“Feeling my Sister’s Pain”: Perceived Victim Suffering Moderates the Impact of Sexualized Music Videos on Fijian Women’s Responses to Men’s Intimate Partner Violence against Women

To better understand how sexualized music videos affect women’s responses to intimate partner violence (IPV), we examined the role of individual variability in perceived victim pain and perceived victim culpability in moderating and mediating (respectively) the priming effects of sexual music videos on women. Female Fijian college students (n = 243) were randomly assigned to one of three viewing conditions: stereotyped sexual music videos, non-stereotyped/non-sexual music videos, or neutral videos. All participants then read a portrayal of a male-toward-female IPV episode and their perceptions of the female victim and male perpetrator were assessed. Only women who minimized the victim’s pain were adversely affected by exposure to the stereotyped sexual videos. Specifically, for women who perceived low victim pain, those in the stereotyped video condition perceived the victim as more culpable and reported greater perpetrator-directed favorable responding than those in the other two conditions. For these women who perceived low victim pain, perceptions of victim culpability mediated the impact of video type on perpetrator-favorable responding. The findings help us better understand susceptibility to the negative impact of stereotypical sexual videos and highlight areas, such as emphasizing the suffering of victims and reducing myths about victim culpability, which may be worthy of particular emphasis in interventions

Extending the mutual information measure to rank inferred literature relationships

BACKGROUND: Within the peer-reviewed literature, associations between two things are not always recognized until commonalities between them become apparent. These commonalities can provide justification for the inference of a new relationship where none was previously known, and are the basis of most observation-based hypothesis formation. It has been shown that the crux of the problem is not finding inferable associations, which are extraordinarily abundant given the scale-free networks that arise from literature-based associations, but determining which ones are informative. The Mutual Information Measure (MIM) is a well-established method to measure how informative an association is, but is limited to direct (i.e. observable) associations. RESULTS: Herein, we attempt to extend the calculation of mutual information to indirect (i.e. inferable) associations by using the MIM of shared associations. Objects of general research interest (e.g. genes, diseases, phenotypes, drugs, ontology categories) found within MEDLINE are used to create a network of associations for evaluation. CONCLUSIONS: Mutual information calculations can be effectively extended into implied relationships and a significance cutoff estimated from analysis of random word networks. Of the models tested, the shared minimum MIM (MMIM) model is found to correlate best with the observed strength and frequency of known associations. Using three test cases, the MMIM method tends to rank more specific relationships higher than counting the number of shared relationships within a network

Truth, Probability, and Frameworks

Yeshttp://www.plosmedicine.org/static/editorial#pee

Re International Association of Machinists, Lodge 717, and Orenda Ltd

Employee Grievance alleging failure by the company to provide weekly indemnity for non-occupational sickness. The facts: On June 19, 1968, Mr. Garden, the grievor, went to Orenda\u27s plant doctor for an examination. He was referred to his family doctor. That same day, and again on June 24th, he consulted Dr. W.K. Taylor who had been his doctor for some years. On June 25th, Dr. Taylor signed an Attending Physician\u27s Statement for submission to the company in support of a claim by the grievor for weekly indemnity for non-occupational sickness. The statement noted under the heading diagnosis the following: neurodermatitis both hands, duodenal ulcer symptoms . It is also noted on the statement that the patient has been totally disabled (unable to work) from June 19, 1968, and that he should be able to return to work on July 2, 1968. Under the heading how long will the patient be partially disabled? the answer given is for the same period

Capillary pumped loop body heat exchanger

A capillary pumped loop for transferring heat from one body part to another body part, the capillary pumped loop comprising a capillary evaporator for vaporizing a liquid refrigerant by absorbing heat from a warm body part, a condenser for turning a vaporized refrigerant into a liquid by transferring heat from the vaporized liquid to a cool body part, a first tube section connecting an output port of the capillary evaporator to an input of the condenser, and a second tube section connecting an output of the condenser to an input port of the capillary evaporator. A wick may be provided within the condenser. A pump may be provided between the second tube section and the input port of the capillary evaporator. Additionally, an esternal heat source or heat sink may be utilized

TALON - The Telescope Alert Operation Network System: Intelligent Linking of Distributed Autonomous Robotic Telescopes

The internet has brought about great change in the astronomical community, but this interconnectivity is just starting to be exploited for use in instrumentation. Utilizing the internet for communicating between distributed astronomical systems is still in its infancy, but it already shows great potential. Here we present an example of a distributed network of telescopes that performs more efficiently in synchronous operation than as individual instruments. RAPid Telescopes for Optical Response (RAPTOR) is a system of telescopes at LANL that has intelligent intercommunication, combined with wide-field optics, temporal monitoring software, and deep-field follow-up capability all working in closed-loop real-time operation. The Telescope ALert Operations Network (TALON) is a network server that allows intercommunication of alert triggers from external and internal resources and controls the distribution of these to each of the telescopes on the network. TALON is designed to grow, allowing any number of telescopes to be linked together and communicate. Coupled with an intelligent alert client at each telescope, it can analyze and respond to each distributed TALON alert based on the telescopes needs and schedule.Comment: Presentation at SPIE 2004, Glasgow, Scotland (UK

Data-Mining Analysis Suggests an Epigenetic Pathogenesis for Type 2 Diabetes

The etiological origin of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) has long been controversial. The body of literature related to T2DM is vast and varied in focus, making a broad epidemiological perspective difficult, if not impossible. A data-mining approach was used to analyze all electronically available scientific literature, over 12 million Medline records, for “objects” such as genes, diseases, phenotypes, and chemical compounds linked to other objects within the T2DM literature but were not themselves within the T2DM literature. The goal of this analysis was to conduct a comprehensive survey to identify novel factors implicated in the pathology of T2DM by statistically evaluating mutually shared associations. Surprisingly, epigenetic factors were among the highest statistical scores in this analysis, strongly implicating epigenetic changes within the body as causal factors in the pathogenesis of T2DM. Further analysis implicates adipocytes as the potential tissue of origin, and cytokines or cytokine-like genes as the dysregulated factor(s) responsible for the T2DM phenotype. The analysis provides a wealth of literature supporting this hypothesis, which—if true—represents an important paradigm shift for researchers studying the pathogenesis of T2DM

A frequent acoustic sign of speech motor delay (SMD)

Recent studies report prevalence, phenotype, and persistence findings for a paediatric motor speech disorder in addition to childhood dysarthria and childhood apraxia of speech termed Speech Motor Delay (SMD). The aim of the present study was to determine if there is a frequent acoustic sign of SMD, with implications for theory, assessment, and treatment. We examined the frequency of 19 acoustic signs of SMD in audio recordings of continuous speech and word-imitation tasks in three groups of speakers with SMD: 50 children (mean age 5.1 years) with idiopathic Speech Delay (SD) from 6 USA cities; 87 children, adolescents, and adults with eight types of complex neurodevelopmental disorders; and 9 children (mean age 8.8 years) with persistent idiopathic SD from a population-based study of children in the South West of England. The 19 acoustic signs of imprecise or unstable speech, prosody, and voice were standardized on typical speakers of the appropriate dialect. The criterion for a frequent acoustic sign was that it occurred in at least 50% of participants with SMD in each of the three groups. Findings indicated that lengthened mid-vowels and diphthongs was the one sign that met criteria, occurring in 64.4% of the 146 participants with SMD, including 71% of the 87 participants with complex neurodevelopmental disorders. Findings are interpreted to support the potential of this acoustic sign, and possibly several others associated with temporal dimensions of speech sound development, to inform explication of the neuromotor substrates of SMD.</p

It began in ponds and rivers : charting the beginnings of the ecology of fish cognition

But fish cognitive ecology did not begin in rivers and streams. Rather, one of the starting points for work on fish cognitive ecology was work done on the use of visual cues by homing pigeons. Prior to working with fish, Victoria Braithwaite helped to establish that homing pigeons rely not just on magnetic and olfactory cues but also on visual cues for successful return to their home loft. Simple, elegant experiments on homing established Victoria's ability to develop experimental manipulations to examine the role of visual cues in navigation by fish in familiar areas. This work formed the basis of a rich seam of work whereby a fish's ecology was used to propose hypotheses and predictions as to preferred cue use, and then cognitive abilities in a variety of fish species, from model systems (Atlantic salmon and sticklebacks) to the Panamanian Brachyraphis episcopi. Cognitive ecology in fish led to substantial work on fish pain and welfare, but was never left behind, with some of Victoria's last work addressed to determining the neural instantiation of cognitive variation.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

SkyDOT (Sky Database for Objects in the Time Domain): A Virtual Observatory for Variability Studies at LANL

The mining of Virtual Observatories (VOs) is becoming a powerful new method for discovery in astronomy. Here we report on the development of SkyDOT (Sky Database for Objects in the Time domain), a new Virtual Observatory, which is dedicated to the study of sky variability. The site will confederate a number of massive variability surveys and enable exploration of the time domain in astronomy. We discuss the architecture of the database and the functionality of the user interface. An important aspect of SkyDOT is that it is continuously updated in near real time so that users can access new observations in a timely manner. The site will also utilize high level machine learning tools that will allow sophisticated mining of the archive. Another key feature is the real time data stream provided by RAPTOR (RAPid Telescopes for Optical Response), a new sky monitoring experiment under construction at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).Comment: to appear in SPIE proceedings vol. 4846, 11 pages, 5 figure