Redundancy, Discrimination and Corruption in the Multibillion-Dollar Business of College Admissions Testing

Most American colleges and universities require standardized entrance exams when making admissions decisions. Scores on these exams help determine if, when and where students will be allowed to pursue higher education. These scores are also used to determine eligibility for merit based financial aid. This testing persists even though half of the institutions that require the test scores from applicants have no idea if the scores offer any valuable information about prospective students. The purpose of this study is to examine the biases inherent in standardized college entrance exams, their validity as predictors of college completion, the actual value of the information these test scores provide and corruption on the part of the testing organizations and the colleges and universities which require the exams. Findings indicate that college entrance exams, which are biased in favor of wealthy, white, male students, are not as reliable a predictor of college grades or completion within the accepted four to six year time frame as high school grade point average. Corruption in the form of cheating, abuse and misuse exists on many levels in the business of college admissions testing. Testing agencies rake in millions of dollars in profit every year yet pay no taxes because they enjoy non-profit status even though they are commercial and not educational enterprises

The analysis of the expression pattern of the intracellular and extracellular miRNAs in prostate tumor cell lines exposed to cytotoxic drugs.

It has been recently discovered that microRNAs are stably expressed in body fluids of several organisms and that the expression patterns in the plasma/serum of cancer patients could represent a diagnostic/predictive tool of the disease. Extracellular miRNAs have been also found in the growth medium of cells in culture and this prompted us to verify whether prostate tumor cell lines release miRNAs specific of prostate tumor patients and whether anticancer drugs affect the expression patterns of the extracellular miRNAs. First of all we determined the expression of either prostate specific (PS-miRNA) or non prostate specific (NPS-miRNA) miRNAs in the growth medium of PC3 and DU-145 cells (prostate metastatic tumor cell lines) in comparison to PNT1A (immortalized prostate cell line). We found that the levels of both the intracellular and extracellular PS-miRNAs were higher in PC3 and DU-145 tumor cell lines in comparison to the immortalized cell line PNT1A and that a positive correlation exists between the intracellular and the extracellular levels suggesting that the release of miRNA in the growth medium may be a manner to maintain the intracellular miRNAs at physiological level. Thereafter, we investigated whether the release of miRNAs is affected in cells upon their exposure to a cytotoxic drug. To address the point, PC-3 and DU-145 cells were exposed to a cytotoxic concentration of either fludarabine (10 μg/mL) or taxotere (30 nM) for 48 hours. At the end of the treatment both the intracellular and extracellular PS-miRNAs and NPS-miRNAs were quantified. Data showed that i) those miRNAs that were up regulated in cells surviving to either fludarabine or taxotere were not released and that ii) the up regulated miRNAs found in fludarabine-or in taxotere-surviving cells were not the same. Overall data indicate for the first time a possible involvement of miRNAs in the survival/resistance of tumor cells to cytotoxic drugs and suggest that the expression pattern of the intracellular and extracellular miRNAs could be an useful tool to identify in tumor cell lines miRNAs responsible of survival/resistance to cytotoxic drugs and in plasma/serum of cancer patients the efficacy of an anticancer treatment

The RNA Activator ds-p21 Potentiates the Cytotoxicity Induced by Fludarabine in Dohh2 Cells

Recently, it has been reported that, in several tumor cell lines, short double-stranded RNAs tailored for promoter regions of specific genes are able to activate their transcription. Such molecules (named RNA activators) act opposite to other double-stranded RNA molecules (named RNA inhibitors) in that the overexpression instead of underexpression of a given gene is triggered. In Dohh2 non-Hodgkin lymphoma cells, the transcriptional repressor BCL6, which negatively controls both p53 and p21, is overexpressed, so that the cells can escape the check point governed by p53 and proliferate. The aim of this work was to investigate whether the RNA activator p21 can represent a tool to circumvent the transcriptional control of BCL6 and induce the blockage of cell proliferation in Dohh2 non-Hodgkin lymphoma cells. For that, Dohh2 cells were transfected with either a control RNA activator (ds-NC) or an RNA activator specific for human p21 promoter (ds-p21). At various time points after transfection, the cells were collected and p21 was measured. Dohh2 cells transfected with ds-p21 showed a slight but significant overexpression of p21 at both mRNA and protein levels. Nonetheless, cell proliferation, cell cycle, and apoptosis were not significantly modified. In contrast, the exposure of Dohh2 cells transfected with ds-p21 to fludarabine potentiates the cytotoxicity of the drug, suggesting the RNA activator p21 complements the fludarabine-dependent cell death pathways

Change Blindness, Attention, and Driving Performance

Concern over older driver high traffic fatality rates has resulted in an effort to identify risk factors and to develop methods of assessment. This study examines two attention-related tasks, Useful Field of View (UFOV) and Change Blindness (CB), in relation to vision and cognitive test batteries and driving performance measures collected using a simulator and an instrumented vehicle. Eight older adults with Alzheimer’s disease and nine comparison subjects between 64 and 81 participated. Factor analysis results indicate that UFOV and CB relate to different factors. While UFOV relates to memory, decision-making, attention, and visual spatial ability, CB relates to vision and attention. The type of images used on a CB task influence how the task relates to driving performance measures. Researchers should be thoughtful when selecting images to include in CB tasks to maximize insight into real-world drivin

The miRNA Pull Out Assay as a Method to Validate the miR-28-5p Targets Identified in Other Tumor Contexts in Prostate Cancer

miR-28-5p is an intragenic miRNA which is underexpressed in several tumor types showing a tumor suppressor (TS) activity. Routinely, the known miR-28-5p targets are validated in specific tumor contexts but it is unclear whether these targets are also being regulated in other tumor types. To this end, we adopted the miRNA pull out assay to capture the miR-28-5p targets in DU-145 prostate cancer (PCa) cells. Firstly, we demonstrated that miR-28-5p acts as a TS-miRNA in PCa, affecting cell proliferation, survival, and apoptosis. Secondly, we evaluated the enrichment of the 10 validated miR-28-5p targets in the pull out sample. We showed that E2F6, TEX-261, MAPK1, MPL, N4BP1, and RAP1B but not BAG1, OTUB1, MAD2L1, and p21 were significantly enriched, suggesting that not all the miR-28-5p targets are regulated by this miRNA in PCa. We then verified whether the miR-28-5p-interacting targets were regulated by this miRNA. We selected E2F6, the most enriched target in the pull out sample, and demonstrated that miR-28-5p downregulated E2F6 at the protein level suggesting that our approach was effective. In general terms, these findings support the miRNA pull out assay as a useful method to identify context-specific miRNA targets

Localization of Compact Binary Sources with Second Generation Gravitational-wave Interferometer Networks

GW170817 began gravitational-wave multimessenger astronomy. However, GW170817 will not be representative of detections in the coming years -- typical gravitational-wave sources will be closer the detection horizon, have larger localization regions, and (when present) will have correspondingly weaker electromagnetic emission. In its design state, the gravitational-wave detector network in the mid-2020s will consist of up to five similar-sensitivity second-generation interferometers. The instantaneous sky-coverage by the full network is nearly isotropic, in contrast to the configuration during the first \change{three} observing runs. Along with the coverage of the sky, there are also commensurate increases in the average horizon for a given binary mass. We present a realistic set of localizations for binary neutron stars and neutron star--black hole binaries, incorporating intra-network duty cycles and selection effects on the astrophysical distributions. Based on the assumption of an $80\%$ duty cycle, and that two instruments observe a signal above the detection threshold, we anticipate a median of $28$ sq.\ deg.\ for binary neutron stars, and $50$--$120$ sq.\ deg.\ for neutron star--black hole (depending on the population assumed). These distributions have a wide spread, and the best localizations, even for networks with fewer instruments, will have localizations of $1$--$10$ sq.\ deg.\ range. The full five instrument network reduces localization regions to a few tens of degrees at worst.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables, accepted in Ap