xL, 1LXL) and four IDPs (Brak/CXCL14, 2HDL; sub-domain of staphylococcal nuclease, 2SOB; F6 subunit of ATP synthase, 1VZS and Tyrosyl tRNA synthestase, 1JH3). The analysis included distance variations between chosen multiple points in the protein backbone, probability distributions of the measured distances and their velocities, and full width half maxima of these probability distributions. The results from the analysis yielded a quantitative measure of dynamics at loop regions in comparison to helix and strand regions. In addition the distance probability distributions of loop regions in IDPs specifically displayed multimodal character indicating distinct preferences for certain distances. This was in contrast to velocity probability distributions which were always of unimodal nature for all the six proteins. Further, we attempted to quantify the randomness in disordered chain dynamics by computing the Boltzmann entropy for all c-alpha atoms in each of the proteins. This entropy value for a given c-alpha atom correlated with its wandering ability in space. Disorder-order transition regions were spotted from the created protein movies and analyzed quantitatively by constructing Ramachandran plots for those regions across all time steps. Such regions included lysine residues previously speculated to be involved in post-translational modifications in F6 unit of ATP synthase and RNA binding domain in Tyrosyl tRNA synthestase.

Birds as potential reservoirs of tick-borne pathogens: first evidence of bacteraemia with Rickettsia helvetica

BackgroundBirds have long been known as carriers of ticks, but data from the literature are lacking on their role as a reservoir in the epidemiology of certain tick-borne disease-causing agents. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the presence of three emerging, zoonotic tick-borne pathogens in blood samples and ticks of birds and to assess the impact of feeding location preference and migration distance of bird species on their tick infestation.MethodsBlood samples and ticks of birds were analysed with TaqMan real-time PCRs and conventional PCR followed by sequencing.ResultsDuring the spring and autumn bird migrations, 128 blood samples and 140 ticks (Ixodes ricinus, Haemaphysalis concinna and a Hyalomma specimen) were collected from birds belonging to 16 species. The prevalence of tick infestation and the presence of tick species were related to the feeding and migration habits of avian hosts. Birds were shown to be bacteraemic with Rickettsia helvetica and Anaplasma phagocytophilum, but not with Candidatus Neoehrlichia mikurensis. The prevalence of rickettsiae was high (51.4%) in ticks, suggesting that some of them may have acquired their infection from their avian host.ConclusionBased on the present results birds are potential reservoirs of both I. ricinus transmitted zoonotic pathogens, R. helvetica and A. phagocytophilum, but their epidemiological role appears to be less important concerning the latter, at least in Central Europe.

Don't stand so close to me: psychopathy and the regulation of interpersonal distance.

Psychopathy is characterized by callous and unemotional personality traits, such as reduced empathy and remorse, and a tendency toward deviant interpersonal behaviors. It has been suggested that subtle behavioral cues in individuals with high levels of psychopathic traits may betray their personality during interpersonal interactions, but little research has addressed what these clues might be. In this study, we investigated whether psychopathic traits predict interpersonal distance preferences, which have been previously linked to amygdala functioning. 46 healthy participants performed a behavioral task in which the distance they preferred to maintain between themselves and an experimenter was measured across a series of trials. Psychopathic traits, including Coldheartedness, Fearless Dominance, and Self-centered Impulsivity were assessed using the Psychopathic Personality Inventory-Revised (Lilienfeld and Widows, 2005). Results demonstrated that Coldheartedness predicted preferred interpersonal distance, with more coldhearted participants preferring shorter distances. These findings suggest that interpersonal distance preferences may signal psychopathic traits, particularly callousness, supporting accounts of amygdala dysfunction in psychopathy.

An Efficient Method to Avoid Hidden Node Problem in Ad-Hoc Network

An ad hoc network consists of various mobile nodes which are not physicals connected to each other. Ad-hoc network is temporary based network which does not rely on the infrastructure that is it is decentralized kind of network.[1] In such network, nodes communicate each other by sending data from one node to another in multi-hop mode[2]. Multi hop refer to the state when one node communicate with its immediate node and the data has to travel through many intermediate nodes from source to destination. Generally there are two problems associated with communication one is hidden node problem other one is exposed node problem. In general scenario when two nodes send data to the same node at same then collision occurs at that node, This is known as hidden node problem.[3] Hidden node problem can be avoided by RTS/CTS mechanism.[4] To make data secure from collision i.e to prevent hidden node problem and also to reduce delay time that occurs when nodes goes to waiting state during RTS/CTS handshake if the communication occurs before the CTS timer, integrating the concept of RTR with RTS/CTS. Apart from the introduction of RTR, in this paper there are other parameters such as data size and distance preference which will further help to define the priorities for the transfer of data.

Public Attitudes toward Persons with Alcohol Use Disorders (AUDs): The Role of Social Contact and Treatment-Seeking Behavior

For more than 60 years sociologists have examined public attitudes toward persons with alcohol use disorders (AUDs), but there is little recent data on this topic. Using responses to vignettes administered in a 2003 national computer-assisted telephone survey (N = 1394) of employed Americans, this paper examines three research questions: (1) How willing are Americans to interact with persons with AUDs? (2) How are preferences for social distance shaped by known contact with a problem drinker? (3) How does treatment-seeking behavior of a known problem drinker influence such preferences? Results indicate that respondents are reluctant to interact with persons with AUDs, especially in the context of work and family life. Multivariate analyses reveal that respondents who knew a relative or coworker with a drinking problem were more likely to desire social distance from the alcohol dependent vignette person. Consistent with the social contact thesis, respondents who reported spending more time with a known problem drinker, were less likely to desire social distance from persons with AUDs, as were respondents who reported that the known problem drinker received treatment from a counselor, psychiatrist, or physician. These results suggest that stigma associated with AUDs may be decreased through formal treatment for AUDs, as well as by greater diffusion of knowledge about the positive effects of treatment.

Deep mutational scanning of an RRM domain of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae poly(A)-binding protein

The RNA recognition motif (RRM) is the most common RNA-binding domain in eukaryotes. Differences in RRM sequences dictate, in part, both RNA and protein-binding specificities and affinities. We used a deep mutational scanning approach to study the sequence-function relationship of the RRM2 domain of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae poly(A)-binding protein (Pab1). By scoring the activity of more than 100,000 unique Pab1 variants, including 1246 with single amino acid substitutions, we delineated the mutational constraints on each residue. Clustering of residues with similar mutational patterns reveals three major classes, composed principally of RNA-binding residues, of hydrophobic core residues, and of the remaining residues. The first class also includes a highly conserved residue not involved in RNA binding, G150, which can be mutated to destabilize Pab1. A comparison of the mutational sensitivity of yeast Pab1 residues to their evolutionary conservation reveals that most residues tolerate more substitutions than are present in the natural sequences, although other residues that tolerate fewer substitutions may point to specialized functions in yeast. An analysis of ∼40,000 double mutants indicates a preference for a short distance between two mutations that display an epistatic interaction. As examples of interactions, the mutations N139T, N139S, and I157L suppress other mutations that interfere with RNA binding and protein stability. Overall, this study demonstrates that living cells can be subjected to a single assay to analyze hundreds of thousands of protein variants in parallel.

Post-hatch dispersal of lake sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens, Rafinesque, 1817) yolk-sac larvae in relation to substrate in an artificial stream

Summary Knowledge of the effects of environment and genotype on behavior during early ontogenetic stages of many fish species including lake sturgeon (Acipenser fulvescens) is generally lacking. Understanding these effects is particularly important at a time when human activities are fundamentally altering habitats and seasonal and diel physical and biotic stream features. Artificial stream channels were used in a controlled experiment to quantify lake sturgeon yolk-sac larvae dispersal distance and stream substrate preference from different females (N = 2) whose eggs were incubated at different temperatures (10 and 18°C) that simulated stream conditions during early and late spawning and incubation periods in the Black River, Michigan. Data revealed that yolk-sac larvae exhibited considerable variability in dispersal distance as a function of family (genotype), temperature experienced during previous (embryonic) ontogenetic stages, and environmental ‘grain’. Yolk-sac larvae dispersal distance varied as a function of the juxtaposition of substrate to location of egg hatch. Lake sturgeon yolk-sac larvae dispersed from mesh screens attached to bricks and settled exclusively in gravel substrate. Dispersal distance also varied as a function of family and egg incubation temperatures, reflecting differences in offspring body size and levels of endogenous yolk reserves (yolk sac area) at hatch. Expression of plasticity in dispersal behavior may be particularly important to individual survival and population levels of recruitment contingent upon the location, size, and degree of fragmentation of suitable (gravel) habitats between adult spawning and yolk-sac larvae rearing areas.

Associations between stigma and help-seeking intentions and beliefs: Findings from an Australian national survey of young people

To reduce stigma and improve help seeking by young people for mental illness, we need a better understanding of the associations between various dimensions of stigma and young people's help-seeking intentions and helpfulness beliefs for various sources of help and for different disorders. This study assessed stigmatizing attitudes and help-seeking intentions and helpfulness beliefs via a national telephone survey of 3021 youths aged 15–25. Five stigma scales were used: social distance, personally held weak-not-sick and dangerousness beliefs, and weak-not-sick and dangerousness beliefs perceived in others. Respondents were presented with a vignette of a young person portraying depression, depression with suicidal thoughts, depression with alcohol abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder, social phobia, or psychosis. Beliefs that mental illness is a sign of personal weakness and preference for social distance were associated with less intention to seek professional help and less endorsement of their helpfulness. In contrast, dangerousness/unpredictability beliefs were associated with more intention to seek professional help and more endorsement of their helpfulness. Findings highlight the importance of examining the associations between different dimensions of stigma with different sources of help, specifically for various mental disorders, to better inform future efforts to reduce stigma and increase help seeking in young people.

Widespread evidence of cooperative DNA binding by transcription factors in Drosophila development

Regulation of eukaryotic gene transcription is often combinatorial in nature, with multiple transcription factors (TFs) regulating common target genes, often through direct or indirect mutual interactions. Many individual examples of cooperative binding by directly interacting TFs have been identified, but it remains unclear how pervasive this mechanism is during animal development. Cooperative TF binding should be manifest in genomic sequences as biased arrangements of TF-binding sites. Here, we explore the extent and diversity of such arrangements related to gene regulation during Drosophila embryogenesis. We used the DNA-binding specificities of 322 TFs along with chromatin accessibility information to identify enriched spacing and orientation patterns of TF-binding site pairs. We developed a new statistical approach for this task, specifically designed to accurately assess inter-site spacing biases while accounting for the phenomenon of homotypic site clustering commonly observed in developmental regulatory regions. We observed a large number of short-range distance preferences between TF-binding site pairs, including examples where the preference depends on the relative orientation of the binding sites. To test whether these binding site patterns reflect physical interactions between the corresponding TFs, we analyzed 27 TF pairs whose binding sites exhibited short distance preferences. In vitro protein–protein binding experiments revealed that >65% of these TF pairs can directly interact with each other. For five pairs, we further demonstrate that they bind cooperatively to DNA if both sites are present with the preferred spacing. This study demonstrates how DNA-binding motifs can be used to produce a comprehensive map of sequence signatures for different mechanisms of combinatorial TF action.

The Structure of Pairwise Correlation in Mouse Primary Visual Cortex Reveals Functional Organization in the Absence of an Orientation Map

Neural responses to sensory stimuli are not independent. Pairwise correlation can reduce coding efficiency, occur independent of stimulus representation, or serve as an additional channel of information, depending on the timescale of correlation and the method of decoding. Any role for correlation depends on its magnitude and structure. In sensory areas with maps, like the orientation map in primary visual cortex (V1), correlation is strongly related to the underlying functional architecture, but it is unclear whether this correlation structure is an essential feature of the system or arises from the arrangement of cells in the map. We assessed the relationship between functional architecture and pairwise correlation by measuring both synchrony and correlated spike count variability in mouse V1, which lacks an orientation map. We observed significant pairwise synchrony, which was organized by distance and relative orientation preference between cells. We also observed nonzero correlated variability in both the anesthetized (0.16) and awake states (0.18). Our results indicate that the structure of pairwise correlation is maintained in the absence of an underlying anatomical organization and may be an organizing principle of the mammalian visual system preserved by nonrandom connectivity within local networks.

Biogenetic explanations and public acceptance of people with eating disorders

It has been assumed that biogenetic causal models may improve public attitudes toward people with mental illnesses. The present study examines whether biogenetic attributions are positively associated with acceptance of people suffering from these disorders. Population surveys were conducted in two large German cities. Respondents were presented with a vignette depicting a young female suffering from either anorexia nervosa (N = 680) or bulimia nervosa (N = 667), followed by a fully structured interview including questions on causal attributions, emotional reactions and desire for social distance. Attribution to hereditary factors showed hardly any relationship with attitudes toward people with symptoms of eating disorders. Respondents who endorsed brain disease as a cause tended more to hold those afflicted responsible for their condition, they also expressed more negative emotions and a stronger preference for social distance. Our results do not support the notion that promulgating biogenetic causal models of eating disorders helps decrease the stigma surrounding these illnesses; it may even entail the risk of increasing it.

Factorbook.org: a Wiki-based database for transcription factor-binding data generated by the ENCODE consortium.

The Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) consortium aims to identify all functional elements in the human genome including transcripts, transcriptional regulatory regions, along with their chromatin states and DNA methylation patterns. The ENCODE project generates data utilizing a variety of techniques that can enrich for regulatory regions, such as chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP), micrococcal nuclease (MNase) digestion and DNase I digestion, followed by deeply sequencing the resulting DNA. As part of the ENCODE project, we have developed a Web-accessible repository accessible at http://factorbook.org. In Wiki format, factorbook is a transcription factor (TF)-centric repository of all ENCODE ChIP-seq datasets on TF-binding regions, as well as the rich analysis results of these data. In the first release, factorbook contains 457 ChIP-seq datasets on 119 TFs in a number of human cell lines, the average profiles of histone modifications and nucleosome positioning around the TF-binding regions, sequence motifs enriched in the regions and the distance and orientation preferences between motif sites.

The Use of Visual and Verbal Means of Communication Across Psychological Distance

The current study investigated the effect of distance on medium preferences in interpersonal communication. Five experiments showed that people's preference for using pictures (vs. words) is increasingly higher when communicating with temporally, socially, or geographically proximal (vs. distal) others. In contrast, preference for words is increasingly higher when communicating with those who were distal. A sixth experiment showed that communication's medium influences distance preferences, such that people's preference for communicating a message to a distant (vs. proximal) target is greater for verbal compared with pictorial communications. A seventh experiment showed that recipients are more likely to heed a sender's suggestions when the medium and distance are congruent. These findings reflect the suitability of pictures for communication with proximal others and words with distal others. Implications of these findings for construal-level theory, perspective taking, embodied cognition, the development of language, and social skills with children are discussed.