Obtaining Record Linkage Consent: Results from a Wording Experiment in Germany

Many sample surveys ask respondents for consent to link their survey information with administrative sources. There is significant variation in how linkage requests are administered and little experimental evidence to suggest which approaches are useful for achieving high consent rates. A common approach is to emphasize the positive benefits of linkage to respondents. However, some evidence suggests that emphasizing the negative consequences of not consenting to linkage is a more effective strategy. To further examine this issue, we conducted a gain-loss framing experiment in which we emphasized the benefit (gain) of linking or the negative consequence (loss) of not linking one’s data as it related to the usefulness of their survey responses. In addition, we explored a sunk-prospective costs rationale by varying the emphasis on response usefulness for responses that the respondent had already provided prior to the linkage request (sunk costs) and responses that would be provided after the linkage request (prospective costs). We found a significant interaction between gain-loss framing and the sunk-prospective costs rationale: respondents in the gain-framing condition consented to linkage at a higher rate than those in the loss-framing condition when response usefulness was emphasized for responses to subsequent survey items. Conversely, the opposite pattern was observed when response usefulness was emphasized for responses that had already been provided: loss-framing resulted in a higher consent rate than the gain-framing, but this result did not reach statistical significance

A Non-Disordered Glassy Model with a Tunable Interaction Range

We introduce a non-disordered lattice spin model, based on the principle of minimizing spin-spin correlations up to a (tunable) distance R. The model can be defined in any spatial dimension D, but already for D=1 and small values of R (e.g. R=5) the model shows the properties of a glassy system: deep and well separated energy minima, very slow relaxation dynamics, aging and non-trivial fluctuation-dissipation ratio.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

The Design of Incentive Systems in Digital Game-Based Learning:How Primary School Children Interact with It

Digital game-based learning builds on the general characteristics of games. The incentive system (points, scores, stars, levels, and performance feedback) integrates design elements to keep a learner engaged. In the work described here, we investigated which elements of the incentive system design—rewards, penalties, or feedback—have the potential to trigger students’ motivation to play the game. We used eye tracking of eight primary school children, aged 8–11 years, as they interacted with the incentive system of a mathematics game-based item and its specific design, followed by a semi-structured interview. Eye-tracking results show that students paid minimal visual attention to the incentive system during the game, regardless of their level of performance in the game or their age group. The feedback at the end of the game attracted more of their visual attention and provided a good opportunity to inform them about their performance. The semi-structured interviews revealed a high level of self-reported excitement about playing the game, mainly related to the design of the incentive system. Elements of the incentive system triggered students’ wish for student-to-student competition, which has been shown in the literature on traditional tangible rewards to stifle intrinsic motivation under certain conditions. The results of this study show that the design of the incentive system has the potential to promote extrinsic motivation with the game through rewards and penalties, and open the reflection on its possible spillover effect on intrinsic motivation in digital game-based learning.</p

Chapter 7: Statistical Identification of Fraudulent Interviews in Surveys: Improving Interviewer Controls Appendix 7

Table A7A.1 Number of identical response pattern

Accurate Determination of Phenotypic Information from Historic Thoroughbred Horses by Single Base Extension

Historic DNA have the potential to identify phenotypic information otherwise invisible in the historical, archaeological and palaeontological record. In order to determine whether a single nucleotide polymorphism typing protocol based on single based extension (SNaPshot™) could produce reliable phenotypic data from historic samples, we genotyped three coat colour markers for a sample of historic Thoroughbred horses for which both phenotypic and correct geotypic information were known from pedigree information in the General Stud Book. Experimental results were consistent with the pedigrees in all cases. Thus we demonstrate that historic DNA techniques can produce reliable phenotypic information from museum specimens.© 2010 Campana et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Targeting platelet receptor function in thrombus formation: The risk of bleeding

In this review, we presume that the process of thrombus formation, as assessed in whole blood flow studies and in experimental (murine) thrombosis studies, reflects the platelet responses in human haemostasis and thrombosis. Following this concept, we give an up-to-date overview of the main platelet receptors and signalling pathways that contribute to thrombus formation and are used as targets in (pre)clinical intervention studies to prevent cardiovascular disease. Discussed are receptors for thrombin, thromboxane, ADP, ATP, prostaglandins, von Willebrand factor, collagen, CLEC-2 ligand, fibrinogen and laminin. Sketched are the consequences of receptor deficiency or blockage for haemostasis and thrombosis in mouse and man. Recording of bleeding due to (congenital) platelet dysfunction or (acquired) antiplatelet treatment occurs according to different protocols, while common laboratory methods are used to determine platelet function

Universality-class dependence of energy distributions in spin glasses

We study the probability distribution function of the ground-state energies of the disordered one-dimensional Ising spin chain with power-law interactions using a combination of parallel tempering Monte Carlo and branch, cut, and price algorithms. By tuning the exponent of the power-law interactions we are able to scan several universality classes. Our results suggest that mean-field models have a non-Gaussian limiting distribution of the ground-state energies, whereas non-mean-field models have a Gaussian limiting distribution. We compare the results of the disordered one-dimensional Ising chain to results for a disordered two-leg ladder, for which large system sizes can be studied, and find a qualitative agreement between the disordered one-dimensional Ising chain in the short-range universality class and the disordered two-leg ladder. We show that the mean and the standard deviation of the ground-state energy distributions scale with a power of the system size. In the mean-field universality class the skewness does not follow a power-law behavior and converges to a nonzero constant value. The data for the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model seem to be acceptably well fitted by a modified Gumbel distribution. Finally, we discuss the distribution of the internal energy of the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model at finite temperatures and show that it behaves similar to the ground-state energy of the system if the temperature is smaller than the critical temperature.Comment: 15 pages, 20 figures, 1 tabl

Synthesis and Structure-Affinity Relationships of Spirocyclic Benzopyrans with Exocyclic Amino Moiety

\u3c31 and/or \u3c32 receptors play a crucial role in pathological conditions such as pain, neurodegenerative disorders, and cancer. A set of spirocyclic cyclohexanes with diverse O-heterocycles and amino moieties (general structure III) was prepared and pharmacologically evaluated. In structure-activity relationships studies, the \u3c31 receptor affinity and \u3c31:\u3c32 selectivity were correlated with the stereochemistry, the kind and substitution pattern of the O-heterocycle, and the substituents at the exocyclic amino moiety. cis-configured 2-benzopyran cis-11b bearing a methoxy group and a tertiary cyclohexylmethylamino moiety showed the highest \u3c31 affinity ( Ki = 1.9 nM) of this series of compounds. In a Ca2+ influx assay, cis-11b behaved as a \u3c31 antagonist. cis-11b reveals high selectivity over \u3c32 and opioid receptors. The interactions of the novel \u3c31 ligands were analyzed on the molecular level using the recently reported X-ray crystal structure of the \u3c31 receptor protein. The protonated amino moiety forms a persistent salt bridge with E172. The spiro[benzopyran-1,1'-cyclohexane] scaffold and the cyclohexylmethyl moiety occupy two hydrophobic pockets. Exchange of the N-cyclohexylmethyl moiety by a benzyl group led unexpectedly to potent and selective \u3bc-opioid receptor ligands

Allele-specific NKX2-5 binding underlies multiple genetic associations with human electrocardiographic traits.

The cardiac transcription factor (TF) gene NKX2-5 has been associated with electrocardiographic (EKG) traits through genome-wide association studies (GWASs), but the extent to which differential binding of NKX2-5 at common regulatory variants contributes to these traits has not yet been studied. We analyzed transcriptomic and epigenomic data from induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes from seven related individuals, and identified ~2,000 single-nucleotide variants associated with allele-specific effects (ASE-SNVs) on NKX2-5 binding. NKX2-5 ASE-SNVs were enriched for altered TF motifs, for heart-specific expression quantitative trait loci and for EKG GWAS signals. Using fine-mapping combined with epigenomic data from induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes, we prioritized candidate causal variants for EKG traits, many of which were NKX2-5 ASE-SNVs. Experimentally characterizing two NKX2-5 ASE-SNVs (rs3807989 and rs590041) showed that they modulate the expression of target genes via differential protein binding in cardiac cells, indicating that they are functional variants underlying EKG GWAS signals. Our results show that differential NKX2-5 binding at numerous regulatory variants across the genome contributes to EKG phenotypes