The consistency of negation as failure

AbstractClark's attempt [1] to validate negation as failure in first order logic is shown to contain some fundamental errors. In particular, we show that the motivation for the completed database, the definition of the completed database, and the attempt to validate negation as failure in terms of it are illogical, that the completed database cannot be regarded as the intended meaning of the database, and that the closed world assumption is generally absurd and, in any case, irrelevant. A validation is given using a consistent first order extension of the database and hence in the only terms which appear to make any sense, namely, consistency with the database. However, it seems that the query evaluation process, with negation interpreted as failure, is of no practical use as a theorem prover

Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids and Early-Life Cardiometabolic Disease Risk

Background: Polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) intake is low throughout Latin America, but sociodemographic patterning and dietary sources of PUFA status in the region are poorly characterized. PUFA may be related to the development of early-life risk factors for cardiometabolic diseases, which have reached epidemic proportions in Latin America. However, the relations between these nutrients and cardiometabolic risk in children are poorly understood. Objectives: To identify sociodemographic, anthropometric, and dietary correlates of PUFA status in Mesoamerica (aim 1), and to examine the relations of n-3 and n-6 PUFA with metabolic syndrome (MetS) (aim 2) and development of adiposity in children (aim 3). Methods: Aims 1 and 2 were completed using data from the Nine Mesoamerican Countries Metabolic Syndrome (NiMeCoMeS) study, a cross-sectional investigation of school-age children and their parents from the capital cities of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Belize, Panama, the Dominican Republic, and the city of Tuxtla Gutíerrez in Chiapas, Mexico. Researchers collected information on sociodemographic characteristics; food intake and the type of cooking oil used in the home were measured by food frequency questionnaire. PUFA concentrations were quantified in adipose tissue by gas chromatography. In aim 1, we assessed correlates of adipose tissue PUFA biomarkers by estimating percent mean differences in each PUFA between levels of predictors using multivariable-adjusted linear regression models. In aim 2, we examined associations between PUFA and MetS in parents, and between PUFA and a continuous metabolic risk score in children. We estimated prevalence ratios of MetS in adults and mean differences in metabolic score in children across quartiles of PUFA using multivariable-adjusted Poisson and linear regression models, respectively. Aim 3 was conducted in the context of a cohort of children from Santiago, Chile who were recruited in infancy and followed through adolescence. PUFA were quantified in serum at 5 and 10 y of age. Body mass index (BMI) was measured at 5, 10, and 16 y. We compared the change in BMI-for-age Z scores through 16 y of age between PUFA quartiles at 5 or 10 y and between quartiles of PUFA change from 5 to 10 y by fitting growth curves from multivariable linear mixed models with restricted cubic splines. Results: Country of origin was the strongest predictor of all essential and long-chain PUFA biomarkers. The type of cooking oil used in the home was the strongest dietary correlate of PUFA status. Among adults, MetS prevalence was inversely associated with adipose tissue alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) and gamma-linolenic acid (GLA), and positively associated with eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), dihomo-gamma-linolenic acid (DGLA), and the Δ6-desaturase activity index. Among children, metabolic risk score was positively associated with docosapentaenoic acid (DPA). Serum concentrations of some long-chain n-3 PUFA in middle childhood were associated with less weight gain through adolescence whereas the n-6 PUFA arachidonic acid (AA) and estimated Δ5-desaturase activity are related to increased weight gain. Conclusions and significance: PUFA status within Latin America is heterogeneous and is related to the type of vegetable oil used for cooking. ALA is inversely associated with MetS among adults but long-chain n-3 PUFA do not appear to be protective against MetS in children or adults. However, they may be protective against development of adiposity in middle childhood. These results suggest that PUFA are related to cardiometabolic risk in early life and could serve as modifiable targets for intervention.PHDEpidemiological ScienceUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/144058/1/kflanna_1.pd

Teaching American Sign Language as a language other than English: Level II curriculum

This curriculum is designed for teaching a full school year of ASL Level II as a foreign language course at the high school level. The unit plans in this curriculum have been derived from the New York State\u27s checkpoints or guidelines for teaching ASL as a foreign language. Each unit plan contains objectives for both the students\u27 receptive and expressive skills, knowledge of Deaf culture/history, various options or suggestions for assessment, evaluation, resources and materials. Also included are New York State\u27s communication sub-topics and functions as outlined in New York State\u27s checkpoints for teaching ASL. ASL teachers may use this curriculum as a guideline or checklist in order to ensure that they have covered New York State\u27s checkpoints while creating lesson plans. Additionally, ASL teachers have the option of following this curriculum in its sequential order or modifying it to meet the needs of their students however, because ASL is a visual language, it is strongly recommended that ASL teachers using this curriculum teach students ASL without the use of voice. A list of teaching materials are suggested in this curriculum however, ASL teachers are expected to find additional teaching resources such as books, videotapes or websites that fit each unit and assign homework accordingly

Factors Associated with Crashes of Urban Drivers

Technical Report FinalThis"report"focuses"on"the"nature"of"crashes"that"occur"in"urban"areas."The"report"first"discusses"the"differences"between" the"urban"and"rural"crash"pictures.""We"then"take"a"closer"look"at"a"variety"of"urban"crash"configurations,"separated"into" intersection"crashes,"non(intersection"crashes,"pedicyclist"crashes,"rear(end"crashes,"and"lane(change"crashes.""Although" fault"and"cause"are"not"identified"in"databases,"we"address"the"array"of"causes"by"identifying"violations"charged"to"drivers," rates"of"drunkenness,"and"other"factors"associated"with"each"crash"type. To"supplement"the"crash"data"analysis,"we"present"analysis"of"spatial"road"data"from"a"selection"of"U.S."cities.""The"road" data"indicate"the"kinds"of"road"conditions"that"drivers"encounter"in"typical"urban"driving.""The"combination"of"road" exposure"and"crash"risk"leads"to"the"full"picture"of"crashes"in"urban"areas.Volkswagenhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/153816/1/UMTRI-2011-22.pdfDescription of UMTRI-2011-22.pdf : Technical Repor

Vision in Night Driving: The Roles of Rod and Cone Photoreceptors

Because of the low light levels that are important in night driving, it is possible that both rods and cones contribute to visual performance for drivers at night. However, little evidence has been available about the relative contributions of these classes of photoreceptors. Partly, this may be because until recently the range of light sources has been limited, and consequently the question was not of great practical importance, at least for photometry. However, there is now a much larger variety of sources in use for vehicle lighting, including high-intensity discharge (HID) and light emitting diode (LED) sources. The greater variety of sources and spectral power distributions has increased interest in how the visual response of a driver’s eyes at night varies with wavelength. New evidence indicates that the relative contributions of rods and cones may be different for different driving tasks or different aspects of a driver’s visual experience at night: detection of pedestrians—the task that is most critically affected by darkness— may depend primarily on cones, while subjective impressions of brightness, and perhaps the conspicuity of emergency signals in the visual periphery, may be strongly influenced by rods

The effects of levels of processing on retention of word meaning

The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of the three encoding techniques of rote memory, semantic, and self-reference, on short-term and long-term retention levels of unfamiliar vocabulary words and their meanings. Seventy-two college students participated in the experiment, with 24 students in each encoding group. All participants viewed 20 target words and their definitions, and were exposed to each word for 30 seconds. Each group was given instructions designed to promote a type of encoding specific to their group. After a five-minute distractor task, subjects were given a list of the target words and were tested on the recall of the definitions of those words. A retest was administered after one week. As hypothesized, encoding by self-reference produced significantly higher scores than encoding by semantic strategies or by rote memory. It was concluded that encoding by self-reference may lead to higher short-term and long-term retention levels of the meanings of unfamiliar nouns and adjectives

Products Liability: The Continued Viability of the Learned Intermediary Rule as it Applies to Product Warnings for Prescription Drugs

Judicial decisions, as well as statutory enactments, have removed many of the traditional stumbling blocks which formerly hampered an injured plaintiff\u27s recovery against the manufacturer of a defective product. Concomitantly, the past few decades have seen a dramatic increase in the number of product liability suits brought by injured consumers directly against manufacturers. These product liability suits have involved the full range of manufactured products and have proceeded under three basic theories of recovery. While no single type of product, either because of its use or purpose, has been immune from products liability suits, some types of products have special relationships between manufacturer and consumer which affect the theory of recovery

A method for estimating delta-V distributions from injury outcomes in crashes

Two key national crash data samples from the National Automotive Sampling System (NASS) program are the General Estimates System (GES) and the Crashworthiness Data System (CDS). The former is a larger (50,000 crashes per year) sample of police-reported crashes and contains only information coded from the police report. The latter is a smaller (~3,000 crashes per year) sample of light-vehicle towaway crashes that are investigated by trained accident investigators. One key advantage of CDS is that it includes estimated crash severity, or delta-V, assigned to each vehicle in a crash. Delta-V is the best single predictor of injury outcome and thus is a key variable in prediction models. However, because it requires special data collection, it is absent from police-report-based datasets. In contrast to CDS, GES is a much larger sample and includes more than just light-vehicle crashes. Thus, it would be ideal to have delta-V available for GES crashes to improve models of injury outcome from those data. Some attempts to do this for individual crashes were unsuccessful (e.g., Farmer, 2003). However, in some analyses, especially statistical simulations, it is sufficient to have a distribution of delta-V for a given crash mode rather than tying a specific delta-V to a specific crash-involved vehicle. This report presents a method of estimating a distribution of crash severity using only police-reported crash data. The approach uses an injury risk curve developed from CDS and a parametric distributional assumption for the delta-V distribution. While the distribution can take any parametric form, I use the lognormal in this report. The method uses maximum likelihood to fit parameters to the delta-V distribution based on the observed injury distribution using the police-reported KABCO scale. That is, individuals in crashes fall into one of five injury categories. Each pair of lognormal parameters produces a distribution of injury when multiplied by the injury risk curve. Thus, the parameters that produce the multinomial injury distribution that best fits the observed distribution are chosen for the estimated delta-V distribution. The report includes results from a simulation study as well as a fit to CDS data with known delta-V distribution.National Highway Traffic Safety Administrationhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/117575/1/103241.pdfDescription of 103241.pdf : Final repor