Facebook's known for testing new features with a limited group before a broader rollout, and it's latest one could have some real implications for both businesses and individual users of the social network alike. As TechCrunch reports, Facebook is now testing a new five star rating system that's ...![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 7-Nov-2013
ShareContact: Lisa M.P. Munoz
spsp.publicaffairs@gmail.com
703-951-3195
Society for Personality and Social Psychology
November 7, 2013 - From Cal Ripkin, Jr., to MLK to Robert Downey, Jr., finding men named after their fathers is easy. Children named after men in the family with so-called patronyms are common around the world. But what about matronymns names for a mother or grandmother? New research shows that matronymns are rare and that family naming trends follow a regional pattern in the United States: People in states with a relatively high emphasis on honor are more likely to use patronyms, especially in the face of a terrorist threat.
"Studying naming trends can be a subtle means of peering into a society's beliefs and values without ever having to ask people to report directly about their beliefs and values," says Ryan Brown of the University of Oklahoma. Brown is not an expert in baby names but rather studies cultural values and trends. He became interested in the connection between names and cultural values when his collaborator, Mauricio Carvallo, was researching names for his new baby girl. They started to wonder whether values associated with honor and reputation affected whether people named their children after men or women in the family.
Social scientists define "cultures of honor" as places where the defense of reputation plays an unusually important role in social life. "For men in a typical honor culture, the kind of reputation that is highly prized is a reputation for toughness and bravery," Ryan says. "For women in a typical honor culture, the most valued reputation is a reputation for loyalty and sexual purity." Two decades of research has shown that people in the Southern and Western regions of the United States tend to embrace honor cultures more than in the North.
To see how those values translate into children's names, Ryan and colleagues designed several studies to look at naming trends. The studies included surveying people about their beliefs and their likelihood of naming their children after men or women in the family and included a novel, indirect method to look at actual U.S. baby name trends. In all the studies, published today in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, they found that people who endorse honor ideology were most likely to use patronyms.
In the study of U.S. name trends, the researchers used Social Security Administration data to identify the 10 most popular boy and girl names in each state in 1960, 1984, and 2008. The idea was to look at 24-year cycles to see how frequently the same names popped up one and two generations later and then to compare it to regional trends of honor beliefs, controlling for a variety of other regional differences and demographics.
"Each state was given a patronym score and a matronym score by tallying how many of the 10 most popular names in one generation showed up again among the most popular names given to the next generation, or in the generation after that," Ryan says. "Higher scores show that baby names were being recycled from one generation to the next, and these scores showed a regional pattern to them similar to the patterns we see with other behaviors connected to honor ideology around the United States."
States in the South and West tended to have higher patronym scores than did states in the North. And those same states ranked higher in indicators of honor ideology such as execution rates, Army recruitment levels, and suicide rates among White men and women. They also found that after 9/11, the use of patronyms increased in culture-of-honor states. And similarly, people who were asked to think about a fictitious terrorist attack were more likely to say they'd use patronyms if they also strongly endorsed honor ideology.
"The same pattern was not observed, however, when it came to matronyms, which is exactly what we expected," Ryan says. "Matronyms, unlike patronyms, are not any more popular in the South and West compared to the North, and they do not predict any statewide variables to a significant degree."
Indeed, matronyms are very rare in Western culture. "Everyone probably knows a guy who is a 'junior,' given the exact same name as his father, and many know someone who is 'such-and-such the third,' having the same name as both his father and his grandfather," Ryan says. "But when was the last time you met a woman who had the same name as her mother, much less the same first and middle names as her mother, like Sally Anne Jones, Jr.?" Some famous female juniors include former First Lady Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, Jr., Carolina Herrara, Jr. (daughter of the clothing designer), and Rory (aka Lorelai) from the TV show Gilmore Girls.
In the new analysis, Elizabeth was the only female name that showed up frequently across generations as a possible matronym. "Perhaps one of the reasons for this name's greater intergenerational use is that there are so many nicknames based on the name Elizabeth: Liz, Lizzy, Beth, Eliza, Lisa, Betty, etc.," Ryan says. "So, a girl named Elizabeth could be given her mother's name and most people might not even realize it."
Ryan says that this naming trend is one of the most pronounced gender differences we still see in society. "Women who once could only strive to work as nurses, teachers, or librarians can now aspire to be astronauts, brain surgeons, or senators," he says. "But don't expect anyone to give a girl her mother's name."
"The greater use of patronyms in these cultures reflects and transmits the value of masculinity and the male name," Ryan says. "A person's name, after all, is what people call that person, but it also represents that person's reputation how he or she is known in a community and all of the respect, status, or infamy that goes along with that reputation."
Ryan hopes that the current work shows how cultural values and events shape important personal decisions, such as naming children. "Our baby naming practices can shed light on what we care about, in a subtle way, and they might also serve as a mechanism for transmitting our cultural values from one generation to the next."
###
The study, "Naming Patterns Reveal Cultural Values: Patronyms, Matronyms, and the US Culture of Honor," Ryan P. Brown, Mauricio Carvallo, Mikiko Imura, was published online on November 7, 2013, and is forthcoming in print in February 2014 in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, a journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP).
Most common patronyms*:
Michael
James
William
Robert
Christopher
*From the Social Security Administration database developed for Brown et al., study
SPSP promotes scientific research that explores how people think, behave, feel, and interact. The Society is the largest organization of social and personality psychologists in the world. Follow us on Twitter: @SPSPnews
Science stories are bigger in Texas... Get your next big story at the SPSP annual meeting in Austin, TX, Feb. 13-15, 2014! Press registration is now open. http://www.spspmeeting.org
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 7-Nov-2013
ShareContact: Lisa M.P. Munoz
spsp.publicaffairs@gmail.com
703-951-3195
Society for Personality and Social Psychology
November 7, 2013 - From Cal Ripkin, Jr., to MLK to Robert Downey, Jr., finding men named after their fathers is easy. Children named after men in the family with so-called patronyms are common around the world. But what about matronymns names for a mother or grandmother? New research shows that matronymns are rare and that family naming trends follow a regional pattern in the United States: People in states with a relatively high emphasis on honor are more likely to use patronyms, especially in the face of a terrorist threat.
"Studying naming trends can be a subtle means of peering into a society's beliefs and values without ever having to ask people to report directly about their beliefs and values," says Ryan Brown of the University of Oklahoma. Brown is not an expert in baby names but rather studies cultural values and trends. He became interested in the connection between names and cultural values when his collaborator, Mauricio Carvallo, was researching names for his new baby girl. They started to wonder whether values associated with honor and reputation affected whether people named their children after men or women in the family.
Social scientists define "cultures of honor" as places where the defense of reputation plays an unusually important role in social life. "For men in a typical honor culture, the kind of reputation that is highly prized is a reputation for toughness and bravery," Ryan says. "For women in a typical honor culture, the most valued reputation is a reputation for loyalty and sexual purity." Two decades of research has shown that people in the Southern and Western regions of the United States tend to embrace honor cultures more than in the North.
To see how those values translate into children's names, Ryan and colleagues designed several studies to look at naming trends. The studies included surveying people about their beliefs and their likelihood of naming their children after men or women in the family and included a novel, indirect method to look at actual U.S. baby name trends. In all the studies, published today in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, they found that people who endorse honor ideology were most likely to use patronyms.
In the study of U.S. name trends, the researchers used Social Security Administration data to identify the 10 most popular boy and girl names in each state in 1960, 1984, and 2008. The idea was to look at 24-year cycles to see how frequently the same names popped up one and two generations later and then to compare it to regional trends of honor beliefs, controlling for a variety of other regional differences and demographics.
"Each state was given a patronym score and a matronym score by tallying how many of the 10 most popular names in one generation showed up again among the most popular names given to the next generation, or in the generation after that," Ryan says. "Higher scores show that baby names were being recycled from one generation to the next, and these scores showed a regional pattern to them similar to the patterns we see with other behaviors connected to honor ideology around the United States."
States in the South and West tended to have higher patronym scores than did states in the North. And those same states ranked higher in indicators of honor ideology such as execution rates, Army recruitment levels, and suicide rates among White men and women. They also found that after 9/11, the use of patronyms increased in culture-of-honor states. And similarly, people who were asked to think about a fictitious terrorist attack were more likely to say they'd use patronyms if they also strongly endorsed honor ideology.
"The same pattern was not observed, however, when it came to matronyms, which is exactly what we expected," Ryan says. "Matronyms, unlike patronyms, are not any more popular in the South and West compared to the North, and they do not predict any statewide variables to a significant degree."
Indeed, matronyms are very rare in Western culture. "Everyone probably knows a guy who is a 'junior,' given the exact same name as his father, and many know someone who is 'such-and-such the third,' having the same name as both his father and his grandfather," Ryan says. "But when was the last time you met a woman who had the same name as her mother, much less the same first and middle names as her mother, like Sally Anne Jones, Jr.?" Some famous female juniors include former First Lady Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, Jr., Carolina Herrara, Jr. (daughter of the clothing designer), and Rory (aka Lorelai) from the TV show Gilmore Girls.
In the new analysis, Elizabeth was the only female name that showed up frequently across generations as a possible matronym. "Perhaps one of the reasons for this name's greater intergenerational use is that there are so many nicknames based on the name Elizabeth: Liz, Lizzy, Beth, Eliza, Lisa, Betty, etc.," Ryan says. "So, a girl named Elizabeth could be given her mother's name and most people might not even realize it."
Ryan says that this naming trend is one of the most pronounced gender differences we still see in society. "Women who once could only strive to work as nurses, teachers, or librarians can now aspire to be astronauts, brain surgeons, or senators," he says. "But don't expect anyone to give a girl her mother's name."
"The greater use of patronyms in these cultures reflects and transmits the value of masculinity and the male name," Ryan says. "A person's name, after all, is what people call that person, but it also represents that person's reputation how he or she is known in a community and all of the respect, status, or infamy that goes along with that reputation."
Ryan hopes that the current work shows how cultural values and events shape important personal decisions, such as naming children. "Our baby naming practices can shed light on what we care about, in a subtle way, and they might also serve as a mechanism for transmitting our cultural values from one generation to the next."
###
The study, "Naming Patterns Reveal Cultural Values: Patronyms, Matronyms, and the US Culture of Honor," Ryan P. Brown, Mauricio Carvallo, Mikiko Imura, was published online on November 7, 2013, and is forthcoming in print in February 2014 in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, a journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP).
Most common patronyms*:
Michael
James
William
Robert
Christopher
*From the Social Security Administration database developed for Brown et al., study
SPSP promotes scientific research that explores how people think, behave, feel, and interact. The Society is the largest organization of social and personality psychologists in the world. Follow us on Twitter: @SPSPnews
Science stories are bigger in Texas... Get your next big story at the SPSP annual meeting in Austin, TX, Feb. 13-15, 2014! Press registration is now open. http://www.spspmeeting.org
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
FILE - This Sept. 7, 2012 file photo shows Kanye West at the Alexander Wang collection during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York. West pleaded not guilty through his attorney to misdemeanor battery and attempted grand theft charges in a Los Angeles court on Thursday Nov. 7, 2013. (Photo by Dario Cantatore/Invision/AP, File)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Kanye West has pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor battery and attempted grand theft in a case filed over a scuffle with a celebrity photographer earlier this year.
Attorney Blair Berk entered the plea on the rapper's behalf Thursday in a Los Angeles court. West was charged with two misdemeanors in September over a July altercation with paparazzo Daniel Ramos at Los Angeles International Airport.
Prosecutors declined to file felony charges against West, but decided to pursue the misdemeanors. Each carries a penalty of up to six months in jail or a $1,000 fine.
Ramos claims West punched him in an unprovoked attack and wrestled his camera to the ground on July 19.
West's case is due back in court on Jan. 23.
Changing out of his suit and into some scrubs, Prince William visited the Royal Marsden Hospital in Sutton, Greater London on Thursday (November 7).
The proud papa of baby Georgie looked at ease in the hospital get-up as he checked out medical equipment with staff.
Hopefully getting some sort of waiver signed beforehand, the Duke of Cambridge witnessed surgery to remove a patient's bladder tumor in his role as President of the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.
Previously, William's mother, Princess Diana held the same position from 1989 until her death in 1997. Speaking about the royal's visit, urological surgeon Dr. Kumar shared, "He really had an insight into the kind of work we do. He really understood. The questions he asked were really on the money and were very insightful. For want of a better word, he did enjoy himself."
A moderate Republican group that is fed up with the recent onslaught of uncompromising GOP lawmakers and candidates is preparing a multimillion dollar campaign against hardline conservative forces during the 2014 midterm elections.
The Main Street Partnership, a center-right activist group led by Steve LaTourette, an Ohio Republican who left Congress earlier this year to join a lobbying firm, aims to spend as much as $8 million to defend sitting Republican lawmakers facing threats from conservative primary challengers.
Through a combination of direct mail, online ads and support for grassroots organizing, the Partnership plans to defend several moderate Republican incumbents next year. The group also plans to launch a direct strike on the Club for Growth, a free-market advocacy network that supports conservative challengers to incumbent GOP lawmakers.
“To this moment in time we’ve never really fought back, and it’s time to take our party back from these guys,” LaTourette, who left Congress earlier this year, told Yahoo News in an interview. “The center-right of the party has really been out-manned and out-maneuvered by the very conservative wing of the party when it comes to fundraising, when it comes to the ability to put boots on the ground and deliver a message in Republican primaries.”
To date, groups like the Club for Growth and the Senate Conservatives Fund have already formally endorsed a number of conservative challengers to sitting Republicans with records they deem as insufficiently conservative.
Some Republicans see these efforts as counterproductive because it forces the incumbents to devote resources to a primary fight that they could be spending on defeating Democrats in the general election.
They point to cases in the last two election cycles when tea party candidates defeated more centrist primary opponents only to go on to embarrassing defeats in the general election. The Partnership on Wednesday released a video that pointed to some of those failed candidates — particularly Christine “I am not a witch” O'Donnell in Delaware and Todd “legitimate rape” Akin in Missouri. (The Club for Growth did not endorse either of those candidates.)
LaTourette also said inaction in Congress had reached a point of frustration, particularly the failure of House Republicans to find a compromise deal to avoid the so-called “fiscal cliff” last year and the debate over the government shutdown and debt ceiling last month.
The Partnership also hopes it can ward off some of the new conservative challengers next year by targeting the groups that support them. To accomplish this, LaTourette intends to launch a website called “The Club for Democratic Growth” in an attempt to undermine the Club for Growth, he told Yahoo News.
“We are going to spend some time educating people as to exactly who they are, and who they are is a small collection of very, very wealthy people who have been able to gain a disproportionate voice in Republican politics,” LaTourette said. “We will be profiling one of their board members or champions on a regular basis with their own words. … We’re going to use their words against them.”
Going up against the Club would be a tall order for the Partnership. While LaTourette’s goal is to spend about $8 million for the campaign, the group has only raised about $2 million so far. In 2012, the group’s political action committee spent just $1.1 million.
When reached by phone Thursday, a spokesman for the Club said the group was not concerned about the Partnership’s plans for next year.
“We don’t really care what some lobbyist has to say about us,” Club spokesman Barney Keller told Yahoo News.
“What groups like this don’t understand is that all that matters to the voters are the candidates and the policies that the candidates support," Keller said. "If being a big government liberal was a ticket to winning a Republican primary then more big government liberals would win Republican primaries. All we do is provide candidates with the resources they need to get the message out and then the voters are the ones picking the candidates.”
Sure to bring tears to your eyes, the trailer for “Winter’s Tale” hit the web on Thursday (November 7).
Colin Farrell and Jessica Brown star in the flick as unlikely lovers, battling to stay together through a number of obstacles.
Based on the imaginative novel by Mark Helprin, the flick also stars Jennifer Connelly, William Hurt and Russell Crowe.
It is slated to hit theaters on Valentine’s Day 2014. Check out the trailer below!
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 7-Nov-2013
ShareContact: David Salisbury
david.salisbury@vanderbilt.edu
615-343-6803
Vanderbilt University
Tricking algae's biological clock to remain in its daytime setting can dramatically boost the amount of valuable compounds that these simple marine plants can produce when they are grown in constant light.
That is the conclusion of a "proof of concept" experiment described in the Dec. 2 issue of the journal Current Biology. The study found that when the biological clocks of cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) were stopped in their daylight setting, the amount of several biomolecules that they were genetically altered to produce increased by as much as 700 percent when grown in constant light.
"We have shown that manipulating cyanobacteria's clock genes can increase its production of commercially valuable biomolecules," said Carl Johnson, Stevenson Professor of Biological Sciences at Vanderbilt University, who performed the study with collaborators at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, MD and Waseda University in Tokyo. "In the last 10 years, we have figured out how to stop the circadian clocks in most species of algae and in many higher plants as well, so the technique should have widespread applicability."
If it lives up to its promise, bioclock stopping could have significant economic benefits: Microalgae are used for a wide variety of commercial applications ranging from anti-cancer drugs to cosmetics to bioplastics to biofuels to neutraceuticals. In addition, biotech companies are currently rushing to set up "biofactories" that use microorganisms to create a wide variety of substances that are too difficult or expensive to synthesize using conventional chemical methods. Many of them are based on microorganisms that have biological clocks.
In 2004, Johnson was a member of the team that determined the molecular structure of a circadian clock protein for the first time. Subsequent work mapped the entire clock mechanism in cyanobacteria, which is the simplest bioclock found in nature. The researchers discovered that the clock consisted of three proteins: KaiA, KaiB and KaiC. Detailed knowledge of the clock's structure allowed them to determine how to switch the clock on and off.
In the current study, the researchers discovered that two components of the clock, KaiA and KaiC, act as switches that turn the cell's daytime and nighttime genes on and off. They have dubbed this "yin-yang" regulation. When KaiA is upregulated produced in larger amounts and KaiC is downregulated produced in smaller amounts then the 95 percent of cell's genes that are active during daylight are turned on, and the 5 percent of the cell's genes that operate during the night are turned off. However, when KaiC is upregulated and KaiA is downregulated then the day genes are turned off and the night genes are turned on.
"As a result, all we have to do to lock the biological clock into its daylight configuration is to genetically upregulate the expression of KaiA, which is a simple manipulation in the genetically malleable cyanobacteria," Johnson said.
To see what effects this capability has on the bacteria's ability to produce commercially important compounds, the researchers inserted a gene for human insulin in some of the cyanobacteria cells, a gene for a fluorescent protein (luciferase) in other cells and a gene for hydrogenase, an enzyme that produces hydrogen gas, in yet others. They found that the cells with the locked clocks produced 200 percent more hydrogenase, 500 percent more insulin and 700 percent more luciferase when grown in constant light than they did when the genes were inserted in cells with normally functioning clocks.
###
Coauthors of the study include Research Associate Professor Yao Xu, Postdoctoral Fellow Ximing Qin and Graduate Student Jing Xiong from Vanderbilt; Assistant Professor Philip Weyman and Group Leader Qing Xu from the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Md., and Graduate Student Miki Umetani and Professor Hideo Iwasaki at Waseda University in Tokyo.
The research was funded by National Institute of General Medical Sciences grants GM067152 and GM088595, Department of Energy grant DE-FG36-05GO15027, Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science grants 23657138 and 23687002, the Asahi Glass Foundation and the Yoshida Scholarship Foundation.
Visit Research News @ Vanderbilt for more research news from Vanderbilt. [Media Note: Vanderbilt has a 24/7 TV and radio studio with a dedicated fiber optic line and ISDN line. Use of the TV studio with Vanderbilt experts is free, except for reserving fiber time.]
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 7-Nov-2013
ShareContact: David Salisbury
david.salisbury@vanderbilt.edu
615-343-6803
Vanderbilt University
Tricking algae's biological clock to remain in its daytime setting can dramatically boost the amount of valuable compounds that these simple marine plants can produce when they are grown in constant light.
That is the conclusion of a "proof of concept" experiment described in the Dec. 2 issue of the journal Current Biology. The study found that when the biological clocks of cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) were stopped in their daylight setting, the amount of several biomolecules that they were genetically altered to produce increased by as much as 700 percent when grown in constant light.
"We have shown that manipulating cyanobacteria's clock genes can increase its production of commercially valuable biomolecules," said Carl Johnson, Stevenson Professor of Biological Sciences at Vanderbilt University, who performed the study with collaborators at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, MD and Waseda University in Tokyo. "In the last 10 years, we have figured out how to stop the circadian clocks in most species of algae and in many higher plants as well, so the technique should have widespread applicability."
If it lives up to its promise, bioclock stopping could have significant economic benefits: Microalgae are used for a wide variety of commercial applications ranging from anti-cancer drugs to cosmetics to bioplastics to biofuels to neutraceuticals. In addition, biotech companies are currently rushing to set up "biofactories" that use microorganisms to create a wide variety of substances that are too difficult or expensive to synthesize using conventional chemical methods. Many of them are based on microorganisms that have biological clocks.
In 2004, Johnson was a member of the team that determined the molecular structure of a circadian clock protein for the first time. Subsequent work mapped the entire clock mechanism in cyanobacteria, which is the simplest bioclock found in nature. The researchers discovered that the clock consisted of three proteins: KaiA, KaiB and KaiC. Detailed knowledge of the clock's structure allowed them to determine how to switch the clock on and off.
In the current study, the researchers discovered that two components of the clock, KaiA and KaiC, act as switches that turn the cell's daytime and nighttime genes on and off. They have dubbed this "yin-yang" regulation. When KaiA is upregulated produced in larger amounts and KaiC is downregulated produced in smaller amounts then the 95 percent of cell's genes that are active during daylight are turned on, and the 5 percent of the cell's genes that operate during the night are turned off. However, when KaiC is upregulated and KaiA is downregulated then the day genes are turned off and the night genes are turned on.
"As a result, all we have to do to lock the biological clock into its daylight configuration is to genetically upregulate the expression of KaiA, which is a simple manipulation in the genetically malleable cyanobacteria," Johnson said.
To see what effects this capability has on the bacteria's ability to produce commercially important compounds, the researchers inserted a gene for human insulin in some of the cyanobacteria cells, a gene for a fluorescent protein (luciferase) in other cells and a gene for hydrogenase, an enzyme that produces hydrogen gas, in yet others. They found that the cells with the locked clocks produced 200 percent more hydrogenase, 500 percent more insulin and 700 percent more luciferase when grown in constant light than they did when the genes were inserted in cells with normally functioning clocks.
###
Coauthors of the study include Research Associate Professor Yao Xu, Postdoctoral Fellow Ximing Qin and Graduate Student Jing Xiong from Vanderbilt; Assistant Professor Philip Weyman and Group Leader Qing Xu from the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Md., and Graduate Student Miki Umetani and Professor Hideo Iwasaki at Waseda University in Tokyo.
The research was funded by National Institute of General Medical Sciences grants GM067152 and GM088595, Department of Energy grant DE-FG36-05GO15027, Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science grants 23657138 and 23687002, the Asahi Glass Foundation and the Yoshida Scholarship Foundation.
Visit Research News @ Vanderbilt for more research news from Vanderbilt. [Media Note: Vanderbilt has a 24/7 TV and radio studio with a dedicated fiber optic line and ISDN line. Use of the TV studio with Vanderbilt experts is free, except for reserving fiber time.]
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
