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The prevalence of pseudoscientific beliefs in our societies negatively influences relevant areas such as health or education. Causal illusions have been proposed as a possible cognitive basis for the development of such beliefs. The aim of our study was to further investigate the specific nature of the association between causal illusion and endorsement of pseudoscientific beliefs through an active contingency detection task. In this task, volunteers are given the opportunity to manipulate the presence or absence of a potential cause in order to explore its possible influence over the outcome. Responses provided are assumed to reflect both the participants' information interpretation strategies as well as their information search strategies. Following a previous study investigating the association between causal illusion and the presence of paranormal beliefs, we expected that the association between causal illusion and pseudoscientific beliefs would disappear when controlling for the information search strategy (i.e., the proportion of trials in which the participants decided to present the potential cause). Volunteers with higher pseudoscientific beliefs also developed stronger causal illusions in active contingency detection tasks. This association appeared irrespective of the participants with more pseudoscientific beliefs showing (Experiment 2) or not (Experiment 1) differential search strategies. Our results suggest that both information interpretation and search strategies could be significantly associated to the development of pseudoscientific (and paranormal) beliefs., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Charcoal briquettes are inexpensive solid fuels made from carbonized biomass. The potential of converting water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) charcoal into briquettes with molasses as binder was investigated in this study. Dried water hyacinth was carbonized at a temperature between 350°C to 500°C in a fabricated fine biomass carbonizer. A solution containing 80% by weight molasses was used in the production of briquettes having different charcoal/molasses ratios of 40:60, 30:70, and 20:80. Each briquette was characterized in terms of bulk density, calorific value, compressive strength, proximate analysis and micro-structure by Scanning Electron Microscopy. Charcoal briquettes were tested for their flammable characteristics through their burning rates and ignition time. Altering the molasses to charcoal ratio affected the quality and characteristics of the briquettes. Volatile combustible matter and fixed carbon increased with increasing amount of binder while ash content decreased. The 30:70 charcoal/molasses ratio produced the highest calorific value (16.6 MJ/kg) and compressive strength (19.1 kg/cm2). The results have shown the potential of converting water hyacinth into an alternative fuel source., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Cognitive biases such as causal illusions have been related to paranormal and pseudoscientific beliefs and, thus, pose a real threat to the development of adequate critical thinking abilities. We aimed to reduce causal illusions in undergraduates by means of an educational intervention combining training-in-bias and training-in-rules techniques. First, participants directly experienced situations that tend to induce the Barnum effect and the confirmation bias. Thereafter, these effects were explained and examples of their influence over everyday life were provided. Compared to a control group, participants who received the intervention showed diminished causal illusions in a contingency learning task and a decrease in the precognition dimension of a paranormal belief scale. Overall, results suggest that evidence-based educational interventions like the one presented here could be used to significantly improve critical thinking skills in our students.

Word recognition includes the activation of a range of syntactic and semantic knowledge that is relevant to language interpretation and reference. Here we explored whether or not the number of arguments a verb takes impinges negatively on verb processing time. In this study, three experiments compared the dynamics of spoken word recognition for verbs with different preferred argument structure. Listeners' eye movements were recorded as they searched an array of pictures in response to hearing a verb. Results were similar in all the experiments. The time to identify the referent increased as a function of the number of arguments, above and beyond any effects of label appropriateness (and other controlled variables, such as letter, phoneme and syllable length, phonological neighborhood, oral and written lexical frequencies, imageability and rated age of acquisition). The findings indicate that the number of arguments a verb takes, influences referent identification during spoken word recognition. Representational complexity and amount of information generated by the lexical item that aids target identification are discussed as possible sources of this finding.

Previous research has studied the relationship between political ideology and cognitive biases, such as the tendency of conservatives to form stronger illusory correlations between negative infrequent behaviors and minority groups. We further explored these findings by studying the relation between illusory correlation and moral values. According to the moral foundations theory, liberals and conservatives differ in the relevance they concede to different moral dimensions: Care, Fairness, Loyalty, Authority, and Purity. Whereas liberals consistently endorse the Care and Fairness foundations more than the Loyalty, Authority and Purity foundations, conservatives tend to adhere to the five foundations alike. In the present study, a group of participants took part in a standard illusory correlation task in which they were presented with randomly ordered descriptions of either desirable or undesirable behaviors attributed to individuals belonging to numerically different majority and minority groups. Although the proportion of desirable and undesirable behaviors was the same in the two groups, participants attributed a higher frequency of undesirable behaviors to the minority group, thus showing the expected illusory correlation effect. Moreover, this effect was specifically associated to our participants' scores in the Loyalty subscale of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire. These results emphasize the role of the Loyalty moral foundation in the formation of attitudes towards minorities among conservatives. Our study points out the moral system as a useful fine-grained framework to explore the complex interaction between basic cognitive processes and ideology.

Biochar effects on soil microbial abundance and community structure are keys for understanding the biogeochemical cycling of nutrients and organic matter turnover, but are poorly understood, in particular in tropical areas. We conducted a greenhouse experiment in which we added biochars produced from four different feedstocks [sewage sludge (B1), deinking sewage sludge (B2), Miscanthus (B3) and pine wood (B4)] at a rate of 3% (w/w) to two tropical soils (an Acrisol and a Ferralsol) planted with proso millet (Panicum milliaceum L.). The interactive effect of the addition of earthworms was also addressed. For this purpose we utilized soil samples from pots with or without the earthworm Pontoscolex corethrurus, which is a ubiquitous earthworm in tropical soils. Phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) measurements showed that biochar type, soil type and the presence of earthworms significantly affected soil microbial community size and structure. In general, biochar addition affected fungal but not bacterial populations. Overall, biochars rich in ash (B1 and B2) resulted in a marked increase in the fungi to bacteria ratio, while this ratio was unaltered after addition of biochars with a high fixed carbon content (B3 and B4). Our study remarked the contrasting effect that both, biochar prepared from different materials and macrofauna, can have on soil microbial community. Such changes might end up with ecosystem-level effects.

According to the dual coding theory, differences in the ease of retrieval between concrete and abstract words are related to the exclusive dependence of abstract semantics on linguistic information. Argument structure can be considered a measure of the complexity of the linguistic contexts that accompany a verb. If the retrieval of abstract verbs relies more on the linguistic codes they are associated to, we could expect a larger effect of argument structure for the processing of abstract verbs. In this study, sets of length- and frequency-matched verbs including 40 intransitive verbs, 40 transitive verbs taking simple complements, and 40 transitive verbs taking sentential complements were presented in separate lexical and grammatical decision tasks. Half of the verbs were concrete and half were abstract. Similar results were obtained in the two tasks, with significant effects of imageability and transitivity. However, the interaction between these two variables was not significant. These results conflict with hypotheses assuming a stronger reliance of abstract semantics on linguistic codes. In contrast, our data are in line with theories that link the ease of retrieval with availability and robustness of semantic information.

Hepatosplenic T-cell lymphoma (HSTL) is an aggressive lymphoma cytogenetically characterized by isochromosome 7q [i(7)(q10)], of which the molecular consequences remain unknown. We report here results of an integrative genomic and transcriptomic (expression microarray and RNA-sequencing) study of six i(7)(q10)-positive HSTL cases, including HSTL-derived cell line (DERL-2), and three cases with ring 7 [r(7)], the recently identified rare variant aberration. Using high resolution array CGH, we profiled all cases and mapped the common deleted region (CDR) at 7p22.1p14.1 (34.88 Mb; 3506316-38406226 bp) and the common gained region (CGR) at 7q22.11q31.1 (38.77 Mb; 86259620-124892276 bp). Interestingly, CDR spans a smaller region of 13 Mb (86259620-99271246 bp) constantly amplified in cases with r(7). In addition, we found that TCRG (7p14.1) and TCRB (7q32) are involved in formation of r(7), which seems to be a byproduct of illegitimate somatic rearrangement of both loci. Further transcriptomic analysis has not identified any CDR-related candidate tumor suppressor gene. Instead, loss of 7p22.1p14.1 correlated with an enhanced expression of CHN2 (7p14.1) and the encoded β2-chimerin. Gain and amplification of 7q22.11q31.1 are associated with an increased expression of several genes postulated to be implicated in cancer, including RUNDC3B, PPP1R9A and ABCB1, a known multidrug resistance gene. RNA-sequencing did not identify any disease-defining mutation or gene fusion. Thus, chromosome 7 imbalances remain the only driver events detected in this tumor. We hypothesize that the Δ7p22.1p14.1-associated enhanced expression of CHN2/β2-chimerin leads to downmodulation of the NFAT pathway and a proliferative response, while upregulation of the CGR-related genes provides growth advantage for neoplastic δγT-cells and underlies their intrinsic chemoresistance. Finally, our study confirms the previously described gene expression profile of HSTL and identifies a set of 24 genes, including three located on chromosome 7 (CHN2, ABCB1 and PPP1R9A), distinguishing HSTL from other malignancies.

Phytoremediation of soils contaminated with cadmium was tested after liming (CaO) or biochar addition, using red amaranth (Amaranthus tricolor L.) as test plant species. Two biochars with contrasting characteristics were prepared from two feedstocks and added to the soil at a rate of 3% (w:w): Eucalyptus pyrolysed at 600°C (EB) and poultry litter at 400°C (PLB). Liming was carried out in two treatments (CaO1) and (CaO2) to the same pH as the treatments EB and PLB respectively. Total plant mass increased in soils amended with PLB and with a mixture of PLB and EB; however this was not sufficient to increase the efficiency of phytoextraction. Bioavailable and mobile fractions of Cd diminished after liming or biochar addition. Our study infers that, both the amount of Cd immobilized and the main mechanism responsible for this immobilization varies according to biochar properties.

The transcription factor FOXP1 is implicated in the pathogenesis of B-cell lymphomas through chromosomal translocations involving either immunoglobulin heavy chain (IGH) locus or non-IG sequences. The former translocation, t(3;14)(p13;q32), results in dysregulated expression of FOXP1 juxtaposed with strong regulatory elements of IGH. Thus far, molecular consequences of rare non-IG aberrations of FOXP1 remain undetermined. Here, using molecular cytogenetics and molecular biology studies, we comprehensively analyzed four lymphoma cases with non-IG rearrangements of FOXP1 and compared these with cases harboring t(3;14)(p13;q32)/IGH-FOXP1 and FOXP1-expressing lymphomas with no apparent structural aberrations of the gene. Our study revealed that non-IG rearrangements of FOXP1 are usually acquired during clinical course of various lymphoma subtypes, including diffuse large B cell lymphoma, marginal zone lymphoma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and correlate with a poor prognosis. Importantly, these aberrations constantly target the coding region of FOXP1, promiscuously fusing with coding and non-coding gene sequences at various reciprocal breakpoints (2q36, 10q24 and 3q11). The non-IG rearrangements of FOXP1, however, do not generate functional chimeric genes but commonly disrupt the full-length FOXP1 transcript leading to an aberrant expression of N-truncated FOXP1 isoforms (FOXP1(NT)), as shown by QRT-PCR and Western blot analysis. In contrast, t(3;14)(p13;q32)/IGH-FOXP1 affects the 5' untranslated region of FOXP1 and results in overexpress the full-length FOXP1 protein (FOXP1(FL)). RNA-sequencing of a few lymphoma cases expressing FOXP1(NT) and FOXP1(FL) detected neither FOXP1-related fusions nor FOXP1 mutations. Further bioinformatic analysis of RNA-sequencing data retrieved a set of genes, which may comprise direct or non-direct targets of FOXP1(NT), potentially implicated in disease progression. In summary, our findings point to a dual mechanism through which FOXP1 is implicated in B-cell lymphomagenesis. We hypothesize that the primary t(3;14)(p13;q32)/IGH-FOXP1 activates expression of the FOXP1(FL) protein with potent oncogenic activity, whereas the secondary non-IG rearrangements of FOXP1 promote expression of the FOXP1(NT) proteins, likely driving progression of disease.