SummaryIn Arabidopsis, the tapetum plays important roles in anther development by providing enzymes for callose dissolution and materials for pollen-wall formation, and by supplying nutrients for pollen development. Here, we report the identification and characterization of a male-sterile mutant, defective in tapetal development and function 1 (tdf1), that exhibits irregular division and dysfunction of the tapetum. The TDF1 gene was characterized using a map-based cloning strategy, and was confirmed by genetic complementation. It encodes a putative R2R3 MYB transcription factor, and is highly expressed in the tapetum, meiocytes and microspores during anther development. Callose staining and gene expression analysis suggested that TDF1 may be a key component in controlling callose dissolution. Semi-quantitative and quantitative RT-PCR analysis showed that TDF1 acts downstream of DYT1 and upstream of AMS and AtMYB103 in the transcriptional regulatory networks that regulate tapetal development. In conclusion, our results show that TDF1 plays a vital role in tapetal differentiation and function.

People intuitively believe that when they become consciously aware of a visual stimulus, they will be able to remember it and immediately report it. The present study provides a series of striking demonstrations of behavior that is inconsistent with such an intuition. Four experiments showed that in certain conditions, participants could not report an attribute (e.g., letter identity) of a stimulus even when that attribute had been attended and had reached a full state of conscious awareness just prior to being questioned about it. We term this effect attribute amnesia, and it occurs when participants repeatedly locate a target using one attribute and are then unexpectedly asked to report that attribute. This discovery suggests that attention to and awareness of a stimulus attribute are insufficient to ensure its immediate reportability. These results imply that when attention is configured by using an attribute for target selection, that attribute will not necessarily be remembered.

Research conducted in Western cultural contexts has discovered that people are more intolerant of moral than demographic diversity, prefer greater social and physical distance from morally dissimilar others, and actively discriminate against those who do not share their moral attitudes. The goal of the current work was to test whether (a) these findings generalize across cultural contexts and (b) similar patterns would emerge with not only social but also political intolerance. Strength of moral conviction associated with participants' most important issue was associated with higher and similar levels of social intolerance of attitudinally dissimilar others in both China and the United States but was only related to political intolerance in China. These results demonstrate that moral mandate effects are not unique to highly individualized cultural contexts and reveal a possible boundary condition on the links between moral conviction and intolerance. Implications are discussed.

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