No differences in value-based decision-making due to use of oral contraceptives

Fluctuating ovarian hormones have been shown to affect decision-making processes in women. While emerging evidence suggests effects of endogenous ovarian hormones such as estradiol and progesterone on value-based decision-making in women, the impact of exogenous synthetic hormones, as in most oral contraceptives, is not clear. In a between-subjects design, we assessed measures of value-based decision-making in three groups of women aged 18 to 29 years, during (1) active oral contraceptive intake (N = 22), (2) the early follicular phase of the natural menstrual cycle (N = 20), and (3) the periovulatory phase of the natural menstrual cycle (N = 20). Estradiol, progesterone, testosterone, and sex-hormone binding globulin levels were assessed in all groups via blood samples. We used a test battery which measured different facets of value-based decision-making: delay discounting, risk-aversion, risk-seeking, and loss aversion. While hormonal levels did show the expected patterns for the three groups, there were no differences in value-based decision-making parameters. Consequently, Bayes factors showed conclusive evidence in support of the null hypothesis. We conclude that women on oral contraceptives show no differences in value-based decision-making compared to the early follicular and periovulatory natural menstrual cycle phases. Copyright © 2022 Lewis, Kimmig, Kroemer, Pooseh, Smolka, Sacher and Derntl

METIS D3.4: Final workshops packages: workshops for different educational levels and education contexts

Several decades of research in technology-enhanced learning (TEL) have clearly demonstrated the potential of digital technology to transform education. Yet the impact of TEL research on daily teaching-learning practices is still far from fulfilling this potential. Arguably, this is a gap in the capacity for learning design: educators need the tools and competencies which would allow them to identify educational challenges, describe the context in which they arise, identify the opportunities afforded by technology, project the insights derived from research, and devise new learning experiences. To address this gap, educators need tools and practices. Tools that would support them through the cycle of learning design – from conception to deployment and evaluation of techno-educational innovations. Professional practices that use such tools to ensure the robustness and effectiveness of their innovations and make learning design a daily habit and part of their professional identity. The METIS project (http://metis-project.org/) aims to contribute to this aim, by providing educators with an Integrated Learning Design Environment (ILDE) (Hernández-Leo, Asensio-Pérez, Derntl, Prieto, & Chacón, 2014; Hernández-Leo et al., 2015) and a workshop package for training educators in using the ILDE to support effective learning design. Work Package 3, led by the OU (UK), is concerned with the design and development of the workshop package. This deliverable is the final version of the METIS workshop package. It includes • a meta-design for METIS workshops that provides a flexible reusable structure so that workshops can be customised to meet different needs , • a description of the rationale and pedagogical methodology on which the meta-design is based • guidance for instantiating the meta-design in different contexts and • example workshop packages based on the meta-design for three different educational sectors. This document provides educators with a basis for delivering workshops about using the ILDE to support effective learning design. To create and run a workshop suitable for your own context, please proceed in the following way. Firstly, consider the meta-design; then choose one of the example workshop packages closest to your context; finally, use the guidelines to adapt it for your needs

Проєкт будівництва 10-ти поверхового житлового будинку у місті Дніпро

Кваліфікаційна робота: 54 с., 5 табл., 6 Рисунок , 3 дод., 30 джерел. ЖИТЛОВИЙ БУДИНОК, ПАЛЬОВИЙ ФЦНДАМЕНТ, ПРОЕКТУВАННЯ, ТЕХНОЛОГІЯ І ОРГАНІЗАЦІЯ РОБІТ. Об’єкт роботи – багатоповерховий житловий будинок в м. Дніпро Мета роботи – запроектувати багатоквартирний житловий будинок . Результати. Обрані та обґрунтовані основні об’ємно-планувальні та конструктивні рішення. Виконане компонування конструктивної схеми, збір та розрахунок навантажень. Проведено розрахунок пальово-стрічкового фундаменту. Обрана раціональна схема суміщення технологічних процесів. Розроблено проект виконання робіт та відповідні технологічні карти. Виконано аналіз перспектив влаштування паль по імпульсній технології при будівництві багатоповерхових житлових будинків. Взаємозв’язок з іншими роботами – продовження інноваційної діяльності кафедри будівництва, геотехніки і геомеханіки НТУ «Дніпровська політехніка» в сфері будівництва та цивільної інженерії. Сфера застосування – технології спорудження об’єктів цивільного будівництва. Практичне значення роботи – підвищення техніко-економічних та культурно-соціальних аспектів цивільного будівництва.Qualification work: 54 pp., 4 tables, 6 Figure, 3 addition, 30 sources. RESIDENTIAL BUILDING, PILE FOUNDATION, DESIGN, TECHNOLOGY AND WORK ORGANIZATION. The object of work is a multistory residential building in Dnipro The purpose of the work is to design an apartment building. Results. Selected and substantiated the main spatial planning and design solutions. Completed layout of the structural scheme, collection and calculation of loads. The calculation of the pile-strip foundation was carried out. The rational scheme of combination of technological processes was chosen. The project of performance of works and the corresponding technological maps was developed. The analysis of prospects of arrangement of piles on pulse technology at construction of multistory apartment building was executed. Interconnection with other works - continuation of innovative activities of the Department of Construction, Geotechnics and Geomechanics of NTU " Dniprovs’ka Polytechnicа" in the field of construction and civil engineering. Scope - technologies of construction of civil engineering objects. The practical significance of the work is to increase the technical, economic and cultural and social aspects of civil engineering

Emotional imagination of negative situations: Functional neuroimaging in anorexia and bulimia

AimThe present study aims to extend the knowledge of the neural correlates of emotion processing in first episode subjects affected by anorexia nervosa (AN) or bulimia nervosa (BN). We applied an emotional distress paradigm targeting negative emotions thought to be relevant for interpersonal difficulties and therapeutic resistance mechanisms.MethodsThe current study applied to 44 female participants with newly diagnosed AN or BN and 20 matched controls a neuroimaging paradigm eliciting affective responses. The measurements also included an extensive assessment comprising clinical scales, neuropsychological tests, measures of emotion processing and empathy.ResultsAN and BN did not differ from controls in terms of emotional response, emotion matching, self-reported empathy and cognitive performance. However, eating disorder and psychopathological clinical scores, as well as alexithymia levels, were increased in AN and BN. On a neural level, no significant group differences emerged, even when focusing on a region of interest selected a priori: the amygdala. Some interesting findings put in relation the hippocampal activity with the level of Body Dissatisfaction of the participants, the relative importance of the key nodes for the common network in the decoding of different emotions (BN = right amygdala, AN = anterior cingulate area), and the qualitative profile of the deactivations.ConclusionsOur data do not support the hypothesis that participants with AN or BN display reduced emotional responsiveness. However, peculiar characteristics in emotion processing could be associated to the three different groups. Therefore, relational difficulties in eating disorders, as well as therapeutic resistance, could be not secondary to a simple difficulty in feeling and identifying basic negative emotions in AN and BN participants

Orchestrating learning activities using the CADMOS learning design tool

This paper gives an overview of CADMOS (CoursewAre Development Methodology for Open instructional Systems), a graphical IMS-LD Level A & B compliant learning design (LD) tool, which promotes the concept of “separation of concerns” during the design process, via the creation of two models: the conceptual model, which describes the learning activities and the corresponding learning resources, and the flow model, which describes the orchestration of these activities. According to the feedback from an evaluation case study with 36 participants, reported in this paper, CADMOS is a user-friendly tool that allows educational practitioners to design flows of learning activities using a layered approach

In Vivo Study of the Sorbicillinoid Gene Cluster in Trichoderma reesei

Sorbicillinoids are a diverse group of yellow secondary metabolites that are produced by a range of not closely related ascomycetes, including Penicillium chrysogenum, Acremonium chrysogenum, and Trichoderma reesei. They share a similarity to the name-giving compound sorbicillin, a hexaketide. Previously, a conserved gene cluster containing two polyketide synthases has been identified as the source of sorbicillin, and a model for the biosynthesis of sorbicillin in P. chrysogenum has been proposed. In this study, we deleted the major genes of interest of the cluster in T. reesei, namely sor1, sor3, and sor4. Sor1 is the homolog of P. chrysogenum SorA, which is the first polyketide synthase of the proposed biosynthesis pathway. Sor3 is a flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD)-dependent monooxygenase, and its homolog in P. chrysogenum, SorC, was shown to oxidize sorbicillin and 2′,3′-dihydrosorbicillin to sorbicillinol and 2′,3′-dihydrosorbicillinol, respectively, in vitro. Sor4 is an FAD/flavin mononucleotide-containing dehydrogenase with an unknown function. We measured the amounts of synthesized sorbicillinoids throughout growth and could verify the roles of Sor1 and Sor3 in vivo in T. reesei. In the absence of Sor4, two compounds annotated to dihydrosorbicillinol accumulate in the supernatant and only small amounts of sorbicillinol are synthesized. Therefore, we suggest extending the current biosynthesis model about Sor4 reducing 2′,3′-dihydrosorbicillin and 2′,3′-dihydrosorbicillinol to sorbicillinol and sorbicillinol, respectively. Sorbicillinol turned out to be the main chemical building block for most sorbicillinoids, including oxosorbicillinol, bisorbicillinol, and bisvertinolon. Further, we detected the sorbicillinol-dependent synthesis of 5-hydroxyvertinolide at early time points, which contradicts previous models for biosynthesis of 5-hydroxyvertinolide. Finally, we investigated whether sorbicillinoids from T. reesei have a growth limiting effect on the fungus itself or on plant pathogenic fungi or on pathogenic bacteria

Neurobiological Divergence of the Positive and Negative Schizophrenia Subtypes Identified on a New Factor Structure of Psychopathology Using Non-negative Factorization:An International Machine Learning Study

ObjectiveDisentangling psychopathological heterogeneity in schizophrenia is challenging and previous results remain inconclusive. We employed advanced machine-learning to identify a stable and generalizable factorization of the “Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS)”, and used it to identify psychopathological subtypes as well as their neurobiological differentiations.MethodsPANSS data from the Pharmacotherapy Monitoring and Outcome Survey cohort (1545 patients, 586 followed up after 1.35±0.70 years) were used for learning the factor-structure by an orthonormal projective non-negative factorization. An international sample, pooled from nine medical centers across Europe, USA, and Asia (490 patients), was used for validation. Patients were clustered into psychopathological subtypes based on the identified factor-structure, and the neurobiological divergence between the subtypes was assessed by classification analysis on functional MRI connectivity patterns.ResultsA four-factor structure representing negative, positive, affective, and cognitive symptoms was identified as the most stable and generalizable representation of psychopathology. It showed higher internal consistency than the original PANSS subscales and previously proposed factor-models. Based on this representation, the positive-negative dichotomy was confirmed as the (only) robust psychopathological subtypes, and these subtypes were longitudinally stable in about 80% of the repeatedly assessed patients. Finally, the individual subtype could be predicted with good accuracy from functional connectivity profiles of the ventro-medial frontal cortex, temporoparietal junction, and precuneus.ConclusionsMachine-learning applied to multi-site data with cross-validation yielded a factorization generalizable across populations and medical systems. Together with subtyping and the demonstrated ability to predict subtype membership from neuroimaging data, this work further disentangles the heterogeneity in schizophrenia