Narrative coherence in multiple forensic interviews with child witnesses alleging physical and sexual abuse

This study investigated the narrative coherence of children's accounts elicited in multiple forensic interviews. Transcriptions of 56 police interviews with 28 children aged 3–14 years alleging physical and sexual abuse were coded for markers of completeness, consistency and connectedness. We found that multiple interviews increased the completeness of children's testimony, containing on average almost twice as much new information as single interviews, including crucial location, time and abuse‐related details. When both contradictions within the same interview and across interviews were considered, contradictions were not more frequent in multiple interviews. The frequency of linguistic markers of connectedness remained stable across interviews. Multiple interviews increase the narrative coherence of children's testimony through increasing their completeness without necessarily introducing contradictions or decreasing causal‐temporal connections between details. However, as ‘ground truth’ is not known in field studies, further investigation of the relationship between the narrative coherence and accuracy of testimonies is required

Keemei: cloud-based validation of tabular bioinformatics file formats in Google Sheets.

BackgroundBioinformatics software often requires human-generated tabular text files as input and has specific requirements for how those data are formatted. Users frequently manage these data in spreadsheet programs, which is convenient for researchers who are compiling the requisite information because the spreadsheet programs can easily be used on different platforms including laptops and tablets, and because they provide a familiar interface. It is increasingly common for many different researchers to be involved in compiling these data, including study coordinators, clinicians, lab technicians and bioinformaticians. As a result, many research groups are shifting toward using cloud-based spreadsheet programs, such as Google Sheets, which support the concurrent editing of a single spreadsheet by different users working on different platforms. Most of the researchers who enter data are not familiar with the formatting requirements of the bioinformatics programs that will be used, so validating and correcting file formats is often a bottleneck prior to beginning bioinformatics analysis.Main textWe present Keemei, a Google Sheets Add-on, for validating tabular files used in bioinformatics analyses. Keemei is available free of charge from Google's Chrome Web Store. Keemei can be installed and run on any web browser supported by Google Sheets. Keemei currently supports the validation of two widely used tabular bioinformatics formats, the Quantitative Insights into Microbial Ecology (QIIME) sample metadata mapping file format and the Spatially Referenced Genetic Data (SRGD) format, but is designed to easily support the addition of others.ConclusionsKeemei will save researchers time and frustration by providing a convenient interface for tabular bioinformatics file format validation. By allowing everyone involved with data entry for a project to easily validate their data, it will reduce the validation and formatting bottlenecks that are commonly encountered when human-generated data files are first used with a bioinformatics system. Simplifying the validation of essential tabular data files, such as sample metadata, will reduce common errors and thereby improve the quality and reliability of research outcomes

Nitrogen Fertilizer and Growth Regulator Impacts on Tuber Deformity, Rot, and Yield for Russet Potatoes

Potatoes (Solanum tuberosum) are an important high-value commodity for producers in the Mid-Atlantic Region. Current production recommendations were based on white potatoes, and practices for Russet potatoes have not been researched in this region. The objective of this study was to test impacts of N rate (0, 67, 134, 201, and 268 kg N ha−1), N application timing (100% applied with planter, 2-way split (30% with planter and 70% band applied approximately 30 days after planting at dragoff), and three-way split (30% with planter, 50% band applied prior to drag-off, and 20% band applied at first sight of bloom)), and additions of the growth regulator maleic hydrazide (MH-30). We tested “Goldrush” and “Norkotah” Russet potato varieties on marketability, total yield, tuber deformity, and tuber soft rot incidence for sandy loam soils in the Mid-Atlantic. Overall, year variations were significant with substantial rots (up to 86.5%) occurring in year 3. Maleic hydrazide and N application timing had little consistent effect on any tested parameter. Nitrogen rate and variety factors had the greatest impacts on deformity, tuber rots, and yields for Russet potatoes in the Mid-Atlantic Region with 134 kg N ha−1 producing the highest total yields in 2009 and 2010. If tuber rots can be controlled, both “Goldrush” and “Norkotah” are acceptable varieties under the Mid-Atlantic production practices

Quantum Dynamics without the Wave Function

When suitably generalized and interpreted, the path-integral offers an alternative to the more familiar quantal formalism based on state-vectors, selfadjoint operators, and external observers. Mathematically one generalizes the path-integral-as-propagator to a {\it quantal measure} $\mu$ on the space $\Omega$ of all ``conceivable worlds'', and this generalized measure expresses the dynamics or law of motion of the theory, much as Wiener measure expresses the dynamics of Brownian motion. Within such ``histories-based'' schemes new, and more ``realistic'' possibilities open up for resolving the philosophical problems of the state-vector formalism. In particular, one can dispense with the need for external agents by locating the predictive content of $\mu$ in its sets of measure zero: such sets are to be ``precluded''. But unrestricted application of this rule engenders contradictions. One possible response would remove the contradictions by circumscribing the application of the preclusion concept. Another response, more in the tradition of ``quantum logic'', would accommodate the contradictions by dualizing $\Omega$ to a space of ``co-events'' and effectively identifying reality with an element of this dual space.Comment: plainTeX, 24 pages, no figures. To appear in a special volume of {\it Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and General} entitled ``The Quantum Universe'' and dedicated to Giancarlo Ghirardi on the occasion of his 70th birthday. Most current version is available at http://www.physics.syr.edu/~sorkin/some.papers/ (or wherever my home-page may be

Proper time and Minkowski structure on causal graphs

For causal graphs we propose a definition of proper time which for small scales is based on the concept of volume, while for large scales the usual definition of length is applied. The scale where the change from "volume" to "length" occurs is related to the size of a dynamical clock and defines a natural cut-off for this type of clock. By changing the cut-off volume we may probe the geometry of the causal graph on different scales and therey define a continuum limit. This provides an alternative to the standard coarse graining procedures. For regular causal lattice (like e.g. the 2-dim. light-cone lattice) this concept can be proven to lead to a Minkowski structure. An illustrative example of this approach is provided by the breather solutions of the Sine-Gordon model on a 2-dimensional light-cone lattice.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figure

Spatial Hypersurfaces in Causal Set Cosmology

Within the causal set approach to quantum gravity, a discrete analog of a spacelike region is a set of unrelated elements, or an antichain. In the continuum approximation of the theory, a moment-of-time hypersurface is well represented by an inextendible antichain. We construct a richer structure corresponding to a thickening of this antichain containing non-trivial geometric and topological information. We find that covariant observables can be associated with such thickened antichains and transitions between them, in classical stochastic growth models of causal sets. This construction highlights the difference between the covariant measure on causal set cosmology and the standard sum-over-histories approach: the measure is assigned to completed histories rather than to histories on a restricted spacetime region. The resulting re-phrasing of the sum-over-histories may be fruitful in other approaches to quantum gravity.Comment: Revtex, 12 pages, 2 figure

Prescribed Fire and Cattle Grazing to Manage Invasive Grasses for Cattle and Wildlife

Invasive grasses are in most cases introduced species able to outcompete native species. Buffelgrass (Cenchrus ciliaris), Guineagrass (Urochloa minima), and Old World bluestems (Dichanthium spp.) are typical examples of invasive species in southeastern United States. However, native grasses such as tanglehead (Heteropogon contortus) can become invasive and dominant in absence of cattle grazing just like any invasive species. Tanglehead and Kleberg bluestem (Dichanthium ischaemum) increased (p \u3c 0.05) from 1.4 and 1.8% in 1999 to 2.7 and 3.6% in 2002 and then to 8.1 and 9.4% in 2009, respectively. Monocultures of invasive species have very little value for wildlife, and in the case of mature tanglehead its palatability for cattle is very low. Prescribed fire may be used to improve palatability of tanglehead for cattle, and cattle grazing may be used to improve plant species richness for wildlife. To evaluate the effects of prescribed fire and cattle grazing on cattle preference and the botanical composition of a plant community dominated by tanglehead, we burned 3 patches of approximately 0.5 ha in a pasture of 107 ha in October 2016. Two months before the prescribed burning was executed, 10 mother cows were placed in the pasture to graze continually. We fitted GPS collars on 8 cows and location readings were collected every 10 minutes. GPS recordings indicate that cattle used burned patches 4.5 times more after burning compared to before burning. Percent forage utilization of tanglehead was 52% in the burned patches compared to 6% in the control areas. Plant species richness increased from 2.53 to 8.33 plant species per 0.25 m2, before and after burning, respectively, an increase of 330%. Prescribed fire and cattle grazing are valuable tools to increase tanglehead palatability and utilization by cattle and plant species richness for wildlife

The structure of causal sets

More often than not, recently popular structuralist interpretations of physical theories leave the central concept of a structure insufficiently precisified. The incipient causal sets approach to quantum gravity offers a paradigmatic case of a physical theory predestined to be interpreted in structuralist terms. It is shown how employing structuralism lends itself to a natural interpretation of the physical meaning of causal sets theory. Conversely, the conceptually exceptionally clear case of causal sets is used as a foil to illustrate how a mathematically informed rigorous conceptualization of structure serves to identify structures in physical theories. Furthermore, a number of technical issues infesting structuralist interpretations of physical theories such as difficulties with grounding the identity of the places of highly symmetrical physical structures in their relational profile and what may resolve these difficulties can be vividly illustrated with causal sets.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figure

Is spinal muscular atrophy a disease of the motor neurons only: pathogenesis and therapeutic implications?

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a genetic neurological disease that causes infant mortality; no effective therapies are currently available. SMA is due to homozygous mutations and/or deletions in the survival motor neuron 1 gene and subsequent reduction of the SMN protein, leading to the death of motor neurons. However, there is increasing evidence that in addition to motor neurons, other cell types are contributing to SMA pathology. In this review, we will discuss the involvement of non-motor neuronal cells, located both inside and outside the central nervous system, in disease onset and progression. Even if SMN restoration in motor neurons is needed, it has been shown that optimal phenotypic amelioration in animal models of SMA requires a more widespread SMN correction. It has been demonstrated that non-motor neuronal cells are also involved in disease pathogenesis and could have important therapeutic implications. For these reasons it will be crucial to take this evidence into account for the clinical translation of the novel therapeutic approaches