Project description:The open-ended and internally driven nature of curiosity makes characterizing the information seeking that accompanies it a daunting endeavour. We use a historico-philosophical taxonomy of information seeking coupled with a knowledge network building framework to capture styles of information-seeking in 149 participants as they explore Wikipedia for over 5 hours spanning 21 days. We create knowledge networks in which nodes represent distinct concepts and edges represent the similarity between concepts. We quantify the tightness of knowledge networks using graph theoretical indices and use a generative model of network growth to explore mechanisms underlying information-seeking. Deprivation curiosity (the tendency to seek information that eliminates knowledge gaps) is associated with the creation of relatively tight networks and a relatively greater tendency to return to previously visited concepts. With this framework in hand, future research can readily quantify the information seeking associated with curiosity.
Project description:Individuals differ in the way they judge ambiguous information: some individuals interpret ambiguous information in a more optimistic, and others in a more pessimistic way. Over the past two decades, such "optimistic" and "pessimistic" cognitive judgment biases (CJBs) have been utilized in animal welfare science as indicators of animals' emotional states. However, empirical studies on their ecological and evolutionary relevance are still lacking. We, therefore, aimed at transferring the concept of "optimism" and "pessimism" to behavioral ecology and investigated the role of genetic and environmental factors in modulating CJB in mice. In addition, we assessed the temporal stability of individual differences in CJB. We show that the chosen genotypes (C57BL/6J and B6D2F1N) and environments ("scarce" and "complex") did not have a statistically significant influence on the responses in the CJB test. By contrast, they influenced anxiety-like behavior with C57BL/6J mice and mice from the "complex" environment displaying less anxiety-like behavior than B6D2F1N mice and mice from the "scarce" environment. As the selected genotypes and environments did not explain the existing differences in CJB, future studies might investigate the impact of other genotypes and environmental conditions on CJB, and additionally, elucidate the role of other potential causes like endocrine profiles and epigenetic modifications. Furthermore, we show that individual differences in CJB were repeatable over a period of seven weeks, suggesting that CJB represents a temporally stable trait in laboratory mice. Therefore, we encourage the further study of CJB within an animal personality framework.
Project description:Research has started to acknowledge the importance of emotions for complex learning and cognitive performance. However, research on epistemic emotions has only recently become more prominent. Research in educational psychology in particular has mostly focused on examining achievement emotions instead of epistemic emotions. Furthermore, only few studies have addressed functional mechanisms underlying multiple different epistemic emotions simultaneously, and only one study has systematically compared the origins and effects of epistemic emotions with other emotions relevant to knowledge generation (i.e., achievement emotions; Vogl et al., 2019). The present article aimed to replicate the findings from Vogl et al. (2019) exploring within-person interrelations, origins, and outcomes of the epistemic emotions surprise, curiosity, and confusion, and the achievement emotions pride and shame, as well as to analyze their robustness and generalizability across two different study settings (online; Study 1, n = 169 vs. lab; Study 2, n = 79). In addition, the previous findings by Vogl et al. (2019, Study 3) and the present two new studies were meta-analytically integrated to consolidate evidence on origins and outcomes of epistemic emotions. The results of the two new studies largely replicated the findings by Vogl et al. (2019). Combined with the meta-analytic results, the findings confirm distinct patterns of antecedents for epistemic vs. achievement emotions: Pride and shame were more strongly associated with the correctness of a person's answer (i.e., accuracy), whereas surprise, curiosity, and confusion were more strongly related to incorrect responses a person was confident in (i.e., high-confidence errors) producing cognitive incongruity. Furthermore, in contrast to achievement emotions, epistemic emotions had positive effects on the exploration of knowledge. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
Project description:Our actions and decisions are regularly influenced by the social environment around us. Can social cues be leveraged to induce curiosity and affect subsequent behavior? Across two experiments, we show that curiosity is contagious: The social environment can influence people's curiosity about the answers to scientific questions. Participants were presented with everyday questions about science from a popular on-line forum, and these were shown with a high or low number of up-votes as a social cue to popularity. Participants indicated their curiosity about the answers, and they were given an opportunity to reveal a subset of those answers. Participants reported greater curiosity about the answers to questions when the questions were presented with a high (vs. low) number of up-votes, and they were also more likely to choose to reveal the answers to questions with a high (vs. low) number of up-votes. These effects were partially mediated by surprise and by the inferred usefulness of knowledge, with a more dramatic effect of low up-votes in reducing curiosity than of high up-votes in boosting curiosity. Taken together, these results highlight the important role social information plays in shaping our curiosity.
Project description:Camellia yuhsienensis Hu is an economically valuable species in the genus Camellia. It is widely used for breeding ornaments and oil varieties. In this study, the complete chloroplast (cp) genome sequence of C. yuhsienensis is assembled and annotated. The whole cp genome of C. yuhsienensis is 156,912 bp in size, composed of a small single copy (SSC) region of 18,296 bp and a large single copy (LSC) region of 86,560 bp, separated by a pair of inverted repeats (IRs, IRA: 86,561-112,588; IRB: 130,885-156,912). The overall GC content of C. yuhsienensis cp genome is 37.3%, with the base content A (31.08%), T (31.63%), C (19.02%), and G (18.27%). The phylogenetic analysis of 15 Camellia species based on 77 protein-coding genes shows that C. yuhsienensis is evolutionarily close to Camellia taliensis.
Project description:When people feel curious, they often seek information to resolve their curiosity. Reaching resolution, however, does not always occur in a single step but instead may follow the accumulation of information over time. Here, we investigated changes in curiosity over a dynamic information-gathering process and how these changes related to affective and cognitive states as well as behavior. Human participants performed an Evolving Line Drawing Task, during which they reported guesses about the drawings' identities and made choices about whether to keep watching. In Study 1, the timing of choices was predetermined and externally imposed, while in Study 2, participants had agency in the timing of guesses and choices. Using this dynamic paradigm, we found that even within a single information-gathering episode, curiosity evolved in concert with other emotional states and with confidence. In both studies, we showed that the relationship between curiosity and confidence depended on stimulus entropy (unique guesses across participants) and on guess accuracy. We demonstrated that curiosity is multifaceted and can be experienced as either positive or negative depending on the state of information gathering. Critically, even when given the choice to alleviate uncertainty immediately (i.e., view a spoiler), higher curiosity promoted continuing to engage in the information-gathering process. Collectively, we show that curiosity changes over information accumulation to drive engagement with external stimuli, rather than to shortcut the path to resolution, highlighting the value inherent in the process of discovery.
Project description:More than 60 years ago, Richard Feynman gave a lecture titled "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom: An Invitation to Enter a New Field of Physics", where he called on others to join the then-nascent field of nanotechnology. In a similar spirit, we wish to invite chemists, biologists, physicists, bioengineers, educators, high school students, and inventors of all backgrounds to join us in the emerging field of frugal science. In this Review, we define frugal science and use six case studies to describe the broad applications of frugal science, from synthetic biology to disease diagnostics. We conclude by establishing an argument for curiosity-driven research through frugal science to enable broader access in chemical and bioengineering research and drive innovation.
Project description:Due to the poor palatability of straw, feeding untreated rice straw reduces ruminant feed intake, thus affecting the production efficiency of animal husbandry. However, the detailed mechanism by which straw affects ruminants' feed intake is unclear. Therefore, this study aimed to elucidate the molecular mechanism by which a rice straw (RS)-based diet affects appetite regulation in Hu sheep. We found that RS promoted the secretion of cholecystokinin (CCK) and glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) and decreased feed intake. Blood metabolomics showed that RS activated the arachidonic acid metabolism, biosynthesis of unsaturated fatty acids, linoleic acid metabolism, and alpha-linolenic acid metabolism pathways, and the secretion of stearic acid (SA), their metabolic end product, increased significantly. GPR120, one of the classical receptors of long-chain fatty acids (LCFAs), can be involved in appetite regulation. However, the role of SA in satiety hormone regulation mediated by GPR120 in ruminants is unclear. In this study, in vivo experiments showed that in sheep fed with RS, SA increased significantly and activated GPR120/Ca2+, increasing the secretion of the satiety hormones CCK and GLP-1. In vitro mechanism studies showed that SA promotes GLP-1 and CCK secretion by activating GPR120-mediated downstream PKC and IP3R signaling pathways of PLCβ.
Project description:Curiosity during learning increases information-seeking behaviors and subsequent memory retrieval success, yet the mechanisms that drive curiosity and its accompanying information-seeking behaviors remain elusive. Hints throughout the literature suggest that curiosity may result from a metacognitive signal-possibly of closeness to a not yet accessible piece of information-that in turn leads the experiencer to seek out additional information that will resolve a perceptibly small knowledge gap. We examined whether metacognition sensations thought to signal the likely presence of an as yet unretrieved relevant memory (such as familiarity or déjà vu) might be involved. Across two experiments, when cued recall failed, participants gave higher curiosity ratings during reported déjà vu (Experiment 1) or déjà entendu (Experiment 2), and these states were associated with increased expenditure of limited experimental resources to discover the answer. Participants also spent more time attempting to retrieve information and generated more incorrect information when experiencing these déjà vu-like states than when not. We propose that metacognition signaling of the possible presence of an as yet unretrieved but relevant memory may drive curiosity and prompt information-seeking that includes further search efforts.
Project description:This study aimed to investigate the effects of threonine (Thr) on the digestive and absorptive ability, proliferation and differentiation of enterocytes, and gene expression of juvenile Jian carp (Cyprinus carpio var. Jian). First, seven isonitrogenous diets containing graded levels of Thr (7.4-25.2 g/kg diet) were fed to the fishes for 60 days. Second, enterocyte proliferation and differentiation were assayed by culturing enterocytes with graded levels of Thr (0-275 mg/l) in vitro. Finally, enterocytes were cultured with 0 and 205 mg/l Thr to determine protein synthesis. The percent weight gain (PWG), specific growth rate, feed intake, feed efficiency, protein retention value, activities of trypsin, lipase and amylase, weights and protein contents of hepatopancreas and intestine, folds heights, activities of alkaline phosphatase (AKP), ?- glutamyl transpeptidase and Na(+)/K(+)-ATPase in all intestinal segments, glutamate-oxaloacetate transaminase (GOT) and glutamate-pyruvate transaminase (GPT) activities in hepatopancreas, and 4E-BP2 gene expression in muscle, hepatopancreas and intestinal segments were significantly enhanced by Thr (p<0.05). However, the plasma ammonia concentration and TOR gene expression decreased (p<0.05). In vitro, Thr supplement significantly increased cell numbers, protein content, the activities of GOT, GPT, AKP and Na(+)/K(+)-ATPase, and protein synthesis rate of enterocytes, and decreased LDH activity and ammonia content in cell medium (p<0.05). In conclusion, Thr improved growth, digestive and absorptive capacity, enterocyte proliferation and differentiation, and protein synthesis and regulated TOR and 4E-BP2 gene expression in juvenile Jian carp. The dietary Thr requirement of juvenile Jian carp was 16.25 g/kg diet (51.3 g/kg protein) based on quadratic regression analysis of PWG.