Toward a functional approach to goal setting

A variable that may be associated with performance improvements is goal setting (within and across days). Easy-to-achieve goals will likely produce gradual trends in improvement and difficult-to-achieve goals steeper trends. The purpose of the current experiments was to study the effects of setting easy-to-achieve and difficult-to-achieve goals on the level, trend, and variability of correct, incorrect, and skip responses for math tasks when reinforcement contingencies and numbers of practices were held constant. Five undergraduate students answered math problems on flash cards in 30s timings. Single case design elements were used to evaluate the effects of different types of goals on the speed and accuracy of performance. The results revealed that goal setting primarily increased the frequency of incorrect responses and both the level and trend of skip responses. The implications of these findings and other important variables that influence the effectiveness of goal setting are discussed. In addition, the authors suggest guidelines to follow when implementing goals to improve performance

Newer laboratory approaches for assessing visual dysfunction.

The crucial point that will be emphasized throughout this report is the potential utility of analyzing visual cortical receptive field (RF) properties of the single-cell level as a sensitive and reliable neurotoxicity screening tool. Numerous studies employing exposure of kittens to altered visual environments during the critical period have demonstrated that particular classes of RFs can be selectively affected while sparing others. There has been a rapid proliferation of new methods used to investigate such effects. An important current trend involves the development of multidisciplinary combinations of approaches. The various maneuvers reviewed here seem adaptable to studying neurotoxic insult of the sensitive properties of cortical visual neurons, particularly in the cat or monkey. Conceivably, a general disruption of cortical RF properties might be expected following toxic exposure since individual RF properties are generally not determined by completely independent mechanisms. In fact, some toxicants might produce a general degradation of RF properties akin to the electrophysiological results reported for long-term dark rearing or binocular deprivation

Dietary components that regulate serum somatomedin-C concentrations in humans.

Dietary components responsible for the regulation of somatomedin-C in humans were assessed in five adult volunteers of normal weight who were fasted for 5 d on three occasions, then refed three diets of differing composition. The serum somatomedin-C decreased from a mean prefasting value of 1.85 +/- 0.39 U/ml (+/- 1 SD) to 0.67 +/- 0.16 U/ml at the end of fasting (P less than 0.005). After refeeding for 5 d with a normal diet, the mean serum somatomedin-C increased to 1.26 +/- 0.20 U/ml. A protein-deficient (32% of control), isocaloric diet resulted in a significantly smaller increase, to a mean value of 0.90 +/- 0.24 U/ml (P less than 0.05). A diet deficient in both protein and energy led to a further fall 0.31 +/- 0.06 U/ml. The changes in somatomedin-C during fasting and refeeding correlated significantly with mean daily nitrogen balance (r = 0.90). We conclude that both protein and energy intake are regulators of serum somatomedin-C concentrations in adult humans, and energy intake may be of greater importance. The correlation between changes in somatomedin-C and nitrogen balance suggests that the former are directly related to changes in protein synthesis and may be helpful in assessing the response to nutritional therapy

Dialyzable factor in human serum of platelet origin stimulates endothelial cell replication and growth

Porcine aortic endothelial cells were isolated and maintained in Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium (DME medium)/10% citrate-treated human plasma. They were stimulated by DME medium/10% human serum to grow from a density of 10,100 +/- 500 per well to a final density of 83,000 +/- 1,800 per well over a 9-day period. On the other hand these cells grew poorly (11% increase) in DME medium/10% human platelet-poor plasma prepared without chelating agents and containing platelet factor 4 at 18 ng/ml by radioimmunoassay. Dialysis of the human serum (M(r) cutoff, 3,500) eliminated all the stimulatory activity. The activity recovered from the dialysate stimulated growth when added to endothelial cultures in conjunction with either dialyzed serum or platelet-poor plasma alone. The dialyzable factor could be obtained directly from platelets; both acetic acid extracts and boiled NaCl extracts stimulated porcine aortic endothelial cell replication. Gel filtration chromatography on Sephadex G-15 showed that the endothelial growth factor had a molecular weight of 700. Partially purified material induced a concentration-dependent stimulation of porcine aortic endothelial cell replication in the presence of DME medium alone; however, simultaneous incubation with platelet-poor plasma resulted in a much greater response. Fibroblast growth factor isolated from bovine brain was found to be mitogenic only in the presence of nondialyzed serum or of the dialyzable factor together with plasma. In the absence of this serum factor, fibroblast growth factor had no effect. We conclude that human serum contains a potent endothelial cell mitogen of platelet origin. Human plasma that is devoid of platelet content does not stimulate endothelial cell growth. This growth factor may be an important stimulant of the endothelial cell response to vascular wall injury

Standards for data acquisition and software‐based analysis of in vivo electroencephalography recordings from animals. A TASK1‐WG5 report of the AES/ILAE Translational Task Force of the ILAE

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139127/1/epi13909.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139127/2/epi13909_am.pd

Assessing historical realibility of the agent-based model of the global energy system

This study looks at the historical reliability of the agent-based model of the global energy system. We present a mathematical framework for the agent-based model calibration and sensitivity analysis based on historical observations. Simulation consistency with the historical record is measured as a distance between two vectors of data points and inference on parameter values is done from the probability distribution of this stochastic estimate. Proposed methodology is applied to the model of the global energy system. Some model properties and limitations followed from calibration results are discussed