Significant Increase In Cooperativity Research Articles

A bibliometric analysis of One Health approach in research on antimicrobial resistance

BackgroundAntimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global public health threat that requires actions through One Health intervention. This study aims to trace the historical development of One Health research on AMR to provide evidence supporting future research and actions. MethodsA bibliometric analysis is conducted with One Health articles in the field of antimicrobial resistance (AMR-OH articles) retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC). AMR-OH articles refer to articles in the field of AMR that simultaneously involve elements from human health and at least one other domain, including animals, environment, or plants. Three research periods were identified based on the development of global actions in combating AMR. Descriptive analysis of publications, keyword cluster analysis, annual trending topic analysis, and co-authorship analysis were conducted using R software, VOSViewer, and Pajek. ResultsThe results indicated that the percentage of AMR-OH articles among all AMR articles increased from 5.21% in 1990 to 20.01% in 2023. Key topics in the current AMR-OH articles included the mechanism of AMR, AMR epidemiology, and public health control strategies. Epidemiological research initially focused on human and animal health and then shifted to environmental factors in the third period. Research at the molecular level focused on the mechanisms of AMR transmission in various domains, along with the dynamics and diversity of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). The co-authorship analysis suggested a significant increase in cooperation among low- and middle-income countries in the third period. ConclusionThe scope of epidemiological research on AMR has expanded by including human, animal, and environmental areas. Moreover, genetic and molecular level research represents the forefront of this field, offering innovative tools to combat AMR in the future. This study suggests further research to translate existing findings into practical implementation of the One Health strategy, and to support globally consistent action in combating AMR.

The Impact of a Primary Prevention Program on Preschool Children’s Social–Emotional Competence

This quasi-experimental study compared children who were (or were not) exposed to a 28-week program designed to prevent aggressive behavior by teaching pro-social skills and social knowledge. Children in the experimental group increased significantly in teacher-ratings of cooperation, assertion, self-control, and total social skills, as well as in social knowledge as measured through an interview procedure. Children in the comparison group showed no significant improvements. Neither group showed changes in teacher ratings of externalizing or internalizing problem behaviors. Preliminary analyses suggest that the experimental group also showed reduction in observed aggressive behavior, while the comparison group did not. Changes within the experimental group differed according to whether the teacher had initially identified a child as high or as low in social competence. High competence children showed significant increase in cooperation and in total social skills, while low competence children showed significant increase in cooperation, assertion, total social skills, and social knowledge. The sample size for this study was small (37 subjects), and should be replicated with a larger sample. Results do, however add quasi-experimental support for the effectiveness of the program, and suggest that changes are due to the program, rather than to maturation.

Evolutionary dynamics of time-resolved social interactions.

Cooperation among unrelated individuals is frequently observed in social groups when their members combine efforts and resources to obtain a shared benefit that is unachievable by an individual alone. However, understanding why cooperation arises despite the natural tendency of individuals toward selfish behavior is still an open problem and represents one of the most fascinating challenges in evolutionary dynamics. Recently, the structural characterization of the networks in which social interactions take place has shed some light on the mechanisms by which cooperative behavior emerges and eventually overcomes the natural temptation to defect. In particular, it has been found that the heterogeneity in the number of social ties and the presence of tightly knit communities lead to a significant increase in cooperation as compared with the unstructured and homogeneous connection patterns considered in classical evolutionary dynamics. Here, we investigate the role of social-ties dynamics for the emergence of cooperation in a family of social dilemmas. Social interactions are in fact intrinsically dynamic, fluctuating, and intermittent over time, and they can be represented by time-varying networks. By considering two experimental data sets of human interactions with detailed time information, we show that the temporal dynamics of social ties has a dramatic impact on the evolution of cooperation: the dynamics of pairwise interactions favors selfish behavior.

Evolutionary Dynamics of Time-Resolved Social Interactions

Cooperation among unrelated individuals is frequently observed in social groups when their members combine efforts and resources to obtain a shared benefit that is unachievable by an individual alone. However, understanding why cooperation arises despite the natural tendency of individuals towards selfish behavior is still an open problem and represents one of the most fascinating challenges in evolutionary dynamics.Recently, the structural characterization of the networks in which social interactions take place has shed some light on the mechanisms by which cooperative behavior emerges and eventually overcomes the natural temptation to defect. In particular, it has been found that the heterogeneity in the number of social ties and the presence of tightly knit communities lead to a significant increase in cooperation as compared with the unstructured and homogeneous connection patterns considered in classical evolutionary dynamics. Here, we investigate the role of social-ties dynamics for the emergence of cooperation in a family of social dilemmas. Social interactions are in fact intrinsically dynamic, fluctuating, and intermittent over time, and they can be represented by time-varying networks. By considering two experimental data sets of human interactions with detailed time information, we show that the temporal dynamics of social ties has a dramatic impact on the evolution of cooperation: the dynamics of pairwise interactions favors selfish behavior.

Designing Public-Private Partnership in Macedonia: Designing Crisis-Resilient Strategy

Worldwide, in the last 10 years we saw a significant increase in cooperation between public and private sectors in infrastructure development and management of infrastructure, intended to carry out many economic activities. One of the directions of the World Bank to overcome negative consequences of the economic and financial crisis of 2008-2009 was fostering infrastructure development plans among many countries in Europe. This paper shows that public-private partnership (PPP) financing remains viable and can bring value to the economy, despite the difficulties these projects faced. The global financial crisis has created new opportunities to refocus PPP projects on value-for-money and financial sustainability, as the primary drivers for private participation, and using the range of options and innovative approaches.This paper provides an overview of PPP projects in Europe and Macedonia and an assessment of the current PPP market. The background provided, this paper addresses three key questions: (i) What are the main issues that need to be addressed in order to create such a favorable environment, and how have these been tackled in Macedonian government? (ii) What are the possible ways for managing conflicts between private and public partners? (iii) What are the most appropriate forms of incentives the Macedonian government should use to attract private investors?Gradual reforms in facing with the consequences of the crisis could encourage wider use of PPPs. When allocation of capital resources become less politicized, innovative forms of financing projects are likely to become popular. It is necessary to change the rules governing for the provision of utility services. Public-private partnerships, where the focus is on the economic aspects, can contribute a lot for this situation to be changed.

Rationalization of allosteric pathway in Thermus sp. GH5 methylglyoxal synthase

A sequence of 10 amino acids at the C-terminus region of methylglyoxal synthase from Escherichia coli (EMGS) provides an arginine, which plays a crucial role in forming a salt bridge with a proximal aspartate residue in the neighboring subunit, consequently transferring the allosteric signal between subunits. In order to verify the role of arginine, the gene encoding MGS from a thermophile species, Thermus sp. GH5 (TMGS) lacking this arginine was cloned with an additional 30 bp sequence at the 3´-end and then expressed in form of a fusion TMGS with a 10 residual segment at the C-terminus (TMGS+). The resulting recombinant enzyme showed a significant increase in cooperativity towards phosphate, reflected by a change in the Hill coefficient (nH) from 1.5 to 1.99. Experiments including site directed mutagenesis for Asp-10 in TMGS and TMGS+, two dimentional structural survey, fluorescence and irreversible thermoinactivation were carried out to confirm this pathway. [BMB Reports 2012; 45(12): 748-753]

Blind justice: An experimental analysis of random punishment in team production

We study the effect of blind punishment in a team production experiment, in which subjects choose non-observable effort levels. In this setting, a random exclusion mechanism is introduced, linked to the normalized group performance ( R, from 0 to 1). Every round, each subject is non-excluded from the collective profit with probability R (and with probability 1 − R gets no benefit from the group account). Punishment does not depend on the individual behavior, but the probability of being punished reflects collective performance. As the exclusion probability is computed at the group level, no individual information is needed to implement exclusion. However, the probabilistic punishment risks to be perceived by subjects as procedurally unfair, as all subjects are treated in an identical, non-equitable manner (justice is blind). Our results suggest that random exclusion promotes a significant increase in cooperation. The effect seems to be associated with hot behavioral responses to punishment. However, convergence to full contribution is not observed.

Alternative hydrogen bond implementations produce opposite effects on collapse cooperativity of lattice homopolypeptide models

We use complete enumeration of self-avoiding chains of up to N=26 monomers in two-dimensional lattices to investigate the effect of alternative implementations of backbone hydrogen bonds on the cooperativity of homopolypeptide collapse. Following a recent study on protein folding models, we use the square lattice with z=3 local conformations per monomer and lattice extensions containing diagonal steps which result in z=5 or z=7 and assume that only a subset of zh<z local conformations is compatible with hydrogen bond formation. As previously observed in heteropolymeric folding, a significant increase in cooperativity, as measured by kappa2 values, results from the coupling between hydrogen bonds and hydrophobic interactions, in such a way that hydrophobic contacts are favorable only when contacting monomers are involved in hydrogen bond formation. For some z/zh combinations the energy distribution is bimodal at the collapse transition temperature. The situation can be regarded as if all hydrophobic contacts actually decrease the energy by the same amount, 2h , with the addition of an energetic increase, epsilon2=h, as a penalty for each contacting monomer not satisfying the hydrogen bond condition. Cooperativity is little affected and might even decrease, however, when hydrogen bonds produce a decrease in energy by the same amount, epsilon1=h, for each bonding monomer. For the more general situation when the hydrogen bond effect is not equal, in modulus, to the hydrophobic interaction, i.e., epsilon2 not equalh or epsilon1 not equal h, we observe a pronounced increase in kappa2 for small epsilon2, with a maximum around epsilon2/h approximately 1.5, followed by a gradual decrease to a limiting value at large epsilon2. The opposite behavior is observed when epsilon1 is varied. The observed qualitative difference is shown to arise from opposite effects on the convexity of the total density of states of the system when subdensities corresponding to different numbers of hydrogen bonds are differently favored as opposed to the case when subdensities corresponding to different numbers of contacting monomers not forming hydrogen bonds are differently unfavored. Potential implications for the cooperativity of protein folding and protein unspecific collapse are discussed.

Protein–Protein Förster Resonance Energy Transfer Analysis of Nucleosome Core Particles Containing H2A and H2A.Z

A protein–protein Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) system, employing probes at multiple positions, was designed to specifically monitor the dissociation of the H2A–H2B dimer from the nucleosome core particle (NCP). Tryptophan donors and Cys-AEDANS acceptors were chosen because, compared to previous NCP FRET fluorophores, they: (1) are smaller and less hydrophobic, which should minimize perturbations of histone and NCP structure; and (2) have an R0 of 20 Å, which is much less than the dimensions of the NCP (∼50 Å width and ∼100 Å diameter). Equilibrium protein unfolding titrations indicate that the donor and acceptor moieties have minimal effects on the stability of the H2A–H2B dimer and (H3–H4)2 tetramer. NCPs containing the various FRET pairs were reconstituted with the 601 DNA positioning element. Equilibrium NaCl-induced dissociation of the modified NCPs showed that the 601 sequence stabilized the NCP to dimer dissociation relative to weaker positioning sequences. This finding implies a significant role for the H2A–H2B dimers in determining the DNA sequence dependence of NCP stability. The free energy of dissociation determined from reversible and well-defined sigmoidal transitions revealed two distinct phases reflecting the dissociation of individual H2A–H2B dimers, confirming cooperativity as suggested previously; these data allow quantitative description of the cooperativity. The FRET system was then used to study the effects of the histone variant H2A.Z on NCP stability; previous studies have reported both destabilizing and stabilizing effects. H2A.Z FRET NCP dissociation transitions suggest a slight increase in stability but a significant increase in cooperativity of the dimer dissociations. Thus, the utility of this protein–protein FRET system to monitor the effects of histone variants on NCP dynamics has been demonstrated, and the system appears equally well-suited for dissection of the kinetic processes of dimer association and dissociation from the NCP.

Oxygen‐binding properties of cephalopod blood with special reference to environmental temperatures and ecological distribution

AbstractThe oxygen‐binding properties of the blood of the cephalopods Todarodes sagittatus, Loligo vulgaris, Architeuthis monachus, and Octopus vulgaris were studied in relation to temperature and pH. The data obtained at pH 7.4 were compared with previously reported data on nine species of cephalopod over the actual range of temperatures at which the animals live in an attempt to define the role of temperature as an effector in the process, and to demonstrate the extent to which temperature influences the ecological range of the various species.For most cephalopods we found Bohr and Haldane factors of lower than −1.0, a result that implies that the Bohr shift does not facilitate the unloading of O2, but may improve the loading of O2 with increased ventilation. The functional significance of the Bohr and Haldane effects appears, thus, to involve stabilization of pH by the isohydric transport of CO2.Our results further demonstrated a significant decrease in oxygen affinity with temperature for all cephalopods studied. This relationship was more pronounced for the cephalopods from colder waters than for those from the tropics. Furthermore, a significant increase in cooperativity with decreasing affinity for oxygen was found when we compared these oxygen‐binding parameters at pH 7.4 and at the temperatures of the natural habitats of the various cephalopods. The respective relationships between the Hill coefficient (n50) and the oxygen tension at half‐saturation (P50) allowed us to separate the cephalopods into three distinct groups: 1) the Sepia species; 2) all the squids except Architeuthis; and 3) all the Octopus species, plus Architeuthis and Nautilus, this third group being the most sluggish group examined. Furthermore, the most sluggish species, those in group 3, have the highest reported functional buffer capacities, 7–19 mM CO2 · pH−1 · mM O2−1, while the more active species have functional buffer capacities in the range of 4–7 mM CO2 · pH−1 · mM O2−1. The relationship between P50 and n50 optimizes the utilization of O2 over the entire range of P50 reported.

Transforming Competitive or Cooperative Climates

In two studies 200 subjects played repeated trials of Prisoner's Dilemma with a simulated other who could send verbal communications. In the first study, the other began intensifying conflict by being behaviorally unresponsive over a long duration, by being totally noncooperative, by responding more quickly to the competition than the cooperation of the subject, or by coercing cooperation with threats for the purpose of exploitation. Then the other introduced a program of carefully communicated conciliation. The results showed a significant increase in cooperation by the subjects across conditions. In the second study, the subjects' competition was intensified by the other's choice of verbal communication—threat, insult, or challenge. Then the other introduced conciliation; the subjects responded cooperatively in all cases. Finally, the other lapsed into uncommunicated competition, and the subjects became highly competitive once more. The results are discussed in terms of Deutsch's (1983) “crude law of social relations” and the evidence suggesting that an atmosphere of either cooperation or competition can be quickly altered in a situation of interdependence when one party clearly acts inconsistently with what is characteristic of that climate.