Examining Affect in Psychometric Schizotypy Using Behavioral Experience Sampling Methodology

poster abstractIn schizophrenia, patients often experience more negative emotions in the form of anger, sadness, and anxiety when compared to the general population. One unique way of measuring affect outside of the laboratory has been to use Experience Sampling Methods (ESM) to assess how individuals perceive current emotions in their daily life. However, these methods are still subject to self-report bias. In this study, we examined affect using traditional ESM methods while also implementing the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR), a behaviorally-based ESM measure that provides real-world assessments of speech. To examine the EAR, we evaluated affect in schizotypy and non-schizotypy groups. Research shows that schizophrenia-like experiences, like increased negative affect, run along a continuum. Schizotypy is a category on the healthier end of the schizophrenia-spectrum; it applies to individuals who are thought to have a putative genetic liability for schizophrenia. Using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), we compared affective word usage among schizotypy and non-schizotypy groups to provide a real-world, behavioral ESM measure. When traditional ESM measures were used, we found individuals with schizotypy reported less negative emotions compared to the non-schizotypy group, but results did not reach the level of significance. We also observed that non-schizotypy individuals reported slightly higher positive emotions, and the schizotypy group reported slightly higher negative emotions. A similar pattern was observed when examining EAR data. Overall, results suggested that traditional and behavioral ESM measures of affect had significant overlap. In general, those with schizotypy demonstrated slightly more negative emotion and slightly less positive emotion than the non-schizotypy group. Findings did not reach the level of significance. This study demonstrates that the EAR provides behavioral ratings of affect that are on par with traditional ESM ratings. Future work should examine the EAR at different points on the schizophrenia-spectrum

Comparison of Traits at Sexual Maturity of Recently Introduced Breeds to Angus and Brahman Bulls

Last updated: 6/12/200

Comparison of Reproductive Development of Recently Introduced Breeds to Angus and Brahman Bulls

Last updated: 6/12/200

Atomic and Molecular Opacities for Brown Dwarf and Giant Planet Atmospheres

We present a comprehensive description of the theory and practice of opacity calculations from the infrared to the ultraviolet needed to generate models of the atmospheres of brown dwarfs and extrasolar giant planets. Methods for using existing line lists and spectroscopic databases in disparate formats are presented and plots of the resulting absorptive opacities versus wavelength for the most important molecules and atoms at representative temperature/pressure points are provided. Electronic, ro-vibrational, bound-free, bound-bound, free-free, and collision-induced transitions and monochromatic opacities are derived, discussed, and analyzed. The species addressed include the alkali metals, iron, heavy metal oxides, metal hydrides, $H_2$, $H_2O$, $CH_4$, $CO$, $NH_3$, $H_2S$, $PH_3$, and representative grains. [Abridged]Comment: 28 pages of text, plus 22 figures, accepted to the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, replaced with more compact emulateapj versio

Canonical and Microcanonical Distributions for Fermi Systems

Recursion relations are presented that allow exact calculation of canonical and microcanonical partition functions of degenerate Fermi systems, assuming no explicit two-body interactions. Calculations of the level density, sorted by angular momentum, are presented for Ni-56 are presented. The issue of treating unbound states is also addressed.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

BioVDB: biological vector database for high-throughput gene expression meta-analysis

High-throughput sequencing has created an exponential increase in the amount of gene expression data, much of which is freely, publicly available in repositories such as NCBI's Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO). Querying this data for patterns such as similarity and distance, however, becomes increasingly challenging as the total amount of data increases. Furthermore, vectorization of the data is commonly required in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) approaches. We present BioVDB, a vector database for storage and analysis of gene expression data, which enhances the potential for integrating biological studies with AI/ML tools. We used a previously developed approach called Automatic Label Extraction (ALE) to extract sample labels from metadata, including age, sex, and tissue/cell-line. BioVDB stores 438,562 samples from eight microarray GEO platforms. We show that it allows for efficient querying of data using similarity search, which can also be useful for identifying and inferring missing labels of samples, and for rapid similarity analysis

Dietary Choline Supplementation Attenuates High-Fat-Diet-Induced Hepatocellular Carcinoma in Mice

Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the third most common cause of cancer-related death in the world. Choline deficiency has been well studied in the context of liver disease; however, less is known about the effects of choline supplementation in HCC. Objective: The objective of this study was to test whether choline supplementation could influence the progression of HCC in a high-fat-diet (HFD)-driven mouse model. Methods: Four-day-old male C57BL/6J mice were treated with the chemical carcinogen, 7,12-dimethylbenz[a]anthracene, and were randomly assigned at weaning to a cohort fed an HFD (60% kcal fat) or an HFD with supplemental choline (60% kcal fat, 1.2% choline; HFD+C) for 30 wk. Blood was isolated at 15 and 30 wk to measure immune cells by flow cytometry, and glucose-tolerance tests were performed 2 wk prior to killing. Overall tumor burden was quantified, hepatic lipids were measured enzymatically, and phosphatidylcholine species were measured by targeted MS methods. Gene expression and mitochondrial DNA were quantified by quantitative PCR. Results: HFD+C mice exhibited a 50-90% increase in both circulating choline and betaine concentrations in the fed state (P ≤ 0.05). Choline supplementation resulted in a 55% decrease in total tumor numbers, a 67% decrease in tumor surface area, and a 50% decrease in hepatic steatosis after 30 wk of diet (P ≤ 0.05). Choline supplementation increased the abundance of mitochondria and the relative expression of β-oxidation genes by 21% and ∼75-100%, respectively, in the liver. HFD+C attenuated circulating myeloid-derived suppressor cells at 15 wk of feeding (P ≤ 0.05). Conclusions: Choline supplementation attenuated HFD-induced HCC and hepatic steatosis in male C57BL/6J mice. These results suggest a therapeutic benefit of choline supplementation in blunting HCC progression

Tales from the playing field: black and minority ethnic students' experiences of physical education teacher education

This article presents findings from recent research exploring black and minority ethnic (BME) students’ experiences of Physical Education teacher education (PETE) in England (Flintoff, 2008). Despite policy initiatives to increase the ethnic diversity of teacher education cohorts, BME students are under-represented in PETE, making up just 2.94% of the 2007/8 national cohort, the year in which this research was conducted. Drawing on in-depth interviews and questionnaires with 25 BME students in PETE, the study sought to contribute to our limited knowledge and understanding of racial and ethnic difference in PE, and to show how ‘race,’ ethnicity and gender are interwoven in individuals’ embodied, everyday experiences of learning how to teach. In the article, two narratives in the form of fictional stories are used to present the findings. I suggest that narratives can be useful for engaging with the experiences of those previously silenced or ignored within Physical Education (PE); they are also designed to provoke an emotional as well as an intellectual response in the reader. Given that teacher education is a place where we should be engaging students, emotionally and politically, to think deeply about teaching, education and social justice and their place within these, I suggest that such stories of difference might have a useful place within a critical PETE pedagogy

A systematic review on the impact of leg ulceration on patients' quality of life

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>A systematic review was conducted to analyse journal articles that describe or measure the impact of leg ulceration on patients' quality of life (QoL) in order to improve the content of an educational programme that aims to enhance self-care agency in leg ulcer patients.</p> <p>Method</p> <p>Original articles published in English and German between 1990 and 2006 were included if the findings were analysed at the level of patients. Articles were excluded if (1) they investigated the impact of specific treatments or settings on QoL or (2) focused mainly on arterial ulcers or diabetic foot ulcers.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Twenty-four original research articles met the inclusion criteria; 11 studies used a quantitative, 11 studies a qualitative, and 2 used a mixed method approach. The findings were collapsed into 5 core domains. Quantitative studies commonly investigated the parameters of pain, sleep, social isolation, and physical mobility. Patients had significantly more pain, more restrictions regarding social functioning, less vitality, and limitations with respect to emotional roles compared to the respective controls. Other problem areas identified were restrictions in work capacity, recreation, social interaction, psychological well-being, as well as problems caused by treatment regimes. Inconclusive results were obtained regarding pain intensity, physical restrictions, and gender effects.</p> <p>Limitations</p> <p>Numerous original studies neither undertook a differentiation of participants by ulcer aetiology nor did they analyse the results according to gender differences.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>As leg ulceration has an impact on QoL, national guidelines on the treatment of leg ulceration need to more specifically address these far-ranging effects identified in this review.</p

Three-Dimensional Gravity with Conformal Scalar and Asymptotic Virasoro Algebra

Strominger has derived the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of the BTZ black hole using asymptotic Virasoro algebra. We apply Strominger's method to a black hole solution found by Martinez and Zanelli (MZ). This is a solution of three-dimensional gravity with a conformal scalar field. The solution is not $AdS_3$, but it is asymptotically $AdS_3$; therefore, it has the asymptotic Virasoro algebra. We compute the central charge for the theory and compares Cardy's formula with the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. It turns out that the functional form does agree, but the overall numerical coefficient does not. This is because this approach gives the "maximum possible entropy" for the numerical coefficient.Comment: 26 pages, LaTeX; v2: minor correction