Felipe Nalon Castro

Romantic Preferences in Brazilian Undergraduate Students: From the Short Term to the Long Term

A number of studies have described different preference patterns typically found for men and women when choosing romantic mates. These vary according to the involvement level expected in the relationship. Despite the number of investigations on the topic, one must be careful not to generalize because most studies use samples composed of North American university undergraduates. This study sought to determine if the preference patterns typically found in other countries also occur among Brazilian undergraduates. The importance of characteristics and modifications in preference patterns under gradually restrictive conditions was also investigated. In general, the results obtained suggest that the preferences found in a number of countries also occur in Brazil. In short-term relationships, men prioritize physical attributes, whereas personal traits gain importance when involvement increases. Women in short-term relationships value physical and personal traits, whereas in the long term, they emphasize personal characteristics and their mates desire to acquire resources. Resource-related traits were less important than the other traits, and were more important for women than for men.

Preferred Interpersonal Distances: A Global Comparison

Human spatial behavior has been the focus of hundreds of previous research studies. However, the conclusions and generalizability of previous studies on interpersonal distance preferences were limited by some important methodological and sampling issues. The objective of the present study was to compare preferred interpersonal distances across the world and to overcome the problems observed in previous studies. We present an extensive analysis of interpersonal distances over a large data set (N = 8,943 participants from 42 countries). We attempted to relate the preferred social, personal, and intimate distances observed in each country to a set of individual characteristics of the participants, and some attributes of their cultures. Our study indicates that individual characteristics (age and gender) influence interpersonal space preferences and that some variation in results can be explained by temperature in a given region. We also present objective values of preferred interpersonal distances in different regions, which might be used as a reference data point in future studies.

In silico single strand melting curve: a new approach to identify nucleic acid polymorphisms in Totiviridae

BackgroundThe PCR technique and its variations have been increasingly used in the clinical laboratory and recent advances in this field generated new higher resolution techniques based on nucleic acid denaturation dynamics. The principle of these new molecular tools is based on the comparison of melting profiles, after denaturation of a DNA double strand. Until now, the secondary structure of single-stranded nucleic acids has not been exploited to develop identification systems based on PCR. To test the potential of single-strand RNA denaturation as a new alternative to detect specific nucleic acid variations, sequences from viruses of the Totiviridae family were compared using a new in silico melting curve approach. This family comprises double-stranded RNA virus, with a genome constituted by two ORFs, ORF1 and ORF2, which encodes the capsid/RNA binding proteins and an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp), respectively.ResultsA phylogenetic tree based on RdRp amino acid sequences was constructed, and eight monophyletic groups were defined. Alignments of RdRp RNA sequences from each group were screened to identify RNA regions with conserved secondary structure. One region in the second half of ORF2 was identified and individually modeled using the RNAfold tool. Afterwards, each DNA or RNA sequence was denatured in silico using the softwares MELTSIM and RNAheat that generate melting curves considering the denaturation of a double stranded DNA and single stranded RNA, respectively. The same groups identified in the RdRp phylogenetic tree were retrieved by a clustering analysis of the melting curves data obtained from RNAheat. Moreover, the same approach was used to successfully discriminate different variants of Trichomonas vaginalis virus, which was not possible by the visual comparison of the double stranded melting curves generated by MELTSIM.ConclusionIn silico analysis indicate that ssRNA melting curves are more informative than dsDNA melting curves. Furthermore, conserved RNA structures may be determined from analysis of individuals that are phylogenetically related, and these regions may be used to support the reconstitution of their phylogenetic groups. These findings are a robust basis for the development of in vitro systems to ssRNA melting curves detection.

Marital Satisfaction, Sex, Age, Marriage Duration, Religion, Number of Children, Economic Status, Education, and Collectivistic Values: Data from 33 Countries

Forms of committed relationships, including formal marriage arrangements between men and women, exist in almost every culture (Bell, 1997). Yet, similarly to many other psychological constructs (Henrich et al., 2010), marital satisfaction and its correlates have been investigated almost exclusively in Western countries (e.g., Bradbury et al., 2000). Meanwhile, marital relationships are heavily guided by culturally determined norms, customs, and expectations (for review see Berscheid, 1995; Fiske et al., 1998). While we acknowledge the differences existing both between- and within-cultures, we measured marital satisfaction and several factors that might potentially correlate with it based on self-report data from individuals across 33 countries. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the raw data available for anybody interested in further examining any relations between them and other country-level scores obtained elsewhere. Below, we review the central variables that are likely to be related to marital satisfaction. Gender Gender has long been identified in the literature as a predictor of marital satisfaction (Bernard, 1972). Specifically, early works suggested that men report being more satisfied with their marriages compared to women in both Western (e.g., Schumm et al., 1998) and non-Western (e.g., Rostami et al., 2014) cultures. However, sex differences in marital satisfaction may differ across cultures due to traditional sex roles (Pardo et al., 2012) and larger-scale cultural variables, such as sex egalitarianism (Taniguchi and Kaufman, 2013).

Panorama de oportunidades para os egressos do ensino superior no Brasil: o papel da inovação na criação de novos mercados de trabalho

O numero de egressos do ensino superior aumentou de cerca de 480 mil, em 2002, para mais de um milhao, em 2012. O panorama do mercado de trabalho para o profissional formado nas instituicoes de Ensino Superior brasileiras, gerado a partir da consulta a dados publicos no periodo de 2002 a 2012, indica desvalorizacao da mao de obra qualificada, decrescimo no numero de empregos de maior remuneracao, e um deficit de mais de 450 mil empregos de nivel superior. Esses dados deixam claro que o nivel de profissionalizacao dos trabalhadores deve crescer concomitantemente a acoes que permitam o acesso desses profissionais ao mercado de trabalho. Nesse contexto, a importância dos projetos do governo e da universidade sao inquestionaveis, sendo necessario o aprimoramento dos mecanismos de interacao entre universidade, empresa e governo, de forma a viabilizar o sucesso dos programas do governo que ja estao em andamento, e possibilitar o desenvolvimento economico e social.

Female expectations on romantic market in a sample of Brazilian and American women.

This study explored undergraduate women’s mating-market expectations in Brazil and the United States. Participants (n = 387) were shown descriptions of hypothetical stimulus females that were varied to yield all combinations of 2 levels (high/low) of 3 attributes (physical attractiveness/social skills/social status). They subsequently rated each stimulus female on 9 traits, and each stimulus female’s likely preferred long-term mating partner on the same set of 9 scales. Ratings of stimulus females paralleled their descriptions of each positive characteristic, substantially raising ratings on its 3 related traits but also showed substantial halo effects of positive descriptions, increasing the ratings of most unrelated traits. However, women with lower social skills are rated as having better financial prospects, and (only in Brazil) lower social-status women are rated as having more attractive bodies. Likewise, participants deemed that the stimulus would match their preferred partners more on related than unrelated traits, but each of the 3 positive traits also significantly raised all 6 of their unrelated traits. The strongest unrelated effect size was between the stimulus female’s physical attractiveness and her prospective partner’s financial status; this effect was significantly stronger in the American sample. This study shows that women expect positive assortative mating in long-term relationships and that desirable traits are not expected to vary independently. Finally, of the 54 characteristic/trait pairings examined, a large number showed significant sample (United States/Brazil) differences and even more showed significant pairing × sample interactions, suggesting nontrivial cultural and/or facultative influences.

Global Study of Social Odor Awareness

Olfaction plays an important role in human social communication, including multiple domains in which people often rely on their sense of smell in the social context. The importance of the sense of smell and its role can however vary inter-individually and culturally. Despite the growing body of literature on differences in olfactory performance or hedonic preferences across the globe, the aspects of a given culture as well as culturally universal individual differences affecting odor awareness in human social life remain unknown. Here, we conducted a large-scale analysis of data collected from 10 794 participants from 52 study sites from 44 countries all over the world. The aim of our research was to explore the potential individual and country-level correlates of odor awareness in the social context. The results show that the individual characteristics were more strongly related than country-level factors to self-reported odor awareness in different social contexts. A model including individual-level predictors (gender, age, material situation, education, and preferred social distance) provided a relatively good fit to the data, but adding country-level predictors (Human Development Index, population density, and average temperature) did not improve model parameters. Although there were some cross-cultural differences in social odor awareness, the main differentiating role was played by the individual differences. This suggests that people living in different cultures and different climate conditions may still share some similar patterns of odor awareness if they share other individual-level characteristics.

Corrigendum: Marital satisfaction, sex, age, marriage duration, religion, number of children, economic status, education, and collectivistic values: Data from 33 countries [Front. Psychol., 8, (2017) (1199)] DOI:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01199

[This corrects the article on p. 1199 in vol. 8, PMID: 28785230.].

Influência da formação acadêmica em Nutrição na expressão da neofobia alimentar

Resumo O estudo objetivou avaliar a influencia da formacao academica em Nutricao na expressao do comportamento alimentar neofobico. Trata-se de um estudo transversal realizado com 247 universitarios de ambos os sexos, com idade media de 24,6 ± 6,8 anos, matriculados no primeiro e no ultimo ano de graduacao em Nutricao e em outros cursos superiores da area de ciencia da saude. Foi avaliado o grau de neofobia alimentar atraves da Escala de Neofobia Alimentar associada a uma medida comportamental, obtida a partir da escolha entre alimentos conhecidos ou desconhecidos. De acordo com os resultados, os estudantes que estavam o inicio do curso de Nutricao apresentaram maiores escores de neofobia alimentar do que os do final do curso. No entanto, essa diferenca nao foi observada quando se comparou com os estudantes ingressantes e concluintes de outros cursos de graduacao. Ja na avaliacao comportamental, foi visto que a maior parte dos estudantes concluintes do curso de Nutricao escolheu a preparacao desconhecida, enquanto que nos demais grupos a maioria optou pela conhecida. Os resultados sugerem que a formacao academica em Nutricao pode ter influencia sobre a expressao da neofobia alimentar.

Intra-sex Variation in Human Mating Strategies: Different People, Different Tactics

Abstract Several studies have demonstrated that men and women exhibit different romantic preferences, which align with the patterns predicted by sexual strategies theory. It is also assumed that the mate’s value is a central factor in determining an individual’s sexual strategy. Thus, the current study was developed to investigate whether intra-sex variation exists in the ideal romantic preferences of both genders and whether these preferences are associated with self-perception. To investigate these questions, cluster analyses were performed on the descriptions of ideal mates for short- and long-term relationships given by 366 Brazilian undergraduates (145 men and 221 women). Subsequently, comparisons were made between the lists of self-perceived attributes related to reproduction generated by the resulting groups. The results suggest that males and females use different mating tactics for short-term mating and that males use different tactics for long-term mating. Among men, the mating tactics observed seem to be related to male mate value and their tactics changed when they described ideal short- and long-term partners. Women’s results showed different preference patterns in short-term assessments but minor differences were observed between them in terms of female mate value. For long-term relationships, female patterns were less distinct, indicating a single preference pattern. These findings indicate that a number of different tactics may be clustered together in investigations that address ideal preferences, and that studies of mate preferences must consider individual self-perceptions.