The influence of semantic and phonological factors on syntactic decisions: An event-related brain potential study

During language production and comprehension, information about a word's syntactic properties is sometimes needed. While the decision about the grammatical gender of a word requires access to syntactic knowledge, it has also been hypothesized that semantic (i.e., biological gender) or phonological information (i.e., sound regularities) may influence this decision. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured while native speakers of German processed written words that were or were not semantically and/or phonologically marked for gender. Behavioral and ERP results showed that participants were faster in making a gender decision when words were semantically and/or phonologically gender marked than when this was not the case, although the phonological effects were less clear. In conclusion, our data provide evidence that even though participants performed a grammatical gender decision, this task can be influenced by semantic and phonological factors

Mathematical utility theory and the representability of demand by continuous homogeneous functions

The resort to utility-theoretical issues will permit us to propose a constructive procedure for deriving a homogeneous of degree one continuous function that gives raise to a primitive demand function under suitably mild conditions. This constitutes the first self-contained and elementary proof of a necessary and sufficient condition for an integrability problem to have a solution by continuous (subjective utility) functions.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Chromosome copy number changes carry prognostic information independent of KIT/PDGFRA point mutations in gastrointestinal stromal tumors

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Oncogenic point mutations in <it>KIT </it>or <it>PDGFRA </it>are recognized as the primary events responsible for the pathogenesis of most gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST), but additional genomic alterations are frequent and presumably required for tumor progression. The relative contribution of such alterations for the biology and clinical behavior of GIST, however, remains elusive.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In the present study, somatic mutations in <it>KIT </it>and <it>PDGFRA </it>were evaluated by direct sequencing analysis in a consecutive series of 80 GIST patients. For a subset of 29 tumors, comparative genomic hybridization was additionally used to screen for chromosome copy number aberrations. Genotype and genomic findings were cross-tabulated and compared with available clinical and follow-up data.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We report an overall mutation frequency of 87.5%, with 76.25% of the tumors showing alterations in <it>KIT </it>and 11.25% in <it>PDGFRA</it>. Secondary <it>KIT </it>mutations were additionally found in two of four samples obtained after imatinib treatment. Chromosomal imbalances were detected in 25 out of 29 tumors (86%), namely losses at 14q (88% of abnormal cases), 22q (44%), 1p (44%), and 15q (36%), and gains at 1q (16%) and 12q (20%). In addition to clinico-pathological high-risk groups, patients with <it>KIT </it>mutations, genomic complexity, genomic gains and deletions at either 1p or 22q showed a significantly shorter disease-free survival. Furthermore, genomic complexity was the best predictor of disease progression in multivariate analysis.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>In addition to <it>KIT/PDGFRA </it>mutational status, our findings indicate that secondary chromosomal changes contribute significantly to tumor development and progression of GIST and that genomic complexity carries independent prognostic value that complements clinico-pathological and genotype information.</p

RhoE Deficiency Produces Postnatal Lethality, Profound Motor Deficits and Neurodevelopmental Delay in Mice

Rnd proteins are a subfamily of Rho GTPases involved in the control of actin cytoskeleton dynamics and other cell functions such as motility, proliferation and survival. Unlike other members of the Rho family, Rnd proteins lack GTPase activity and therefore remain constitutively active. We have recently described that RhoE/Rnd3 is expressed in the Central Nervous System and that it has a role in promoting neurite formation. Despite their possible relevance during development, the role of Rnd proteins in vivo is not known. To get insight into the in vivo function of RhoE we have generated mice lacking RhoE expression by an exon trapping cassette. RhoE null mice (RhoE gt/gt) are smaller at birth, display growth retardation and early postnatal death since only half of RhoE gt/gt mice survive beyond postnatal day (PD) 15 and 100% are dead by PD 29. RhoE gt/gt mice show an abnormal body position with profound motor impairment and impaired performance in most neurobehavioral tests. Null mutant mice are hypoactive, show an immature locomotor pattern and display a significant delay in the appearance of the hindlimb mature responses. Moreover, they perform worse than the control littermates in the wire suspension, vertical climbing and clinging, righting reflex and negative geotaxis tests. Also, RhoE ablation results in a delay of neuromuscular maturation and in a reduction in the number of spinal motor neurons. Finally, RhoE gt/gt mice lack the common peroneal nerve and, consequently, show a complete atrophy of the target muscles. This is the first model to study the in vivo functions of a member of the Rnd subfamily of proteins, revealing the important role of Rnd3/RhoE in the normal development and suggesting the possible involvement of this protein in neurological disorders

Effects on incident reporting after educating residents in patient safety: a controlled study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Medical residents are key figures in delivering health care and an important target group for patient safety education. Reporting incidents is an important patient safety domain, as awareness of vulnerabilities could be a starting point for improvements. This study examined effects of patient safety education for residents on knowledge, skills, attitudes, intentions and behavior concerning incident reporting.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A controlled study with follow-up measurements was conducted. In 2007 and 2008 two patient safety courses for residents were organized. Residents from a comparable hospital acted as external controls. Data were collected in three ways: 1] questionnaires distributed before, immediately after and three months after the course, 2] incident reporting cards filled out by course participants during the course, and 3] residents' reporting data gathered from hospital incident reporting systems.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Forty-four residents attended the course and 32 were external controls. Positive changes in knowledge, skills and attitudes were found after the course. Residents' intentions to report incidents were positive at all measurements. Participants filled out 165 incident reporting cards, demonstrating the skills to notice incidents. Residents who had reported incidents before, reported more incidents after the course. However, the number of residents reporting incidents did not increase. An increase in reported incidents was registered by the reporting system of the intervention hospital.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Patient safety education can have immediate and long-term positive effects on knowledge, skills and attitudes, and modestly influence the reporting behavior of residents.</p

Solving the Task Variant Allocation Problem in Distributed Robotics

We consider the problem of assigning software processes (or tasks) to hardware processors in distributed robotics environments. We introduce the notion of a task variant, which supports the adaptation of software to specific hardware configurations. Task variants facilitate the trade-off of functional quality versus the requisite capacity and type of target execution processors. We formalise the problem of assigning task variants to processors as a mathematical model that incorporates typical constraints found in robotics applications; the model is a constrained form of a multi-objective, multi-dimensional, multiple-choice knapsack problem. We propose and evaluate three different solution methods to the problem: constraint programming, a constructive greedy heuristic and a local search metaheuristic. Furthermore, we demonstrate the use of task variants in a real instance of a distributed interactive multi-agent navigation system, showing that our best solution method (constraint programming) improves the system’s quality of service, as compared to the local search metaheuristic, the greedy heuristic and a randomised solution, by an average of 16, 31 and 56% respectively