The Unemployment Trap Meets the Age-Earning Profile.

The relative costs of taking employment or receiving welfare are usually understood through comparisons of a person’s social security entitlements and their wage alternative, known as replacement rates. In some situations it appears that the additional income from working is negligible, and this is said to constitute an “unemployment trap”. However, conventional replacement rates ignore the fact that age-earnings profiles slope upward through the acquisition of labour market experience. We offer a dynamic reinterpretation and compare alternative calculations for Australia in 2000. The usual and incorrect approach exaggerates significantly the likelihood of unemployment traps, but the presence of children mitigates considerably, and can even reverse, this assessment.unemployment traps, social security, age-earnings profiles, wages

Biomaterials Used in Injectable Implants (Liquid Embolics) for Percutaneous Filling of Vascular Spaces

The biomaterials currently used in injectable implants (liquid embolics) for minimally invasive image-guided treatment of vascular lesions undergo, once injected in situ, a phase transition based on a variety of physicochemical principles. The mechanisms leading to the formation of a solid implant include polymerization, precipitation and cross-linking through ionic or thermal process. The biomaterial characteristics have to meet the requirements of a variety of treatment conditions. The viscosity of the liquid is adapted to the access instrument, which can range from 0.2 mm to 3 mm in diameter and from a few centimeters up to 200 cm in length. Once such liquid embolics reach the vascular space, they are designed to become occlusive by inducing thrombosis or directly blocking the lesion when hardening of the embolics occurs. The safe delivery of such implants critically depends on their visibility and their hardening mechanism. Once delivered, the safety and effectiveness issues are related to implant functions such as biocompatibility, biodegradability or biomechanical properties. We review here the available and the experimental products with respect to the nature of the polymer, the mechanism of gel cast formation and the key characteristics that govern the choice of effective injectable implant

An Open-Source Tool for Anisotropic Radiation Therapy Planning in Neuro-oncology Using DW-MRI Tractography.

There is evidence from histopathological studies that glioma tumor cells migrate preferentially along large white matter bundles. If the peritumoral white matter structures can be used to predict the likely trajectory of migrating tumor cells outside of the surgical margin, then this information could be used to inform the delineation of radiation therapy (RT) targets. In theory, an anisotropic expansion that takes large white matter bundle anatomy into account may maximize the chances of treating migrating cancer cells and minimize the amount of brain tissue exposed to high doses of ionizing radiation. Diffusion-weighted MRI (DW-MRI) can be used in combination with fiber tracking algorithms to model the trajectory of large white matter pathways using the direction and magnitude of water movement in tissue. The method presented here is a tool for translating a DW-MRI fiber tracking (tractography) dataset into a white matter path length (WMPL) map that assigns each voxel the shortest distance along a streamline back to a specified region of interest (ROI). We present an open-source WMPL tool, implemented in the package Diffusion Imaging in Python (DIPY), and code to convert the resulting WMPL map to anisotropic contours for RT in a commercial treatment planning system. This proof-of-concept lays the groundwork for future studies to evaluate the clinical value of incorporating tractography modeling into treatment planning

Trait Anxiety in Mixed Martial Artists

ABSTRACT Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) is a hybrid combat sport incorporating techniques from boxing, wrestling, Judo, Jiu-Jitsu, Karate, Muay Thai (Thai boxing), and other disciplines. Having only been deemed a competitive sport in 1993 by the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), not a lot of research has been done on these athletes. Research done so far on other areas of athletics has shown that personality traits can predict various cognitive, affective, and behavioral outcomes. Furthermore, elevated levels of Trait Anxiety have been shown to deteriorate non-MMA athletes’ overall performance in high-pressure situations. The present study aimed to investigate the presence of Trait Anxiety in both professional fighters and Mixed Martial Artists, thenceforth comparing them to the control of non-Mixed Martial Artists. The hypothesis was that MMA and professional fighters would have significantly higher scores of trait anxiety on the State-Trait Personality Inventory (STPI) scale while scoring significantly lower on the secondary subscales of trait anger, trait depression, and trait curiosity. The independent samples T-test score for the subscale of trait curiosity on the STPI revealed a significantly greater trait curiosity score for fighters (M = 6.25, SD = 1.89) relative to the control group (M = 5.20, SD = 2.29), t (63) = 2.01, p = .048. According to Cohen’s d, this effect is considered medium-to-large, d = .502. The independent samples T-test score for trait anxiety comparing the fighters (M= 10.92, SD= 4.33) to the control group (M=11.38, SD=5.44) was not significant, t (63) = -.382, p=.704. The T-test scores when measuring trait anger for the fighters (M=16.50, SD=5.71) and the control (M=16.51, SD= 7.12) was not significant, t (63) = -.010, p=.992. Lastly, the T-test scores when measuring trait depression between the fighters (M=7.25, SD=2.72) and the control (M=6.89, SD=3.22) was also not significant, t (63) = .480, p= .633. Key words: Trait Anxiety, Professional Fighters, STP

Global similarity and local divergence in human and mouse gene co-expression networks

BACKGROUND: A genome-wide comparative analysis of human and mouse gene expression patterns was performed in order to evaluate the evolutionary divergence of mammalian gene expression. Tissue-specific expression profiles were analyzed for 9,105 human-mouse orthologous gene pairs across 28 tissues. Expression profiles were resolved into species-specific coexpression networks, and the topological properties of the networks were compared between species. RESULTS: At the global level, the topological properties of the human and mouse gene coexpression networks are, essentially, identical. For instance, both networks have topologies with small-world and scale-free properties as well as closely similar average node degrees, clustering coefficients, and path lengths. However, the human and mouse coexpression networks are highly divergent at the local level: only a small fraction (<10%) of coexpressed gene pair relationships are conserved between the two species. A series of controls for experimental and biological variance show that most of this divergence does not result from experimental noise. We further show that, while the expression divergence between species is genuinely rapid, expression does not evolve free from selective (functional) constraint. Indeed, the coexpression networks analyzed here are demonstrably functionally coherent as indicated by the functional similarity of coexpressed gene pairs, and this pattern is most pronounced in the conserved human-mouse intersection network. Numerous dense network clusters show evidence of dedicated functions, such as spermatogenesis and immune response, that are clearly consistent with the coherence of the expression patterns of their constituent gene members. CONCLUSION: The dissonance between global versus local network divergence suggests that the interspecies similarity of the global network properties is of limited biological significance, at best, and that the biologically relevant aspects of the architectures of gene coexpression are specific and particular, rather than universal. Nevertheless, there is substantial evolutionary conservation of the local network structure which is compatible with the notion that gene coexpression networks are subject to purifying selection

Improved Microarray-Based Decision Support with Graph Encoded Interactome Data

In the past, microarray studies have been criticized due to noise and the limited overlap between gene signatures. Prior biological knowledge should therefore be incorporated as side information in models based on gene expression data to improve the accuracy of diagnosis and prognosis in cancer. As prior knowledge, we investigated interaction and pathway information from the human interactome on different aspects of biological systems. By exploiting the properties of kernel methods, relations between genes with similar functions but active in alternative pathways could be incorporated in a support vector machine classifier based on spectral graph theory. Using 10 microarray data sets, we first reduced the number of data sources relevant for multiple cancer types and outcomes. Three sources on metabolic pathway information (KEGG), protein-protein interactions (OPHID) and miRNA-gene targeting (microRNA.org) outperformed the other sources with regard to the considered class of models. Both fixed and adaptive approaches were subsequently considered to combine the three corresponding classifiers. Averaging the predictions of these classifiers performed best and was significantly better than the model based on microarray data only. These results were confirmed on 6 validation microarray sets, with a significantly improved performance in 4 of them. Integrating interactome data thus improves classification of cancer outcome for the investigated microarray technologies and cancer types. Moreover, this strategy can be incorporated in any kernel method or non-linear version of a non-kernel method

Anthropological Contributions to Cognitive Science

Anthropology was a founding member of cognitive science(Bender et al., 2010; Gardner, 1985), sharing with othercognitive disciplines a deep interest in thinking and behav-ior. With its unique expertise in the cultural content, con-text, and constitution of cognition, it would still be essentialto any comprehensive endeavor to explore the human mind(Bloch, 2012), but rather has turned into cognitive science’s“missing discipline” (Boden, 2006), thus leaving importantquestions unanswered or even unasked. Given that substan-tial shares of knowledge are implicit and that cognition issituated, distributed, embodied, and grounded in variousother ways, anthropological approaches provide privilegedaccess to investigation: for arriving at reasonable hypothe-ses, ensuring ecological validity, and even for coming upwith new research questions and paradigms (Astuti &amp;Bloch, 2012; Hutchins, 2010; Nersessian, 2006).In line with recent calls for rapprochement in Topics inCognitive Science (Bender et al., 2012; Beller &amp; Bender,2015), our symposium brings together scholars that repre-sent different branches of contemporary anthropology withdistinct perspectives—including ‘traditional’ social anthro-pology, cognitive anthropology and ethno-linguistics, cogni-tive ecology, evolutionary anthropology, and archaeology—to present what they consider to be indispensable contribu-tions to cognitive science.With our selection of authors, we hope to demonstrate thevalue of anthropological approaches for cognitive science aswell as the potential benefits of cross-disciplinary collabora-tion. Cognitive archaeologist Overmann discusses a theo-retical perspective on how mind, behavior, and materialartifacts interact to shape human cognition. Combining theirexpertise in linguistics and evolutionary anthropology, Ráczand Jordan investigate the design principles of kinship sys-tems as near-universal conceptual tools. With his back-ground in (ethno-)linguistics and cognitive anthropology,Le Guen uses Yucatec Maya sign languages to illustrate theimportance of cultural practices for shaping cognitive be-havior. Based on Hutchins’ cognitive ecology approach,Solberg speaks to questions at the intersection of anthropol-ogy and philosophy of science by illuminating the culturalframework of science production in a biology lab. And so-cial anthropologist Astuti concludes by taking a bird’s eyeview on how efforts to understand the human mind cruciallybenefit from acknowledging its historical origins and fromtaking the specific sociocultural contexts into consideration.Based on work some of which is published in high-qualityjournals (such as Science, Nature, PNAS, BBS, TiCS, Cur-rent Anthropology, or Cognition), these participants willoffer invaluable contributions to a more diverse, more inclu-sive, and hence more comprehensive cognitive science

Experimental study of turbulent-jet wave packets and their acoustic efficiency

This paper details the statistical and time-resolved analysis of the relationship between the near-field pressure fluctuations of unforced, subsonic free jets (0.4 ≤ M ≤ 0.6) and their far-field sound emissions. Near-field and far-field microphone measurements were taken on a conical array close to the jets and an azimuthal ring at 20∘ to the jet axis, respectively. Recent velocity and pressure measurements indicate the presence of linear wave packets in the near field by closely matching predictions from the linear homogenous parabolized stability equations, but the agreement breaks down both beyond the end of the potential core and when considering higher order statistical moments, such as the two-point coherence. Proper orthogonal decomposition (POD), interpreted in terms of inhomogeneous linear models using the resolvent framework allows us to understand these discrepancies. A new technique is developed for projecting time-domain pressure measurements onto a statistically obtained POD basis, yielding the time-resolved activity of each POD mode and its correlation with the far field. A single POD mode, interpreted as an optimal high-gain structure that arises due to turbulent forcing, captures the salient near-field–far-field correlation signature; further, the signatures of the next two modes, understood as suboptimally forced structures, suggest that these POD modes represent higher order, acoustically important near-field behavior. An existing Green's-function-based technique is used to make far-field predictions, and results are interpreted in terms of POD/resolvent modes, indicating the acoustic importance of this higher order behavior. The technique is extended to provide time-domain far-field predictions

Exploratory Visualization of Astronomical Data on Ultra-high-resolution Wall Displays

International audienceUltra-high-resolution wall displays feature a very high pixel density over a large physical surface, which makes them well-suited to the collaborative, exploratory visualization of large datasets. We introduce FITS-OW, an application designed for such wall displays, that enables astronomers to navigate in large collections of FITS images, query astronomical databases, and display detailed, complementary data and documents about multiple sources simultaneously. We describe how astronomers interact with their data using both the wall's touch-sensitive surface and handheld devices. We also report on the technical challenges we addressed in terms of distributed graphics rendering and data sharing over the computer clusters that drive wall displays