| 1. |
- Beal, Jacob, et al.
(författare)
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Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density
- 2020
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Ingår i: Communications Biology. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2399-3642. ; 3:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data.
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| 2. |
- Dang, Junhua, et al.
(författare)
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A Multilab Replication of the Ego Depletion Effect
- 2021
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Ingår i: Social Psychology and Personality Science. - : Sage Publications. - 1948-5506 .- 1948-5514. ; 12:1, s. 14-24
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- There is an active debate regarding whether the ego depletion effect is real. A recent preregistered experiment with the Stroop task as the depleting task and the antisaccade task as the outcome task found a medium-level effect size. In the current research, we conducted a preregistered multilab replication of that experiment. Data from 12 labs across the globe (N = 1,775) revealed a small and significant ego depletion effect, d = 0.10. After excluding participants who might have responded randomly during the outcome task, the effect size increased to d = 0.16. By adding an informative, unbiased data point to the literature, our findings contribute to clarifying the existence, size, and generality of ego depletion.
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| 3. |
- Luo, Jiaxin, et al.
(författare)
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Solar cells sensitized by donor-linked concerted companion dyes
- 2023
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Ingår i: Journal of Materials Chemistry C. - : ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY. - 2050-7526 .- 2050-7534. ; 11:16, s. 5450-5460
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recently, concerted companion (CC) dyes have been developed by covalently linking the acceptors of organic and porphyrin dye units. Herein, a new class of CC dyes XW85 and XW86 have been designed by linking the donors of porphyrin and organic dye units with C6H12 and C12H24 chains, respectively. The DSSCs of XW85 based on the I-3(-)/I- electrolyte show significant J(SC) (17.20 mA cm(-2)) and PCE (8.96%), and XW86 exhibits higher J(SC) (18.55 mA cm(-2)) and PCE (9.76%), which are also higher than those of the corresponding cosensitization systems. However, the PCEs for XW85 and XW86 are lower than that of the acceptor-linked reference dye XW76 despite the obviously larger dye adsorption amounts. Desorption studies reveal that the CC dyes may be either double-anchored or single-anchored, with the double/single anchoring ratios lying in a sequence of XW85 (1.31) < XW86 (1.88) < XW76 (6.34), consistent with that of increasing PCE. These observations indicate that the non-adsorbed sub-dye unit cannot effectively contribute to electron injection, and thus relatively large mono-anchoring proportions for XW85 and XW86 result in their relatively low J(SC), and the difference between XW85 and XW86 indicates that a longer linking chain is beneficial for partially alleviating the unfavorable single anchoring, resulting in superior performance. The results indicate that the photovoltaic behavior for the CC dyes may be further enhanced by avoiding the unfavorable alignment of the two carboxyl groups in opposite directions and thus simultaneously anchoring the two carboxyl groups, which may be realized through more rational molecular design.
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| 4. |
- Shi, Jiaxin, et al.
(författare)
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A distributional approach to measuring lifespan stratification
- 2023
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Ingår i: Population Studies. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0032-4728 .- 1477-4747. ; 77:1, s. 15-33
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The study of the mortality differences between groups has traditionally focused on metrics that describe average levels of mortality, for example life expectancy and standardized mortality rates. Additional insights can be gained by using statistical distance metrics to examine differences in lifespan distributions between groups. Here, we use a distance metric, the non-overlap index, to capture the sociological concept of stratification, which emphasizes the emergence of unique, hierarchically layered social strata. We show an application using Finnish registration data that cover the entire population over the period from 1996 to 2017. The results indicate that lifespan stratification and life-expectancy differences between income groups both increased substantially from 1996 to 2008; subsequently, life-expectancy differences declined, whereas stratification stagnated for men and increased for women. We conclude that the non-overlap index uncovers a unique domain of inequalities in mortality and helps to capture important between-group differences that conventional approaches miss.
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| 5. |
- Shi, Jiaxin, et al.
(författare)
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How Does Mortality Contribute to Lifetime Pension Inequality? : Evidence From Five Decades of Swedish Taxation Data
- 2022
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Ingår i: Demography. - : Duke University Press. - 0070-3370 .- 1533-7790. ; 59:5, s. 1843-1871
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- As with many social transfer schemes, pension systems around the world are often progressive: individuals with lower incomes receive a higher percentage of their income as a subsequent pension. On the other hand, those with lower earnings have higher mortality and thus accumulate fewer years of pension income. Both of these opposing factors influence the progressiveness of pension systems. Empirical efforts to disentangle the effects of mortality inequality on lifetime pension inequality have been scarce. Using Swedish taxation data linked with death registers for 1970–2018, we study how education and preretirement earnings relate to lifetime pensions from age 60 onward and how mortality inequalities contribute to overall inequalities in lifetime pensions. The results show that a progressive replacement structure and mortality differ ences contribute to the overall distribution of pension payments over the life course. Up to one quarter of lifetime pension inequality is attributable to the greater longevity of socially advantaged groups—particularly among men. Hence, mortality inequalities are an important determinant of the overall degree of between-group income transfers in a pension system, but they are not as important as inequalities in prior earnings.
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| 6. |
- Shi, Jiaxin, et al.
(författare)
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The impact of income definitions on mortality inequalities
- 2021
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Ingår i: SSM - Population Health. - : Elsevier BV. - 2352-8273. ; 15
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Income is a strong predictor of adult mortality. Measuring income is not as simple as it may sound. It can be conceptualized at the individual or the household level, with the former better reflecting an individual's earning ability, and the latter better capturing living standards. Furthermore, respondents are often grouped into income categories based on their positions in the income distribution, and this operationalization can be done on the basis of age-specific or total population income distributions. In this study, we look at how four combinations of different conceptualizations (individual vs. household) and operationalizations (age-specific vs. total population) of income can affect mortality inequality estimates. Using Finnish registry data, we constructed period life tables for ages 25+ from 1996 to 2017 by gender and for four income definitions. The results indicated that the slope index of inequality for life expectancy varied by 1.1-5.7 years between income definitions, with larger differences observed for women than for men. The overall age patterns of relative index of inequality for mortality rates yielded by the four definitions were similar, but the levels differed. The period trends across income definitions were consistent for men, but not for women. We conclude that researchers should pay particular attention to the choice of the income definitions when analyzing the association between income and mortality, and when comparing the magnitude of inequality across studies and over time.
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| 7. |
- Shi, Jiaxin, et al.
(författare)
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The Inequality of Lifetime Pensions
- 2023
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Ingår i: Sociological Science. - 2330-6696. ; 7, s. 667-693
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- At older ages, most people are supported by pension systems that provide payments based on prior contributions. An important, but neglected, aspect of inequality in how much people receive in pensions is the number of years they live to receive their pension. We examine inequality in lifetime-accumulated pensions and show the importance of mortality for understanding inequalities in pension payments, and contrast it to inequalities in working-age earnings and yearly pension payments among older adults. In contrast to most previous research on old-age inequality comparing different social groups, we focused on total-population-level inequality. Using Swedish register data covering the retired population born from 1918-1939, we found that lifetime pensions are much more unequal than pre-retirement earnings and yearly pensions. Our findings also show that mortality explains more than 50 percent of the inequality of lifetime pensions within cohorts, and plays an important role in explaining changes in inequality across cohorts (192 percent among men and 44 percent among women). Pension policies can affect lifetime pension inequality, but such effects are limited in magnitude unless they directly affect the number of years of receiving pensions.
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| 8. |
- Zhang, Tongyu, et al.
(författare)
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Genome-wide association studies revealed candidate genes for tail fat deposition and body size in the Hulun Buir sheep
- 2019
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Ingår i: Journal of Animal Breeding and Genetics. - : WILEY. - 0931-2668 .- 1439-0388. ; 136:5, s. 362-370
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Fat-tailed sheep have a unique characteristic of depositing fat in their tails. In the present study, we conducted genome-wide association studies (GWAS) on traits related to tail fat deposition and body size in the Hulun Buir sheep. A total number of 300 individuals belonging to two fat-tailed lines of the Hulun Buir sheep breed genotyped with the Ovine Infinium HD SNP BeadChip were included in the current study. Two mixed models, one for continuous and one for binary phenotypic traits, were employed to analyse ten traits, that is, body length (BL), body height (BH), chest girth (CG), tail length (TL), tail width (TW), tail circumference (TC), carcass weight (CW), tail fat weight (TF), ratio of CW to TF (RCT) and tail type (TT). We identified 7, 6, 7, 2, 10 and 1 SNPs significantly associated with traits TF, CW, RCT, TW, TT and CG, respectively. Their associated genomic regions harboured 42 positional candidate genes. Out of them, 13 candidate genes including SMURF2, FBF1, DTNBP1, SETD7 and RBM11 have been associated with fat metabolism in sheep. The RBM11 gene has already been identified in a previous study on signatures of selection in this specific sheep population. Two more genes, that is, SMARCA5 and GAB1 were associated with body size in sheep. The present study has identified candidate genes that might be implicated in tail fat deposition and body size in sheep.
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