Warming Up the Language Engines: Short-Term Second Language Use Increases Subsequent Fluency

Subjective experience suggests that using one's second language (L2) becomes easier after an initial period of adjustment. We report the results of an experiment suggesting that even a brief period of L2 use can facilitate subsequent retrieval. Native Hebrew speakers completed letter and category verbal fluency tasks in English. In a subsequent experimental session, participants performed a short comprehension or production task, either in Hebrew (L1) or in English (L2), and then completed an additional round of the English fluency tasks. English use resulted in a reliable improvement in letter fluency, associated with executive functioning. However, there was no reliable improvement in category fluency, associated with lexical knowledge. No reliable improvement in the fluency tasks was observed following Hebrew use. Results suggest that even a brief period of L2 use can facilitate retrieval, by increasing the relative activation of L2. Furthermore, improvement did not result from priming specific lexical items, suggesting increased relative activation affects the L2 lexicon as a whole

The Iowa Homemaker vol.5, no.7

Table of Contents The True Spirit of Christmas by Dr. O. H. Cessna, page 1 Something Different for Christmas Greetings by Elizabeth Johnson, page 2 The Purchase Price of Beauty by Dr, Elizabeth Hoyt, page 3 Can You Visualize Your Hat Problem by Florence Faust, page 4 Decorating the Christmas Tree by Margaret Ericson, page 5 Christmas – For Him by Dorothy Harp and Louise Corsaut, page 5 With Iowa State Home Economics Association, page 6 Preparing the Girl for Motherhood by Dr. Florence Brown Sherborn, page 7 Girls’ 4-H Clubs, page 10 Fuel Economy in the Kitchen by Miriam Rapp, page 11 When We Are Very Young by Anna Johnson, page 12 Editorial, page 13 Who’s There and Where, page 14 Eternal Question, page 16 If You Would Have Health by Margaret Whistler, page 1

Rubber vs. oil palm: an analysis of factors influencing smallholders' crop choice in Jambi, Indonesia

The rapid expansion of the oil palm area in many tropical countries has raised concerns about its negative impact on local communities, food security, and on the environment. While the expansion of oil palm in early stages was mainly driven by large private and public companies, it is expected that smallholders will outnumber large estates in the near future. For policy formulation it is hence important to better understand who these smallholders are and why they have started to cultivate oil palm. In this paper, we used a rich dataset collected in the province of Jambi, which is one of the most important production areas for oil palm, to analyse smallholders’ decision making by combining qualitative, quantitative, and experimental methods. We identified agricultural expertise, lacking flexibility in labour requirements, availability of seedlings, and investment costs as the major constraints for farmers to cultivate oil palm. Important reasons for oil palm cultivation are the higher returns to labour and the shorter immature phase of oil palm. We also showed that oil palm farmers are neither risk-averse nor risk-loving, rather, they appear to be risk-neutral

Diagnostic Test Accuracy of a 2-Transcript Host RNA Signature for Discriminating Bacterial vs Viral Infection in Febrile Children.

IMPORTANCE: Because clinical features do not reliably distinguish bacterial from viral infection, many children worldwide receive unnecessary antibiotic treatment, while bacterial infection is missed in others. OBJECTIVE: To identify a blood RNA expression signature that distinguishes bacterial from viral infection in febrile children. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: Febrile children presenting to participating hospitals in the United Kingdom, Spain, the Netherlands, and the United States between 2009-2013 were prospectively recruited, comprising a discovery group and validation group. Each group was classified after microbiological investigation as having definite bacterial infection, definite viral infection, or indeterminate infection. RNA expression signatures distinguishing definite bacterial from viral infection were identified in the discovery group and diagnostic performance assessed in the validation group. Additional validation was undertaken in separate studies of children with meningococcal disease (n = 24) and inflammatory diseases (n = 48) and on published gene expression datasets. EXPOSURES: A 2-transcript RNA expression signature distinguishing bacterial infection from viral infection was evaluated against clinical and microbiological diagnosis. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: Definite bacterial and viral infection was confirmed by culture or molecular detection of the pathogens. Performance of the RNA signature was evaluated in the definite bacterial and viral group and in the indeterminate infection group. RESULTS: The discovery group of 240 children (median age, 19 months; 62% male) included 52 with definite bacterial infection, of whom 36 (69%) required intensive care, and 92 with definite viral infection, of whom 32 (35%) required intensive care. Ninety-six children had indeterminate infection. Analysis of RNA expression data identified a 38-transcript signature distinguishing bacterial from viral infection. A smaller (2-transcript) signature (FAM89A and IFI44L) was identified by removing highly correlated transcripts. When this 2-transcript signature was implemented as a disease risk score in the validation group (130 children, with 23 definite bacterial, 28 definite viral, and 79 indeterminate infections; median age, 17 months; 57% male), all 23 patients with microbiologically confirmed definite bacterial infection were classified as bacterial (sensitivity, 100% [95% CI, 100%-100%]) and 27 of 28 patients with definite viral infection were classified as viral (specificity, 96.4% [95% CI, 89.3%-100%]). When applied to additional validation datasets from patients with meningococcal and inflammatory diseases, bacterial infection was identified with a sensitivity of 91.7% (95% CI, 79.2%-100%) and 90.0% (95% CI, 70.0%-100%), respectively, and with specificity of 96.0% (95% CI, 88.0%-100%) and 95.8% (95% CI, 89.6%-100%). Of the children in the indeterminate groups, 46.3% (63/136) were classified as having bacterial infection, although 94.9% (129/136) received antibiotic treatment. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: This study provides preliminary data regarding test accuracy of a 2-transcript host RNA signature discriminating bacterial from viral infection in febrile children. Further studies are needed in diverse groups of patients to assess accuracy and clinical utility of this test in different clinical settings

Global and Local Features of Semantic Networks: Evidence from the Hebrew Mental Lexicon

BACKGROUND: Semantic memory has generated much research. As such, the majority of investigations have focused on the English language, and much less on other languages, such as Hebrew. Furthermore, little research has been done on search processes within the semantic network, even though they are abundant within cognitive semantic phenomena. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We examine a unique dataset of free association norms to a set of target words and make use of correlation and network theory methodologies to investigate the global and local features of the Hebrew lexicon. The global features of the lexicon are investigated through the use of association correlations--correlations between target words, based on their association responses similarity; the local features of the lexicon are investigated through the use of association dependencies--the influence words have in the network on other words. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our investigation uncovered Small-World Network features of the Hebrew lexicon, specifically a high clustering coefficient and a scale-free distribution, and provides means to examine how words group together into semantically related 'free categories'. Our novel approach enables us to identify how words facilitate or inhibit the spread of activation within the network, and how these words influence each other. We discuss how these properties relate to classical research on spreading activation and suggest that these properties influence cognitive semantic search processes. A semantic search task, the Remote Association Test is discussed in light of our findings

Large scale multifactorial likelihood quantitative analysis of BRCA1 and BRCA2 variants: An ENIGMA resource to support clinical variant classification

The multifactorial likelihood analysis method has demonstrated utility for quantitative assessment of variant pathogenicity for multiple cancer syndrome genes. Independent data types currently incorporated in the model for assessing BRCA1 and BRCA2 variants include clinically calibrated prior probability of pathogenicity based on variant location and bioinformatic prediction of variant effect, co-segregation, family cancer history profile, co-occurrence with a pathogenic variant in the same gene, breast tumor pathology, and case-control information. Research and clinical data for multifactorial likelihood analysis were collated for 1,395 BRCA1/2 predominantly intronic and missense variants, enabling classification based on posterior probability of pathogenicity for 734 variants: 447 variants were classified as (likely) benign, and 94 as (likely) pathogenic; and 248 classifications were new or considerably altered relative to ClinVar submissions. Classifications were compared with information not yet included in the likelihood model, and evidence strengths aligned to those recommended for ACMG/AMP classification codes. Altered mRNA splicing or function relative to known nonpathogenic variant controls were moderately to strongly predictive of variant pathogenicity. Variant absence in population datasets provided supporting evidence for variant pathogenicity. These findings have direct relevance for BRCA1 and BRCA2 variant evaluation, and justify the need for gene-specific calibration of evidence types used for variant classification

Plasma lipid profiles discriminate bacterial from viral infection in febrile children

Fever is the most common reason that children present to Emergency Departments. Clinical signs and symptoms suggestive of bacterial infection are often non-specific, and there is no definitive test for the accurate diagnosis of infection. The 'omics' approaches to identifying biomarkers from the host-response to bacterial infection are promising. In this study, lipidomic analysis was carried out with plasma samples obtained from febrile children with confirmed bacterial infection (n = 20) and confirmed viral infection (n = 20). We show for the first time that bacterial and viral infection produces distinct profile in the host lipidome. Some species of glycerophosphoinositol, sphingomyelin, lysophosphatidylcholine and cholesterol sulfate were higher in the confirmed virus infected group, while some species of fatty acids, glycerophosphocholine, glycerophosphoserine, lactosylceramide and bilirubin were lower in the confirmed virus infected group when compared with confirmed bacterial infected group. A combination of three lipids achieved an area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve of 0.911 (95% CI 0.81 to 0.98). This pilot study demonstrates the potential of metabolic biomarkers to assist clinicians in distinguishing bacterial from viral infection in febrile children, to facilitate effective clinical management and to the limit inappropriate use of antibiotics

Identification of regulatory variants associated with genetic susceptibility to meningococcal disease.

Non-coding genetic variants play an important role in driving susceptibility to complex diseases but their characterization remains challenging. Here, we employed a novel approach to interrogate the genetic risk of such polymorphisms in a more systematic way by targeting specific regulatory regions relevant for the phenotype studied. We applied this method to meningococcal disease susceptibility, using the DNA binding pattern of RELA - a NF-kB subunit, master regulator of the response to infection - under bacterial stimuli in nasopharyngeal epithelial cells. We designed a custom panel to cover these RELA binding sites and used it for targeted sequencing in cases and controls. Variant calling and association analysis were performed followed by validation of candidate polymorphisms by genotyping in three independent cohorts. We identified two new polymorphisms, rs4823231 and rs11913168, showing signs of association with meningococcal disease susceptibility. In addition, using our genomic data as well as publicly available resources, we found evidences for these SNPs to have potential regulatory effects on ATXN10 and LIF genes respectively. The variants and related candidate genes are relevant for infectious diseases and may have important contribution for meningococcal disease pathology. Finally, we described a novel genetic association approach that could be applied to other phenotypes

Large scale multifactorial likelihood quantitative analysis of BRCA1 and BRCA2 variants: An ENIGMA resource to support clinical variant classification

Abstract The multifactorial likelihood analysis method has demonstrated utility for quantitative assessment of variant pathogenicity for multiple cancer syndrome genes. Independent data types currently incorporated in the model for assessing BRCA1 and BRCA2 variants include clinically calibrated prior probability of pathogenicity based on variant location and bioinformatic prediction of variant effect, co-segregation, family cancer history profile, co-occurrence with a pathogenic variant in the same gene, breast tumor pathology, and case-control information. Research and clinical data for multifactorial likelihood analysis were collated for 1395 BRCA1/2 predominantly intronic and missense variants, enabling classification based on posterior probability of pathogenicity for 734 variants: 447 variants were classified as (likely) benign, and 94 as (likely) pathogenic; 248 classifications were new or considerably altered relative to ClinVar submissions. Classifications were compared to information not yet included in the likelihood model, and evidence strengths aligned to those recommended for ACMG/AMP classification codes. Altered mRNA splicing or function relative to known non-pathogenic variant controls were moderately to strongly predictive of variant pathogenicity. Variant absence in population datasets provided supporting evidence for variant pathogenicity. These findings have direct relevance for BRCA1 and BRCA2 variant evaluation, and justify the need for gene-specific calibration of evidence types used for variant classification. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.Peer reviewe