University of North Carolina at Wilmington

About: University of North Carolina at Wilmington is a education organization based out in Wilmington, North Carolina, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Poison control. The organization has 3329 authors who have published 6797 publications receiving 186308 citations.

Hidden impacts of ocean acidification to live and dead coral framework

Abstract: Cold-water corals, such as Lophelia pertusa, are key habitat-forming organisms found throughout the world's oceans to 3000 m deep. The complex three-dimensional framework made by these vulnerable marine ecosystems support high biodiversity and commercially important species. Given their importance, a key question is how both the living and the dead framework will fare under projected climate change. Here, we demonstrate that over 12 months L. pertusa can physiologically acclimate to increased CO2, showing sustained net calcification. However, their new skeletal structure changes and exhibits decreased crystallographic and molecular-scale bonding organization. Although physiological acclimatization was evident, we also demonstrate that there is a negative correlation between increasing CO2 levels and breaking strength of exposed framework (approx. 20–30% weaker after 12 months), meaning the exposed bases of reefs will be less effective ‘load-bearers’, and will become more susceptible to bioerosion and mechanical damage by 2100.

Antecedents of perceived support: is perceived family environment generalized to new social relationships?

Abstract: Cognitive models of social support hypothesize that relatively enduring expectancies about social support influence ongoing social information processing. Drawing from research that suggests that perceived support cognitions are generalized to novel social stimuli, we hypothesized that negative perceptions of the family environment would be generalized to perceptions of new social relations. Incoming freshmen who had moved away to college were assessed in the first week of their first semester on perceived family environment, psychological distress, and a variety of interpersonal person variables (i.e., social skills, agreeableness, and extraversion). Followup measures of perceived support at college were obtained at the end of their first semester. Controlling for social desirability, persons with negative perceptions of their family environments, higher distress, and lower levels of social competence, agreeableness, and extraversion developed lower levels of perceived support than their more fortunate counterparts. In addition, the relation between perceived family environment and developed perceived support did not appear to be mediated by psychological distress or the interpersonal person variables. Implications for understanding the processes by which perceived support is developed in new social settings were discussed.

Sea urchin bindin divergence predicts gamete compatibility

Abstract: Studies on the evolution of reproductive proteins have shown that they tend to evolve more rapidly than other proteins, frequently under positive selection. Progress on understanding the implications of these patterns is possible for marine invertebrates, where molecular evolution can be linked to gamete compatibility. In this study, we surveyed data from the literature from five genera of sea urchins for which there was information on gamete com- patibility, divergence of the sperm-egg recognition protein bindin, and mitochondrial divergence. We draw three conclusions: (1) bindin divergence at nonsynonymous sites predicts gamete compatibility, whereas (2) bindin diver- gence at synonymous sites and mitochondrial DNA divergence do not, and (3) as few as 10 amino acid changes in bindin can lead to complete gamete incompatibility between species. Using mitochondrial divergence as a proxy for time, we find that complete gamete incompatibility can evolve in approximately one and a half million years, whereas sister species can maintain complete gamete compatibility for as long as five million years.

Cognitive gender differences in very young children parallel biologically based cognitive gender differences in monkeys.

Abstract: Infant humans were trained on 2 cognitive tests that have previously revealed, in infant monkeys, a double dissociation that was reversible by perinatal manipulations of androgens and ablations of specific brain sites. Children showed the same sex-linked behavior found with infant monkeys: young boys were superior on the object reversal task and young girls were superior on the concurrent discrimination task. As happened previously with infant monkeys, the gender difference was not apparent in older human subjects. Thus, early in ontogeny, cognitive gender differences have now been discovered in both humans and monkeys, probably a result of gender differences in androgens that influence the maturation rate of specific brain systems.