313 research outputs found
Examining cognitive, motivational and environmental factors that relate to reading performance for children with English as a first or additional language
Mixed findings exist in the literature regarding the reading skills of children with English as an Additional Language (EAL). Moreover, little research has considered how related literacy skills, motivation, and environmental factors may differ between EAL children and English monolinguals, and how these factors may contribute to reading outcomes. The present study compared 36 children with EAL and 31 monolingual English children (mean age 9 years) on measures of reading, phonology, vocabulary, motivation and environmental factors. No group differences were found in word reading and reading fluency, phonological awareness, expressive vocabulary, reading motivation, time spent reading with a parent and independently, and parental attitudes to reading. However, maternal education was lower in the EAL group and these children had more children’s books at home than their monolingual peers. The findings confirm the importance of phonological awareness and expressive vocabulary for reading performance in both groups, as well as suggesting that maternal education may indirectly relate to EAL children’s reading abilities through maternal attitudes towards reading. In contrast, in the case of monolingual children, maternal education related to number of books in the home. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed
The Negativity Bias Predicts Response Rate To Behavioral Activation For Depression
Background and Objectives: This treatment study investigated the extent to which asymmetric dimensions of affective responding, specifically the positivity offset and the negativity bias, at pretreatment altered the rate of response to Behavioral Activation treatment for depression. Method: Forty-one depressed participants were enrolled into 16 weekly sessions of BA. An additional 36 lifetime healthy participants were evaluated prospectively for 16 weeks to compare affective responding between healthy and remitted patients at post-treatment. All participants were assessed at Weeks 0, 8 and 16 using repeated measures, involving a structured clinical interview for DSM-IV Axis I disorders, questionnaires, and a computerized task designed to measure affective responses to unpleasant, neutral, and pleasant images. Results: The negativity bias at pre-treatment predicted the rate of response to BA, while the positivity offset did not. Limitations: Only one treatment condition was used in this study and untreated depressed participants were not enrolled, limiting our ability to compare the effect of BA. Conclusions: Baseline negativity bias may serve as a signal for patients to engage in and benefit from the goal-directed BA strategies, thereby accelerating rate of response
Active Sampling-based Binary Verification of Dynamical Systems
Nonlinear, adaptive, or otherwise complex control techniques are increasingly
relied upon to ensure the safety of systems operating in uncertain
environments. However, the nonlinearity of the resulting closed-loop system
complicates verification that the system does in fact satisfy those
requirements at all possible operating conditions. While analytical proof-based
techniques and finite abstractions can be used to provably verify the
closed-loop system's response at different operating conditions, they often
produce conservative approximations due to restrictive assumptions and are
difficult to construct in many applications. In contrast, popular statistical
verification techniques relax the restrictions and instead rely upon
simulations to construct statistical or probabilistic guarantees. This work
presents a data-driven statistical verification procedure that instead
constructs statistical learning models from simulated training data to separate
the set of possible perturbations into "safe" and "unsafe" subsets. Binary
evaluations of closed-loop system requirement satisfaction at various
realizations of the uncertainties are obtained through temporal logic
robustness metrics, which are then used to construct predictive models of
requirement satisfaction over the full set of possible uncertainties. As the
accuracy of these predictive statistical models is inherently coupled to the
quality of the training data, an active learning algorithm selects additional
sample points in order to maximize the expected change in the data-driven model
and thus, indirectly, minimize the prediction error. Various case studies
demonstrate the closed-loop verification procedure and highlight improvements
in prediction error over both existing analytical and statistical verification
techniques.Comment: 23 page
Twice The Negativity Bias And Half The Positivity Offset: Evaluative Responses To Emotional Information In Depression
Background and objectives: Humans have the dual capacity to assign a slightly pleasant valence to neutral stimuli (the positivity offset) to encourage approach behaviors, as well as to assign a higher negative valence to unpleasant images relative to the positive valence to equally arousing and extreme pleasant images (the negativity bias) to facilitate defensive strategies. We conducted an experimental psychopathology study to examine the extent to which the negativity bias and the positivity offset differ in participants with and without major depression. Method: Forty-one depressed and thirty-six healthy participants were evaluated using a structured clinical interview for DSM-IV Axis I disorders, questionnaires, and a computerized task designed to measure implicit affective responses to unpleasant, neutral, and pleasant stimuli. Results: The negativity bias was significantly higher and the positivity offset was significantly lower in depressed relative to healthy participants. Limitations: Entry criteria enrolling medication-free participants with minimal DSM-IV comorbidity may limit generalizability of the findings. Conclusions: This study advances our understanding of the positive and negative valence systems in depression, highlighting the irregularities in the positive valence system
Properties of some conformal field theories with M-theory duals
By studying classes of supersymmetric solutions of D=11 supergravity with
AdS_5 factors, we determine some properties of the dual four-dimensional N=1
superconformal field theories. For some explicit solutions we calculate the
central charges and also the conformal dimensions of certain chiral primary
operators arising from wrapped membranes. For the most general class of
solutions we show that there is a consistent Kaluza-Klein truncation to minimal
D=5 gauged supergravity. This latter result allows us to study some aspects of
the dual strongly coupled thermal plasma with a non-zero R-charge chemical
potential and, in particular, we show that the ratio of the shear viscosity to
the entropy density has the universal value of 1/4 pi.Comment: Consistent truncation extended to include fermions. Reference added.
28 page
Consistent Group and Coset Reductions of the Bosonic String
Dimensional reductions of pure Einstein gravity on cosets other than tori are
inconsistent. The inclusion of specific additional scalar and p-form matter can
change the situation. For example, a D-dimensional Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton
system, with a specific dilaton coupling, is known to admit a consistent
reduction on S^2= SU(2)/U(1), of a sort first envisaged by Pauli. We provide a
new understanding, by showing how an S^3=SU(2) group-manifold reduction of
(D+1)-dimensional Einstein gravity, of a type first indicated by DeWitt, can be
broken into in two steps; a Kaluza-type reduction on U(1) followed by a
Pauli-type coset reduction on S^2. More generally, we show that any
D-dimensional theory that itself arises as a Kaluza U(1) reduction from (D+1)
dimensions admits a consistent Pauli reduction on any coset of the form G/U(1).
Extensions to the case G/H are given. Pauli coset reductions of the bosonic
string on G= (G\times G)/G are believed to be consistent, and a consistency
proof exists for S^3=SO(4)/SO(3). We examine these reductions, and arguments
for consistency, in detail. The structures of the theories obtained instead by
DeWitt-type group-manifold reductions of the bosonic string are also studied,
allowing us to make contact with previous such work in which only singlet
scalars are retained. Consistent truncations with two singlet scalars are
possible. Intriguingly, despite the fact that these are not supersymmetric
models, if the group manifold has dimension 3 or 25 they admit a superpotential
formulation, and hence first-order equations yielding domain-wall solutions.Comment: Latex, 5 figures, 45 pages, minor correction
Association between leukocyte telomere shortening and exposure to traffic pollution: a cross-sectional study on traffic officers and indoor office workers
BACKGROUND: Telomere shortening in blood leukocytes has been associated with increased morbidity and death from cardiovascular disease and cancer, but determinants of shortened telomeres, a molecular feature of biological aging, are still largely unidentified. Traffic pollution has been linked with both cardiovascular and cancer risks, particularly in older subjects. Whether exposure to traffic pollution is associated with telomere shortening has never been evaluated. METHODS: We measured leukocyte telomere length (LTL) by real-time PCR in blood DNA from 77 traffic officers exposed to high levels of traffic pollutants and 57 office workers (referents). Airborne benzene and toluene, as tracers for traffic exposure, were measured using personal passive samplers and gas-chromatography/flame-ionization detector analysis. We used covariate-adjusted multivariable models to test the effects of the exposure on LTL and obtain adjusted LTL means and 95\% Confidence Intervals (CIs). RESULTS: Adjusted mean LTL was 1.10 (95\%CI 1.04-1.16) in traffic officers and 1.27 in referents (95\%CI 1.20-1.35) [p < 0.001]. LTL decreased in association with age in both traffic officers (p = 0.01) and referents (p = 0.001), but traffic officers had shorter LTL within each age category. Among traffic officers, adjusted mean relative LTL was shorter in individuals working in high (n = 45, LTL = 1.02, 95\%CI 0.96-1.09) compared to low traffic intensity (n = 32, LTL = 1.22, 95\%CI 1.13-1.31) [p < 0.001]. In the entire study population, LTL decreased with increasing levels of personal exposure to benzene (p = 0.004) and toluene (p = 0.008). CONCLUSION: Our results indicate that leukocyte telomere length is shortened in subjects exposed to traffic pollution, suggesting evidence of early biological aging and disease risk
Dynamics of Warped Flux Compactifications
We discuss the four dimensional effective action for type IIB flux
compactifications, and obtain the quadratic terms taking warp effects into
account. The analysis includes both the 4-d zero modes and their KK
excitations, which become light at large warping. We identify an `axial' type
gauge for the supergravity fluctuations, which makes the four dimensional
degrees of freedom manifest. The other key ingredient is the existence of
constraints coming from the ten dimensional equations of motion. Applying these
conditions leads to considerable simplifications, enabling us to obtain the low
energy lagrangian explicitly. In particular, the warped K\"ahler potential for
metric moduli is computed and it is shown that there are no mixings with the KK
fluctuations and the result differs from previous proposals. The four
dimensional potential contains a generalization of the Gukov-Vafa-Witten term,
plus usual mass terms for KK modes.Comment: 37 pages. v2. References added, typos corrected. v3. Matches JHEP
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