Water quality criteria for selected recreation uses

Four types of outdoor recreationists were investigated to determine whether they differed in their attitudes, beliefs, and behavior regarding various water characteristics at Central Illinois water -based recreation sites. Using an attitude model derived from social-psychological research, the recreationist’ attitudes toward the sites were estimated from their attitudes and beliefs about water characteristics. The site attitudes were regarded as indicators of the quality of the respondents' recreation experiences resulting from characteristics of the water. The major analyses were comparisons of the recreationist groups’ perceptions of the water, attitudes toward water characteristics, the site attitudes held because of water characteristics, reports of decreased site use because of water characteristics, and reports of probable termination of site use because of water characteristics. The relationships between site attitude components resulting from selected water characteristics and the reports of decreased site use and probable termination of use were also investigated. The results indicated that the four types of recreationists differed in their perceptions of the water, attitudes toward water characteristics, site attitudes, and the reported water characteristics that had caused or might cause decreased site use. In addition to these group differences, there were strong individual differences among the recreationists within the various groups. Site attitudes were not highly related to reported behavior.U.S. Department of the InteriorU.S. Geological SurveyOpe

Social approach in preschool children with Williams syndrome: The role of the face.

Background Indiscriminate social approach behaviour is a salient aspect of the Williams syndrome (WS) behavioural phenotype. The present study examines approach behaviour in preschoolers with WS and evaluates the role of the face in WS social approach behaviour. Method Ten preschoolers with WS (aged 3-6 years) and two groups of typically developing children, matched to the WS group on chronological or mental age, participated in an observed play session. The play session incorporated social and non-social components including two components that assessed approach behaviour towards strangers, one in which the stranger’s face could be seen and one in which the stranger’s face was covered. Results In response to the non-social aspects of the play session, the WS group behaved similarly to both control groups. In contrast, the preschoolers with WS were significantly more willing than either control group to engage with a stranger, even when the stranger’s face could not be seen. Conclusion The findings challenge the hypothesis that an unusual attraction to the face directly motivates social approach behaviour in individuals with WS

The Concept of Culture in Critical Mathematics Education

© Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018. This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of a chapter published in The Philosophy of Mathematics Education Today. The final authenticated version is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77760-3A well-known critique in the research literature of critical mathematics education suggests that framing educational questions in cultural terms can encourage ethnic-cultural essentialism, obscure conflicts within cultures and promote an ethnographic or anthropological stance towards learners. Nevertheless, we believe that some of the obstacles to learning mathematics are cultural. ‘Stereotype threat’, for example, has a basis in culture. Consequently, the aims of critical mathematics education cannot be seriously pursued without including a cultural approach in educational research. We argue that an adequate conception of culture is available and should include normative/descriptive and material/ideal dyads as dialectical moments

Applying Machine Learning to Catalogue Matching in Astrophysics

We present the results of applying automated machine learning techniques to the problem of matching different object catalogues in astrophysics. In this study we take two partially matched catalogues where one of the two catalogues has a large positional uncertainty. The two catalogues we used here were taken from the HI Parkes All Sky Survey (HIPASS), and SuperCOSMOS optical survey. Previous work had matched 44% (1887 objects) of HIPASS to the SuperCOSMOS catalogue. A supervised learning algorithm was then applied to construct a model of the matched portion of our catalogue. Validation of the model shows that we achieved a good classification performance (99.12% correct). Applying this model, to the unmatched portion of the catalogue found 1209 new matches. This increases the catalogue size from 1887 matched objects to 3096. The combination of these procedures yields a catalogue that is 72% matched.Comment: 8 Pages, 5 Figure

Acceptability of bisphosphonates among patients, clinicians and managers: a systematic review and framework synthesis

Objective: To explore the acceptability of different bisphosphonate regimens for the treatment of osteoporosis among patients, clinicians and managers, payers and academics. Design: A systematic review of primary qualitative studies. Seven databases were searched from inception to July 2019. Screening, data extraction and quality assessment of full-articles selected for inclusion were performed independently by two authors. A framework synthesis was applied to extracted data based on the theoretical framework of acceptability (TFA). The TFA includes seven domains relating to sense-making, emotions, opportunity costs, burden, perceived effectiveness, ethicality and self-efficacy. Confidence in synthesis findings was assessed. Setting: Any developed country healthcare setting. Participants: Patients, healthcare professionals, managers, payers and academics. Intervention: Experiences and views of oral and intravenous bisphosphonates. Results: Twenty-five studies were included, mostly describing perceptions of oral bisphosphonates. We identified, with high confidence, how patients and healthcare professionals make sense (coherence) of bisphosphonates by balancing perceptions of need against concerns, how uncertainty prevails about bisphosphonate perceived effectiveness and a number of individual and service factors that have potential to increase self-efficacy in recommending and adhering to bisphosphonates. We identified, with moderate confidence, that bisphosphonate taking induces concern, but has the potential to engender reassurance, and that both side effects and special instructions for taking oral bisphosphonates can result in treatment burden. Finally, we identified with low confidence that multimorbidity plays a role in people’s perception of bisphosphonate acceptability. Conclusion: By using the lens of acceptability, our findings demonstrate with high confidence that a theoretically informed, whole-system approach is necessary to both understand and improve adherence. Clinicians and patients need supporting to understand the need for bisphosphonates, and clinicians need to clarify to patients what constitutes bisphosphonate treatment success. Further research is needed to explore perspectives of male patients and those with multimorbidity receiving bisphosphonates, and patients receiving intravenous treatment

Climate change and visual imagery

© 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.O'Neill, S. J. and Smith, N. (2014), Climate change and visual imagery. WIREs Clim Change, 5: 73–87. doi: 10.1002/wcc.249 The definitive version is available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcc.249/abstractMany actors—including scientists, journalists, artists, and campaigning organizations—create visualizations of climate change. In doing so, they evoke climate change in particular ways, and make the issue meaningful in everyday discourse. While a diversity of climate change imagery exists, particular types of climate imagery appear to have gained dominance, promoting particular ways of knowing about climate change (and marginalizing others). This imagery, and public engagement with this imagery, helps to shape the cultural politics of climate change in important ways. This article critically reviews the nascent research area of the visual representations of climate change, and public engagement with visual imagery. It synthesizes a diverse body of research to explore visual representations and engagement across the news media, NGO communications, advertising, and marketing, climate science, art, and virtual reality systems. The discussion brings together three themes which occur throughout the review: time, truth, and power. The article concludes by suggesting fruitful directions for future research in the visual communication of climate change.ESR

Matching Catalogues by Probabilistic Pattern Classification

We consider the statistical problem of catalogue matching from a machine learning perspective with the goal of producing probabilistic outputs, and using all available information. A framework is provided that unifies two existing approaches to producing probabilistic outputs in the literature, one based on combining distribution estimates and the other based on combining probabilistic classifiers. We apply both of these to the problem of matching the HIPASS radio catalogue with large positional uncertainties to the much denser SuperCOSMOS catalogue with much smaller positional uncertainties. We demonstrate the utility of probabilistic outputs by a controllable completeness and efficiency trade-off and by identifying objects that have high probability of being rare. Finally, possible biasing effects in the output of these classifiers are also highlighted and discussed.Comment: 16 pages, 9 (reduced quality) figures. MNRAS (in press) 200

Data-driven Soft Sensors in the Process Industry

In the last two decades Soft Sensors established themselves as a valuable alternative to the traditional means for the acquisition of critical process variables, process monitoring and other tasks which are related to process control. This paper discusses characteristics of the process industry data which are critical for the development of data-driven Soft Sensors. These characteristics are common to a large number of process industry fields, like the chemical industry, bioprocess industry, steel industry, etc. The focus of this work is put on the data-driven Soft Sensors because of their growing popularity, already demonstrated usefulness and huge, though yet not completely realised, potential. A comprehensive selection of case studies covering the three most important Soft Sensor application fields, a general introduction to the most popular Soft Sensor modelling techniques as well as a discussion of some open issues in the Soft Sensor development and maintenance and their possible solutions are the main contributions of this work

Widespread shortening of 3′UTRs by alternative cleavage and polyadenylation activates oncogenes in cancer cells

In cancer cells, genetic alterations can activate proto-oncogenes, thereby contributing to tumorigenesis. However, the protein products of oncogenes are sometimes overexpressed without alteration of the proto-oncogene. Helping to explain this phenomenon, we found that when compared to similarly proliferating nontransformed cell lines, cancer cell lines often expressed substantial amounts of mRNA isoforms with shorter 3′ untranslated regions (UTRs). These shorter isoforms usually resulted from alternative cleavage and polyadenylation (APA). The APA had functional consequences, with the shorter mRNA isoforms exhibiting increased stability and typically producing ten-fold more protein, in part through the loss of microRNA-mediated repression. Moreover, expression of the shorter mRNA isoform of the proto-oncogene IGF2BP1/IMP-1 led to far more oncogenic transformation than did expression of the full-length, annotated mRNA. The high incidence of APA in cancer cells, with consequent loss of 3′UTR repressive elements, suggests a pervasive role for APA in oncogene activation without genetic alteration.National Institutes of Health (U.S.

Mapping lexical dialect variation in British English using Twitter

There is a growing trend in sociolinguistics and dialectology to analyse large corpora of social media data, but it is unclear if the results of these studies can be generalised to language as a whole. To assess the generalisability of Twitter dialect maps, this paper presents the first systematic comparison regional lexical variation in Twitter corpora and traditional survey data. We compare the regional patterns found in 139 lexical dialect maps based on a 1.8 billion word corpus of geolocated UK Twitter data and the BBC Voices dialect survey. A spatial analysis of these 139 map pairs finds a strong alignment between these two data sources, offering evidence that both approaches to data collection allow for the same basic underlying regional patterns to be identified. We conclude that these results license the use of Twitter corpora for general inquiries into regional linguistic variation and change