Researchers and practitioners have an abiding interest in improving tools and methods to support idea generation. In studies that go beyond merely enumerating ideas, researchers typically select one or more of the following three constructs, which are often operationalized as the dependent variable(s): 1) idea quality, 2) idea novelty, which is sometimes referred to as rarity or unusualness, and 3) idea creativity. It has been chronically problematic to compare findings across studies because these evaluation constructs have been variously defined and the constructs have been sampled in different ways. For example, some researchers term an idea 'creative' if it is novel, while others consider an idea to be creative only if it is also applicable, effective, and implementable. This paper examines 90 studies on creativity and idea generation. Within the creativity studies considered here, the novelty of ideas was always measured, but in

Homeostatic regulation of the partial pressure of CO2 (PCO2) is vital for life. Sensing of pH has been proposed as a sufficient proxy for determination of PCO2 and direct CO2-sensing largely discounted. Here we show that connexin 26 (Cx26) hemichannels, causally linked to respiratory chemosensitivity, are directly modulated by CO2. A ‘carbamylation motif’, present in CO2-sensitive connexins (Cx26, Cx30, Cx32) but absent from a CO2-insensitive connexin (Cx31), comprises Lys125 and four further amino acids that orient Lys125 towards Arg104 of the adjacent subunit of the connexin hexamer. Introducing the carbamylation motif into Cx31 created a mutant hemichannel (mCx31) that was opened by increases in PCO2. Mutation of the carbamylation motif in Cx26 and mCx31 destroyed CO2 sensitivity. Course-grained computational modelling of Cx26 demonstrated that the proposed carbamate bridge between Lys125 and Arg104 biases the hemichannel to the open state. Carbamylation of Cx26 introduces a new transduction principle for physiological sensing of CO2.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.01213.001

Allostery in bacterial transcription factors arises from changes in global low-frequency protein dynamics. Amino acids that regulate low-frequency dynamics are identified and seen to be evolutionarily conserved.

No abstract

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