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Collective intelligence (CI) is critical to solving many scientific, business, and other problems, but groups often fail to achieve it. Here, we analyze data on group performance from 22 studies, including 5,279 individuals in 1,356 groups. Our results support the conclusion that a robust CI factor characterizes a group's ability to work together across a diverse set of tasks. We further show that CI is predicted by the proportion of women in the group, mediated by average social perceptiveness of group members, and that it predicts performance on various out-of-sample criterion tasks. We also find that, overall, group collaboration process is more important in predicting CI than the skill of individual members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, Karmali agar was modified by adding tazobactam (T-Kannali agar) to suppress the growth of extendedspectrum p-lactamase (ESBL)-producing Escherichia coli, which frequently contaminates raw poultry meat. By inoculating 30 Campylobacter spp. strains and 25 ESBL-producing E. coli strains onto Karmali agar and T-Karmali agar containing various concentrations of the antibacterial agent, we determined the optimum concentration of tazobactam to be 4 mg/liter. The Campylobacter spp. isolation rate on T-Karmali agar (13.3%) was higher than that on Karmali agar (8.3%), although the difference was not significant (P > 0.05). However, T-Karmali agar showed a significantly greater selectivity than Karmali agar, as evaluated by comparing the numbers of contaminated agar plates (20.8 versus 82.5%; P < 0.05) and the growth indexes (1.36 versus 2.83) of competing flora. The predominant competing flora on Karmali and T-Karmali agar were identified as ESBLproducing E. coli. Thus, T-Karmali agar might be effective for determining the real prevalence of Campylobacter in raw poultry and, especially, contamination with ESBL-producing E. coli. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Myostatin is one of the transforming growth factor (TGF)-β family members and plays inhibitory roles in the development and growth of muscle in mammals. Mammalian myostatins have been studied intensively, considering its medical and industrial potential use. Still, limited information is available about myostatin homologues in crustaceans. In the present study, we isolated for the first time cDNA that encodes for myostatin-like protein (Pj-MSTN) from Morotoge shrimp, Pandalopsis japonica. The putative mature peptide of Pj-MSTN was composed of 109 amino acids, which contains an additional amino acid residue compared with mammalian myostatins. Pj-MSTN exhibited 32% amino acid sequence identity and 52% similarity to human myostatin. Multiple sequence alignment analysis indicated that Pj-MSTN shared the conserved proteolytic cleavage site (RXXR) for its maturation and nine cysteine residues for disulphide bridges. These results suggest that Pj-MSTN has conserved the three-dimensional structure of TGF-β family members in vertebrates. Phylogenetic analysis suggests that Pj-MSTN is a primitive form of vertebrate myostatin and GDF11. The expression of Pj-MSTN was not just identified in muscular tissues, suggesting that Pj-MSTN functions differently from mammalian myostatin. Ablation of the X-organ/sinus gland complex significantly reduced the expression of Pj-MSTN in most tissues, suggesting its potential association with moulting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]