The effect of the similarity of events on change deafness

Change deafness is a perceptual phenomenon that occurs when an observer fails to rapidly detect an above-threshold change in a sound source. The present research represented an initial investigation into one stimulus factor, the perceived similarity between array events, that potentially gives rise to change deafness to continuously moving target events. Participants (N=13) were presented with arrays of three simultaneous tones of inharmonic, synthetic /a/ and /i/ vowels. Each array event had a distinct pitch [low (A2), middle (D#3), high (B4)] and starting location in perceived space on the azimuth (-40°, 0°, +40°). Participants were instructed to identify the pitch of the tone that changed with respect to location in perceived space. The target, or changing event, had either a shared a vowel with another distractor, or had a unique vowel relative to the remaining two events. Mean percent correct identification of change was significantly lower when the target event was similar to distractors, indicating frequent incidence of change deafness, and suggesting that change deafness is dependent upon the degree of event similarity

Structural Racism, Structural Pollution and the Need for a New Paradigm

Any serious attempt to address the issues of poverty, wealth and the working poor would do well to learn from the Environmental Justice movement, a broad-based national social movement that has emerged from the ground up over the past twenty years. The movement operates at the intersection of race, poverty and the environment, and offers hope in an otherwise bleak landscape of environmental and social justice advocacy. The movement offers a new paradigm for community leadership and control. This Essay explores the need for that new paradigm, using one community’s struggle against toxic intrusion to illustrate the failure of the traditional paradigms of environmental and civil rights law. The experiences of residents of the Waterfront South neighborhood of Camden, New Jersey, demonstrate the need to address the structural nature of both pollution and racism, and we offer an environmental justice approach as a start

Interventions to increase uptake of the human papillomavirus vaccine in unvaccinated college students: A systematic literature review

© 2019, American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy. All rights reserved. The Committee was charged with the responsibility for examining the need for change in pharmacy education and the models of leadership that would enable that change to occur across the academy. They also examined the question of faculty wellbeing in a time of change and made several recommendations and suggestions regarding both charges. Building upon the work of the previous Academic Affairs Committee, the 2018-19 AAC encourages the academy to implement new curricular models supporting personalized learning that creates engaged and lifelong learners. This will require transformational leadership and substantial investments in faculty development and new assessment strategies and resources. Recognizing that the magnitude of the recommended change will produce new stress on faculty, the committee identified the need for much additional work on student, faculty and leaders’ wellbeing, noting the limited amount of empirical evidence on pharmacy related to stress and resilience. That said, if faculty and administrators are not able to address personal and community wellbeing, their ability to support their students’ wellbeing will be compromised

Probabilistic Segmentation of Small Metastatic Brain Tumors using Liquid State Machine Ensemble

View full abstracthttps://openworks.mdanderson.org/leading-edge/1017/thumbnail.jp

Measurement of epigenetic alterations from patient’s tissues in myoma, adenomyoma and endometriosis

Background: Myoma, adenomyoma, and endometriosis are estrogen-dependent gynecologic diseases and result in reproductive dysfunction and pelvic pain in women. However, these gynecologic diseases have a complex and poorly understood etiology, involving both genetic and environmental factors. Epigenetic alterations, heritable changes that can modify gene expression without affecting genetic sequence, are associated with the development and progression of numerous pathological states and diseases. Therefore, there is great potential for the use of epigenetics as biomarkers to better understand the early-stage biological responses and molecular mechanisms of gynecologic diesases. We aimed to examine levels of global DNA and gene-specific methylation, which are epigenetic alterations that could be associated with development of gynecologic diseases, including myoma, adenomyoma, and endometriosis. Methods: We measured global DNA methylation (LINE-1) as well as disease relevant gene-specific methylation (i.e. ER, PR, and aromatase) using pyrosequencing assay. For this measurement, gene-specific primers for the selected genes were designed using the Pyro-Mark assay design software. Genomic DNAs from each tissue were extracted, and underwent bisulfite modification to convert unmethylated cytosine residues to uracil. A Pyromark Q96 MD was used for all subsequent pyrosequencing. Samples were processed in duplicates on plates with water controls. Percent methylation of a sample was calculated by averaging all of the interrogated CpG sites. Results: Different methylation levels of selected genes were measured from myoma, adenomyoma, and endometriosis tissues. Our obtained results suggest that epigenetic changes are involved in development of different types of gynecologic diseases

The emotions of individuals during strategic and organisational change : A hermeneutic exploration.

This is a reflexive hermeneutic study exploring the emotions of individuals during strategic and organisational change from an objectivist ontology and subjectivist epistemology. It explores individuals' emotions and individuals' variations from organisations' cultural expectations and cultural fit. It considers individuals' emotions collectively, and the psychology of emotions as a basis on which organisational change could be managed.It provides insight into the emotional complexity of organisational life during periods of change, the work derived feelings and emotions individuals struggle with on a daily basis, the feelings and emotions that influence and shape, and can in turn be influenced and shaped, by change events, and the stark management conditioning arising from the emotional devoid reality and manipulation of organisational expectations and mechanistically driven change programmes. This emotional insight belies the emotion arid legacy of process driven change solutions, and adds to the growing voice that seeks to usurp the emotionally sanitised picture of organisational life. It informs the debate that seeks to influence the transformation of managerial objectivism, change practise, and behaviour, so that emotions are recognised, welcomed, respected, supported and embraced in the workplace. The research environment is one of constant strategic and organisational change. Within this context, the early research "hunches", drawn from the author's intuition, and life history, that an individual's feelings and emotions, their nature of being, their self motivation, their relationships, and the nature of control, can be considered a reasonable way of looking at and interpreting how individuals interact in everyday life, and their personal response to change, are brought vividly to life and evolved

Communicating Sustainability in the Green Science Museum

Green-building construction was among the fastest-growing industries in the United States in 2012 (Katz, 2012). Unfortunately, the broader public, even those who use green buildings daily, have few opportunities to engage with and learn about them (Cole, 2013). Green building certification systems, such as LEED for Schools and the Living Building Challenge, encourage design teams to use green buildings as educational “teaching tools.” However, we have much yet to learn about the social performance of green buildings and how to engage occupants in the sustainability narrative of the building

Sound, structure and meaning : The bases of prominence ratings in English, French and Spanish

This study tests the influence of acoustic cues and non-acoustic contextual factors on listeners’ perception of prominence in three languages whose prominence systems differ in the phonological patterning of prominence and in the association of prominence with information structure—English, French and Spanish. Native speakers of each language performed an auditory rating task to mark prominent words in samples of conversational speech under two instructions: with prominence defined in terms of acoustic or meaning-related criteria. Logistic regression models tested the role of task instruction, acoustic cues and non-acoustic contextual factors in predicting binary prominence ratings of individual listeners. In all three languages we find similar effects of prosodic phrase structure and acoustic cues (F0, intensity, phone-rate) on prominence ratings, and differences in the effect of word frequency and instruction. In English, where phrasal prominence is used to convey meaning related to information structure, acoustic and meaning criteria converge on very similar prominence ratings. In French and Spanish, where prominence plays a lesser role in signaling information structure, phrasal prominence is perceived more narrowly on structural and acoustic grounds. Prominence ratings from untrained listeners correspond with ToBI pitch accent labels for each language. Distinctions in ToBI pitch accent status (nuclear, prenuclear, unaccented) are reflected in empirical and model-predicted prominence ratings. In addition, words with a ToBI pitch accent type that is typically associated with contrastive focus are more likely to be rated as prominent in Spanish and English, but no such effect is found for French. These findings are discussed in relation to probabilistic models of prominence production and perception.Peer reviewe

Social regulation of gene expression in human leukocytes

Analysis of differentially expressed in circulating leukocytes from people who chronically experienced high versus low levels of subjective social isolation (loneliness) revealed over-expression of some anti-inflammatory genes and under-expression of some pro-inflammatory genes

Severity of Depression Predicts Remission Rates Using Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

Background: Multiple factors likely impact response and remission rates in the treatment of depression with repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). Notably the role of symptom severity in outcomes with rTMS is poorly understood.Objective/Hypothesis: This study investigated the predictors of achieving remission in patients suffering from depression who receive ≥3 rTMS treatments per week. Methods: Available data on 41 patients treated at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center from 2009 to 2014 were included for analysis. Patients received a range of pulse sequences from 3,000 to 5,000 with left sided or bilateral coil placement. Primary outcome measures were total score on the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) or the Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology—Self Rated (QIDS-SR). Remission was defined as a total score less than five, and response was defined as a 50% decrease in the total score on both outcome metrics. Outcomes in patients diagnosed as suffering from mild or moderate depression were compared to those suffering from severe depression. Results: Of the 41 patients receiving treatment, 16 reached remission by the end of treatment. Remission rate was associated with the initial severity of depression, with patients with mild or moderate depression reaching remission at a significantly higher rate than those with severe depression. Total number of rTMS sessions or length of treatment were not predictors of remission. Conclusion: Patients with a baseline level of depression characterized as mild or moderate had significantly better outcomes following rTMS compared to patients with severe depression