NMDA Currents Modulate the Synaptic Input–Output Functions of Neurons in the Dorsal Nucleus of the Lateral Lemniscus in Mongolian Gerbils

Neurons in the dorsal nucleus of the lateral lemniscus (DNLL) receive excitatory and inhibitory inputs from the superior olivary complex (SOC) and convey GABAergic inhibition to the contralateral DNLL and the inferior colliculi. Unlike the fast glycinergic inhibition in the SOC, this GABAergic inhibition outlasts auditory stimulation by tens of milliseconds. Two mechanisms have been postulated to explain this persistent inhibition. One, an “integration-based” mechanism, suggests that postsynaptic excitatory integration in DNLL neurons generates prolonged activity, and the other favors the synaptic time course of the DNLL output itself. The feasibility of the integration-based mechanism was tested in vitro in DNLL neurons of Mongolian gerbils by quantifying the cellular excitability and synaptic input–output functions (IO-Fs). All neurons were sustained firing and generated a near monotonic IO-F on current injections. From synaptic stimulations, we estimate that activation of approximately five fibers, each on average liberating ∼18 vesicles, is sufficient to trigger a single postsynaptic action potential. A strong single pulse of afferent fiber stimulation triggered multiple postsynaptic action potentials. The steepness of the synaptic IO-F was dependent on the synaptic NMDA component. The synaptic NMDA receptor current defines the slope of the synaptic IO-F by enhancing the temporal and spatial EPSP summation. Blocking this NMDA-dependent amplification during postsynaptic integration of train stimulations resulted into a ∼20% reduction of the decay time course of the GABAergic inhibition. Thus, our data show that the NMDA-dependent amplification of the postsynaptic activity contributes to the GABAergic persistent inhibition generated by DNLL neurons

Challenges in the Automatic Analysis of Students' Diagnostic Reasoning

Diagnostic reasoning is a key component of many professions. To improve students' diagnostic reasoning skills, educational psychologists analyse and give feedback on epistemic activities used by these students while diagnosing, in particular, hypothesis generation, evidence generation, evidence evaluation, and drawing conclusions. However, this manual analysis is highly time-consuming. We aim to enable the large-scale adoption of diagnostic reasoning analysis and feedback by automating the epistemic activity identification. We create the first corpus for this task, comprising diagnostic reasoning self-explanations of students from two domains annotated with epistemic activities. Based on insights from the corpus creation and the task's characteristics, we discuss three challenges for the automatic identification of epistemic activities using AI methods: the correct identification of epistemic activity spans, the reliable distinction of similar epistemic activities, and the detection of overlapping epistemic activities. We propose a separate performance metric for each challenge and thus provide an evaluation framework for future research. Indeed, our evaluation of various state-of-the-art recurrent neural network architectures reveals that current techniques fail to address some of these challenges

Disseminating legislative debates: How legislators communicate the parliamentary agenda

While a rich literature addresses legislative agenda-setting in multiparty democracies, relatively little is known how members of parliament disseminate the legislative agenda beyond the parliamentary floor. Drawing on content analyses of 110 legislative debates and 5,847 press releases from Austrian MPs (2013–2017), we test whether legislators are more likely to send press releases on issues that are salient to their party (party agenda-setting) and to other parties in the party system (systemic salience). MPs should also communicate more on issues that fall within their area of expertise (issue specialization) and when they have given a speech on that issue during the legislative debate (intra-party delegation). While we find empirical support for all these expectations, communication of the legislative agenda largely rests on each parties’ issue specialists and their speakers in plenary debates. Importantly, there is no significant discrepancy overall between the actual parliamentary issue agenda and the agenda communicated by party MPs.Austrian Science Fundhttps://doi.org/10.13039/501100002428servicestelle für mobilitätsprogramme des österreichischen bundesministeriums für bildung, wissenschaft und forschung, kulturkontakt austriahttps://doi.org/10.13039/100015057Peer Reviewe

Towards an integrated ecological-economic land-use change model

Land-use changes have transformed tropical landscapes throughout the past decades dramatically. We describe here an ecologicaleconomicland-use change model to provide an integrated, exploratory tool to analyze how tropical land use and land-use change affect ecological and socio-conomic functions. The guiding question of the model is what kind of landscape mosaic can improve the ensemble of ecosystem functioning, biodiversity and economic benefit based on the synergies and trade-offs that we have to account for. The economic submodel simulates smallholder land-use management decisions based on a profit maximization assumption and a Leontief production function. Each household determines factor inputs for all household fields and decides about land-use change based on available wealth. The ecological submodel includes a simple account of carbon sequestration in above- and belowground vegetation. Initialized with realistic or artificial land use maps, the ecological-economic model will advance our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the trade-offs and synergies of ecological and economic functions in tropical landscapes

Examining the Links Between Challenging Behaviors in Youth with ASD and Parental Stress, Mental Health, and Involvement: Applying an Adaptation of the Family Stress Model to Families of Youth with ASD

Raising a child with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) poses unique challenges that may impact parents’ mental health and parenting experiences. The current study analyzed self-report data from 77 parents of youth with ASD. A serial multiple mediation model revealed that parenting stress (SIPA) and parental mental health (BAI and BDI-II) appears to be impacted by challenging adolescent behaviors (SSIS-PBs) and, in turn, affect parental involvement (PRQ), controlling for social skills (SSIS-SSs). Further, the study explored the malleability of parents’ mental health over the course of a social skills intervention, and provides modest evidence that parent depressive symptoms decline across intervention. This study illustrates the importance of considering the entire family system in research on youth with ASD

Challenges in the automatic analysis of students' diagnostic reasoning

Diagnostic reasoning is a key component of many professions. To improve students' diagnostic reasoning skills, educational psychologists analyse and give feedback on epistemic activities used by these students while diagnosing, in particular, hypothesis generation, evidence generation, evidence evaluation, and drawing conclusions. However, this manual analysis is highly time-consuming. We aim to enable the large-scale adoption of diagnostic reasoning analysis and feedback by automating the epistemic activity identification. We create the first corpus for this task, comprising diagnostic reasoning self-explanations of students from two domains annotated with epistemic activities. Based on insights from the corpus creation and the task's characteristics, we discuss three challenges for the automatic identification of epistemic activities using AI methods: the correct identification of epistemic activity spans, the reliable distinction of similar epistemic activities, and the detection of overlapping epistemic activities. We propose a separate performance metric for each challenge and thus provide an evaluation framework for future research. Indeed, our evaluation of various state-of-the-art recurrent neural network architectures reveals that current techniques fail to address some of these challenges

Challenging the Postwar Narrative: The Art and Agenda of Boris Lurie

Art history is shaped, studied, and taught based on narratives, artistic movements, and the biographies of celebrated artists. While contributing to an understanding of prevalent traditions and artists working in those traditions, these narratives are also constructions of inclusion and exclusion that establish art historical placement for certain artists while relegating others to historical obscurity. It is clear what happens to the critical fortunes of artists who are placed within these narratives. Yet what happens to the artists who do not fit within any of the categories established by these constructions? Are they then to be understood as simply minor artists or perhaps even “outsider artists?” Using the example of Boris Lurie and his critical fortune within the context of the standard art historical narrative of American art of the post World War Two period, this thesis argues for an expanded vision of modern and contemporary art that would accommodate lesser-known artists and offer a nuanced understanding of what American art has been after 1945

Disseminating legislative debates: How legislators communicate the parliamentary agenda

While a rich literature addresses legislative agenda-setting in multiparty democracies, relatively little is known how members of parliament disseminate the legislative agenda beyond the parliamentary floor. Drawing on content analyses of 110 legislative debates and 5,847 press releases from Austrian MPs (2013–2017), we test whether legislators are more likely to send press releases on issues that are salient to their party (party agenda-setting) and to other parties in the party system (systemic salience). MPs should also communicate more on issues that fall within their area of expertise (issue specialization) and when they have given a speech on that issue during the legislative debate (intra-party delegation). While we find empirical support for all these expectations, communication of the legislative agenda largely rests on each parties’ issue specialists and their speakers in plenary debates. Importantly, there is no significant discrepancy overall between the actual parliamentary issue agenda and the agenda communicated by party MPs

Analysis of automatic annotation suggestions for hard discourse-level tasks in expert domains

Many complex discourse-level tasks can aid domain experts in their work but require costly expert annotations for data creation. To speed up and ease annotations, we investigate the viability of automatically generated annotation suggestions for such tasks. As an example, we choose a task that is particularly hard for both humans and machines: the segmentation and classification of epistemic activities in diagnostic reasoning texts. We create and publish a new dataset covering two domains and carefully analyse the suggested annotations. We find that suggestions have positive effects on annotation speed and performance, while not introducing noteworthy biases. Envisioning suggestion models that improve with newly annotated texts, we contrast methods for continuous model adjustment and suggest the most effective setup for suggestions in future expert tasks