Bar-Ilan University

About: Bar-Ilan University is a education organization based out in Ramat Gan, Israel. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Poison control. The organization has 12835 authors who have published 34964 publications receiving 995648 citations. The organization is also known as: Bar Ilan University & BIU.

Temporal-Spatial Interaction between Reactive Oxygen Species and Abscisic Acid Regulates Rapid Systemic Acclimation in Plants

Abstract: Being sessile organisms, plants evolved sophisticated acclimation mechanisms to cope with abiotic challenges in their environment. These are activated at the initial site of exposure to stress, as well as in systemic tissues that have not been subjected to stress (termed systemic acquired acclimation [SAA]). Although SAA is thought to play a key role in plant survival during stress, little is known about the signaling mechanisms underlying it. Here, we report that SAA in plants requires at least two different signals: an autopropagating wave of reactive oxygen species (ROS) that rapidly spreads from the initial site of exposure to the entire plant and a stress-specific signal that conveys abiotic stress specificity. We further demonstrate that SAA is stress specific and that a temporal–spatial interaction between ROS and abscisic acid regulates rapid SAA to heat stress in plants. In addition, we demonstrate that the rapid ROS signal is associated with the propagation of electric signals in Arabidopsis thaliana. Our findings unravel some of the basic signaling mechanisms underlying SAA in plants and reveal that signaling events and transcriptome and metabolome reprogramming of systemic tissues in response to abiotic stress occur at a much faster rate than previously envisioned.

A World Survey of Religion and the State

Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. The question of religion's role in politics and society: modernization, secularization, and beyond? 3. Quantifying religion 4. Global GIR from 1990 to 2002 5. Western democracies 6. The former Soviet bloc 7. Asia 8. The Middle East and North Africa 9. Sub-Saharan Africa 10. Latin America 11. Patterns and trends 12. Conclusions.

Maternal postpartum behavior and the emergence of infant-mother and infant-father synchrony in preterm and full-term infants: the role of neonatal vagal tone.

Abstract: Relations between maternal postpartum behavior and the emergence of parent-infant relatedness as a function of infant autonomic maturity were examined in 56 premature infants (birthweight = 1000-1500 g) and 52 full-term infants. Maternal behavior, mother depressive symptoms, and infant cardiac vagal tone were assessed in the neonatal period. Infant-mother and infant-father synchrony, maternal and paternal affectionate touch, and the home environment were observed at 3 months. Premature birth was associated with higher maternal depression, less maternal behaviors, decreased infant alertness, and lower coordination of maternal behavior with infant alertness in the neonatal period. At 3 months, interactions between premature infants with their mothers and fathers were less synchronous. Interaction effects of premature birth and autonomic maturity indicated that preterm infants with low vagal tone received the lowest amounts of maternal behavior in the postpartum and the least maternal touch at 3 months. Infant-mother and infant-father synchrony were each predicted by cardiac vagal tone and maternal postpartum behavior in both the preterm and full-term groups. Among preterm infants, additional predictors of parent-infant synchrony were maternal depression (mother only) and the home environment (mother and father). Findings are consistent with evolutionary perspectives on the higher susceptibility of dysregulated infants to rearing contexts and underscore the compensatory mechanisms required for social-emotional growth under risk conditions for parent-infant bonding.

Comparing university rankings

Abstract: Recently there is increasing interest in university rankings. Annual rankings of world universities are published by QS for the Times Higher Education Supplement, the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, the Higher Education and Accreditation Council of Taiwan and rankings based on Web visibility by the Cybermetrics Lab at CSIC. In this paper we compare the rankings using a set of similarity measures. For the rankings that are being published for a number of years we also examine longitudinal patterns. The rankings limited to European universities are compared to the ranking of the Centre for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University. The findings show that there are reasonable similarities between the rankings, even though each applies a different methodology. The biggest differences are between the rankings provided by the QS-Times Higher Education Supplement and the Ranking Web of the CSIC Cybermetrics Lab. The highest similarities were observed between the Taiwanese and the Leiden rankings from European universities. Overall the similarities are increased when the comparison is limited to the European universities.

Mean-field theory of the Potts glass.

Abstract: Randomly interacting p-state Potts spins may freeze into a Potts-glass phase in which the Potts symmetry is unbroken, on the average. The mean-field theory of this phase transition is presented. Unlike the spin-glass case, there exist two distinct Potts-glass phases that differ in the nature of the correlations among the many degenerate ground states of the system. For pg4, the transition from the disordered phase is unusual: The freezing occurs discontinuously but without latent heat. Similar results hold for mean-field quadrupolar-glass models.