Digest: Changing environment often easier than changing phenotype

Linearly changing stress environment causes cellular growth phenotype

A hallmark of cellular stress response pathways is to protect cells from different environmental insults. While much is known about how cells are protected against acute stresses of different types, the mechanisms underpinning how cells are protected against gradually changing stresses are poorly understood. Here we demonstrate that a linear stress gradient but not a step, pulse or a quadratic ...

Down Syndrome: Changing Cardiac Phenotype?

Down syndrome (DS) is the most common chromosomal abnormality, affecting 1 in 700 infants born yearly in the United States.1 The birth prevalence of DS varies internationally among populations, likely due to variations in maternal age, race/ethnicity, use of prenatal screening, and terminations of affected pregnancies.2, 3 Approximately half of all infants born with DS also have a congenital he...

The Changing Information Environment

Learning in a changing environment.

Multiple cue probability learning studies have typically focused on stationary environments. We present 3 experiments investigating learning in changing environments. A fine-grained analysis of the learning dynamics shows that participants were responsive to both abrupt and gradual changes in cue-outcome relations. We found no evidence that participants adapted to these types of change in quali...

The Changing Private Practice Environment:

The physician private practice arena has evolved from the days of the single family practitioner delivering house calls to one where options such as an affiliation of independent practitioners to purchase supplies or the integration of multi-specialty medical groups and hospitals into regional health systems are available. The transition to these sophisticated systems for the delivery of medica...