Different Pieces Of Information Research Articles

WHEEL OF LIFE: TEACHING SCIENCE THROUGH AN ADAPTED VERSION OF SPIN THE WHEEL GAME

The research attempted to examine a teaching aid designed to teach basic learning skills of recognizing, naming, and describing among preschool children on a science topic. The teaching aid referred to as “Wheel of life” is based on the conventional concept of a board game that allows unpredictability and control. Preschool teachers often find it difficult to get children to pay attention during class and this could hinder them from gaining understanding on how to link different pieces of information and explain them properly in any specific topic. Thus, this research aimed to explore the potential of this game in increasing children’s level of engagement in the lesson to the extent of being able to link different pieces of information. A popular science topic related to life cycles of different animals was chosen since it was one of the most difficult topics to teach in science lessons for preschool children. A group of six children, along with a teacher, was chosen as subjects for this study. There were two research methods: observation through a checklist on the children’s behavioral responses and semi-structured interviews for the parents and teachers. The findings from this research revealed children’s increased level of engagement in the classroom as they challenged themselves to identify the right answers within a competitive yet collaborative atmosphere.

Loess-derived polygenetic soils of North-Western Italy: A deep characterization of particle size, shape and color to draw insights about the past

The multiplicity of units present in a single loess bed greatly complicates the reconstruction of the history of polycyclic loess-derived soils. The present study implemented a combination of techniques to characterize different depositional events in a pedogenized loess formation of North-Western Italy. Field morphological observations, laboratory Particle Size Distribution (PSD) analyses, and single-grain image processing techniques were applied.Five different loess depositions, or cycles, were distinguished in the field. Laser PSD curves highlighted the fine nature of the studied loess, which stood out even in comparison to similar Italian loess-derived soils. All PSD functions showed a tri/bimodal distribution with a dominant peak at 8–14 μm, wider in younger depositions. The second most relevant peak, at 0.5–4 μm, displayed a greater intensity in older cycles where it also fell in correspondence of slightly bigger particles. The fine-grained nature of the loess was read as a sign of its alluvial origin, therefore the Po plain has been addressed as the source of the material. This hypothesis was supported by evidence of a dominant SE-to-NW paleo-wind direction, proved by the spatial trends of the coarse and fine silt fractions. The typical aeolian size-dependant depositional trait of one of the cycles (IV) was however opposite to that of the other four loess depositions. Therefore, the source of this material was attributed to a site North of the study area where, right behind the Lanzo ultramafic massif, an ice lobe stretched during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Image analysis supported this hypothesis: as the loess grains of cycle IV were significantly darker colored than the others, this would agree with the provenance from an ultramafic source. In conclusion, the variety of applied techniques allowed us to combine different pieces of information in order to assess the physical and morphological properties of the studied loess-derived soils, trying to determine the most probable sources of the material and the weathering pathways.

Working Memory as an Indicator for Comparative Cognition - Detecting Qualitative and Quantitative Differences.

Working memory (WM), the representation of information held accessible for manipulation over time, is an essential component of all higher cognitive abilities. It allows for complex behaviors that go beyond simple stimulus-response associations and inflexible behavioral patterns. WM capacity determines how many different pieces of information (items) can be used for these cognitive processes, and in humans, it correlates with fluid intelligence. As such, WM might be a useful tool for comparison of cognition across species. WM can be tested using comparatively simple behavioral protocols, based on operant conditioning, in a multitude of different species. Species-specific contextual variables that influence an animal’s performance on a non-cognitive level are controlled by adapting the WM paradigm. The neuronal mechanisms by which WM emerges in the brain, as sustained neuronal activity, are comparable between the different species studied (mammals and birds), as are the areas of the brain in which WM activity can be measured. Thus WM is comparable between vastly different species within their respective niches, accounting for specific contextual variables and unique adaptations. By approaching the question of “general cognitive abilities” or “intelligence” within the animal kingdom from the perspective of WM, the complexity of the core question at hand is reduced to a fundamental memory system required to allow for complex cognitive abilities. This article argues that measuring WM can be a suitable addition to the toolkit of comparative cognition. By measuring WM on a behavioral level and going beyond behavior to the underlying physiological processes, qualitative and quantitative differences in cognition between different animal species can be identified, free of contextual restraints.

Indonesian Language Important but Undervalued at Home: Theme and Thematic Progression Analysis

A text's cohesion can be seen through the thematic progression used in the text itself. Thematic progression patterns can be divided into three patterns, namely zigzag theme patterns, reiteration theme patterns, and multiple theme patterns. This research aims to analyze the thematic progression patterns in an article in The Magdalene Online Magazine. The researchers have chosen an article entitled “Indonesian Language Important but Undervalued at Home” in the Magdalene online magazine. This research used a descriptive qualitative approach. The researchers found there are sixteen zigzag theme patterns and four reiteration theme patterns in the article. The multiple theme patterns were not found in the article. The writer of the article used the zigzag thematic pattern to make cohesion in a text and introduces new information of a text, the reiteration theme pattern used when the writer tries to focus the reader about the thing that is being discussed, and the multiple theme pattern is not used because the writer does not make a Rheme becomes a number of different pieces of information in another Theme on the text.

Seed Germination in Oil Palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.): A Review of Metabolic Pathways and Control Mechanisms.

Oil palm is an oil-producing crop of major importance at the global scale. Oil palm mesocarp lipids are used for myriads industrial applications, and market demand has been growing for decades. In addition, oil palm seeds are oleaginous, and the oil extracted therefrom can be used for several purposes, from food to cosmetics. As such, there is a huge need in oil palm seeds to maintain the global cohort of more than 2 billion trees. However, oil palm seed germination is a rather difficult process, not only to break dormancy, but also because it is long and often reaches lower-than-expected germination rates. Surprisingly, despite the crucial importance of germination for oil palm plantation management, our knowledge is still rather limited, in particular about germinating oil palm seed metabolism. The present review incorporates different pieces of information that have been obtained in the past few years, in oil palm and in other palm species, in order to provide an overview of germination metabolism and its control. Further insights can also be gained from other oleaginous model plants, such as Arabidopsis or canola, however, palm seeds have peculiarities that must be accounted for, to gain a better understanding of germinating seed metabolism.

The Neurocognitive Correlates of Human Reasoning: A Meta-analysis of Conditional and Syllogistic Inferences.

Inferring knowledge is a core aspect of human cognition. We can form complex sentences connecting different pieces of information, such as in conditional statements like "if someone drinks alcohol, then they must be older than 18." These are relevant for causal reasoning about our environment and allow us to think about hypothetical scenarios. Another central aspect to forming complex statements is to quantify about sets, such as in "some apples are green." Reasoning in terms of the ability to form these statements is not yet fully understood, despite being an active field of interdisciplinary research. On a theoretical level, several conceptual frameworks have been proposed, predicting diverging brain activation patterns during the reasoning process. We present a meta-analysis comprising the results of 32 neuroimaging experiments about reasoning, which we subdivided by their structure, content, and requirement for world knowledge. In conditional tasks, we identified activation in the left middle and rostrolateral pFC and parietal regions, whereas syllogistic tasks elicit activation in Broca's complex, including the BG. Concerning the content differentiation, abstract tasks exhibit activation in the left inferior and rostrolateral pFC and inferior parietal regions, whereas content tasks are in the left superior pFC and parieto-occipital regions. The findings clarify the neurocognitive mechanisms of reasoning and exhibit clear distinctions between the task's type and content. Overall, we found that the activation differences clarify inconsistent results from accumulated data and serve as useful scaffolding differentiations for theory-driven interpretations of the neuroscientific correlates of human reasoning.

Information Weighting Under Least Squares Learning

This paper evaluates how adaptive learning agents weight different pieces of information when forming expectations with a recursive least squares algorithm. The analysis is based on a renewed and more general non-recursive representation of the learning algorithm, namely, a penalized weighted least squares estimator, where a penalty term accounts for the effects of the learning initials. The paper then draws behavioral implications of alternative specifications of the learning mechanism, such as the cases with decreasing, constant, regime-switching, adaptive, and age-dependent gains, as well as practical recommendations on their computation. One key new finding is that without a proper account for the uncertainty about the learning initial, a constant-gain can generate a time-varying profile of weights given to past observations, particularly distorting the estimation and behavioral interpretation of this mechanism in small samples of data. In fact, simulations and empirical estimation of a Phillips curve model with learning indicate that this particular misspecification of the initials can lead to estimates where inflation rates are less responsive to expectations and output gaps than in reality, or “flatter” Phillips curves.

Recursion in SPARQL

The need for recursive queries in the Semantic Web setting is becoming more and more apparent with the emergence of datasets where different pieces of information are connected by complicated patterns. This was acknowledged by the W3C committee by the inclusion of property paths in the SPARQL standard. However, as more data becomes available, it is becoming clear that property paths alone are not enough to capture all recursive queries that the users are interested in, and the literature has already proposed several extensions to allow searching for more complex patterns. We propose a rather different, but simpler approach: add a general purpose recursion operator directly to SPARQL. In this paper we provide a formal syntax and semantics for this proposal, study its theoretical properties, and develop algorithms for evaluating it in practical scenarios. We also show how to implement this extension as a plug-in on top of existing systems, and test its performance on several synthetic and real world datasets, ranging from small graphs, up to the entire Wikidata database.

Testing learning mechanisms of rule-based judgment.

Weighing the importance of different pieces of information is a key determinant of making accurate judgments. In social judgment theory, these weighting processes have been successfully described with linear models. How people learn to make judgments has received less attention. Although the hitherto proposed delta learning rule can perfectly learn to solve linear problems, reanalyzing a previous experiment showed that it does not adequately describe human learning. To provide a more accurate description of learning processes we amended the delta learning rule with three learning mechanisms—a decay, an attentional learning mechanism, and a capacity limitation. An additional study tested the different learning mechanisms in predicting learning in linear judgment tasks. In this study, participants first learned to predict a continuous criterion based on four cues. To test the three learning mechanisms rigorously against each other, we changed the importance of the cues after 200 trials so that the mechanisms make different predictions with regard to how fast people adapt to the new environment. On average, judgment accuracy improved from Trial 1 to Trial 200, dropped when the task environment changed, but improved again until the end of the task. The capacity-restricted learning model, restricting how much people update the cue weights on a single trial, best described and predicted the learning curve of the majority of participants. Taken together, these results suggest that considering cognitive constraints within learning models may help to understand how humans learn when making inferences.

Communicating and Managing Communication in a Project Environment—A Practitioner's View

I have been involved in managing a variety of projects, or consulting on this issue. There are many experiences that exist; I am glad to take this opportunity to write about some communication issues I've seen faced in the field. It is concluded that communication is critical to all project management dimensions. Projects have many different pieces of information either to be or not to be shared with different stakeholders. Each stakeholder has specific needs, methods, and frequency of communication. The project manager must understand this basic fact. They need to strategically cognizant of these characteristics in their project planning. The project manager must decide on the mode of communication— bi-directional or not. When deciding on their model and approach, they need to know their audience and the needs of the audience. They need to understand the stakeholders, context, and technical demands of the audience in order to strategically incorporate communication into their project management activities. The need to avoid wasted effort and for timely project completion leads to conscious project managers who are engaged with the project cycle to communicate strategically. As one can see, the strategy is dynamic and sensitive to complexity. Managers must consider the context, technical specifications, and the stakeholders when selecting channels and types of communication.

Infectivity enhances prediction of viral cascades in Twitter.

Models of contagion dynamics, originally developed for infectious diseases, have proven relevant to the study of information, news, and political opinions in online social systems. Modelling diffusion processes and predicting viral information cascades are important problems in network science. Yet, many studies of information cascades neglect the variation in infectivity across different pieces of information. Here, we employ early-time observations of online cascades to estimate the infectivity of distinct pieces of information. Using simulations and data from real-world Twitter retweets, we demonstrate that these estimated infectivities can be used to improve predictions about the virality of an information cascade. Developing our simulations to mimic the real-world data, we consider the effect of the limited effective time for transmission of a cascade and demonstrate that a simple model of slow but non-negligible decay of the infectivity captures the essential properties of retweet distributions. These results demonstrate the interplay between the intrinsic infectivity of a tweet and the complex network environment within which it diffuses, strongly influencing the likelihood of becoming a viral cascade.

Public Costs versus Private Gain: Assessing the Effect of Different Types of Information about Corruption Incidents on Electoral Accountability

Are voters’ attitudes towards corrupt candidates affected by the details they learn about candidates’ wrongdoing? This study examines the effect of including different pieces of information emphasising the public costs or private gain of a similar corruption incident on the probability of support for the incumbent mayor’s re-election. I use three surveys experiments with online convenience samples of Brazilian subjects. The survey experiments use various vignettes presenting a fictitious Brazilian incumbent mayor with antecedents of misuse of public funds, running for re-election. I manipulate the details that subjects learn on those antecedents to assess whether information on the public costs of the corruption incident or on the candidate’s illicit enrichment stimulates a stronger rejection. Additional manipulations are used to test rival hypotheses. Results consistently show that information showing the candidate’s illicit enrichment drives a stronger negative response than every alternative treatment.

Beyond Sexual Dimorphism and Habitat Boundaries: Coloration Correlates with Morphology, Age, and Locomotor Performance in a Toad

Coloration is often key in animal communication, and is frequently subjected to strong natural and sexual selection, often with opposed directions: natural selection typically favors cryptic colorations whereas sexual selection may favor conspicuous colorations. Also, different coloration traits may convey different pieces of information. Plus, coloration may vary among habitats, mirroring local selective pressures. In this work, we test if color parameters (luminosity, chroma, and hue) of back and throat are related to different life-history and morphological traits in Epidalea calamita toads. Furthermore, we check possible variability of color parameters between agrosystem and natural habitat toads. Toad coloration was sexually dimorphic, which suggests a role of coloration in sexual communication. Moreover, coloration correlated with age, body size, hindlimb length, and sprint speed. These findings suggest communication based on coloration beyond sex recognition: coloration could act as a signal of overall quality of bearers, with a potential role in mate choice. Moreover, coloration differed between habitats. Greener backs in agrosystem toads could indicate greater intensity of predator pressure, while their higher saturation could indicate greater investment in mate attraction. This result is aligned with previous findings that agrosystem toads respond to reduced lifespan with greater reproductive investment.

The Nomogram: A Decision-Making Tool for Practitioners Using Multitiered Systems of Support

Although schools administer many assessments, there is a lack of consensus regarding the best way to combine different pieces of information to facilitate evidence-based decision-making, particularly within multitiered systems of support. Although largely unheard of in education, the nomogram is an evidence-based assessment tool that is widely used in other fields and allows users to incorporate data about multiple sources of risk to estimate the probability of an outcome. This article (a) provides a primer and conceptual overview of the nomogram, (b) provides a tutorial and the materials needed to use the nomogram for evidence-based assessment, (c) describes analyses to compare the decision-making accuracy of the nomogram with that of other methods using a large sample of data (N = 1,461) from an urban school district, and (d) illustrates use of the nomogram with a hypothetical case.

PRS10 - The Epidemiology and Disease Burden of Severe Asthma in Japan Utilizing Multiple Data Sources

The aim of this presentation is to draw a whole picture of the epidemiology and burden of severe asthma (SA) by using data from three studies with different data sources in Japan. Three data sources (all GSK sponsored studies) were: medical records/claim data of the Kyoto University Hospital (HOSPITAL; HO1515492), health insurance claim database (CLAIM, population based; HO1616484), and Diagnosis Procedure Combination database (HO1617890; DPC, hospital based)]. Asthma patients ≥ 15 years of age were identified by International Classification of Disease, 10th revision codes and prescription data of asthma management. We assessed proportion of SA among persistent asthma (CLAIM, DPC), distribution of blood eosinophil count among SA (HOSPITAL), risk factors for exacerbations (HOSPITAL, CLAIM), asthma-related direct cost (HOSPITAL, CLAIM, DPC). An increasing proportion of SA among asthma patients was observed with 0.6-3.6% (15 to 65 years of age, CLAIM) and 6.6-13.4% (15 to 90+ years of age, DPC), and 34% of SA had a blood eosinophil count ≥300 cells/µl (HOSPITAL). Exacerbation history (HOSPITAL, CLAIM) and asthma severity (CLAIM) were associated with subsequent exacerbations. Large economic burden was shown among SA (HOSPITAL, CLAIM, DPC). We showed a more complete picture of the epidemiology and burden of SA. Combining different pieces of information from multiple data sources can be useful to complement limitations of each database and answer complex research questions.

Assessing threats of violence: Professional skill or common sense?

AbstractWhen faced with threats of violence, it is of great importance to assess the risk for actual harm to occur. Over the last decades, this task has developed into a domain of its own and professionals have specialised in threat assessment. However, it is yet unknown whether professional experience affects the quality of threat assessments. The present study examined how threat assessment professionals (N = 44), university students (N = 44), and laypersons (N = 45) assessed the risk for violence in three fictitious cases. The assessments (i.e., assigning risk values to different pieces of information) were found to be strikingly similar across the three groups. Yet, professionals agreed more with one another on their assessments, and professionals identified more relevant (empirically supported) threat cues when given the opportunity to request additional information. These results suggest that threat assessment professionals know better than nonprofessionals what information to look for, and hence, they may contribute most in the process of gathering information to clarify the threat. Such knowledge can help to optimise the use of expertise, which may improve the quality of threat assessments. The current findings can be of value to those who consult threat assessment professionals, as well as to the professionals themselves.

The Volatility-of-Volatility Term Structure

We apply the model-free implied risk-neutral measure of variance to VIX options to investigate the volatility-of-volatility (VVIX) term structure. We find that the information content of the VVIX term structure is fairly distinct from the VIX term structure. Both carry different pieces of information about market uncertainty. The second PCA component (SlopeVVIX) of the VVIX term structure is a significant risk factor. In joint regressions SlopeVVIX predicts straddle returns of S&P500 and VIX options incremental to the VIX term structure and the variance risk premium. We propose an affine approximation method of the VVIX and use parameter estimates of a VIX option pricing model to identify three factors that describe most of the term structure. Continuous volatility-of-volatility adds most to the term structure, followed by variance jumps and a lower bound component. These systematic changes of the risk-factors can be put in economic context by the variance-of-variance to variance ratio.

Modeling the cooperative and competitive contagions in online social networks

The wide adoption of social media has increased the interaction among different pieces of information, and this interaction includes cooperation and competition for our finite attention. While previous research focus on fully competition, this paper extends the interaction to be both “cooperation” and “competition”, by employing an IS1S2R model. To explore how two different pieces of information interact with each other, the IS1S2R model splits the agents into four parts-(Ignorant-Spreader I-Spreader II-Stifler), based on SIR epidemic spreading model. Using real data from Weibo.com, a social network site similar to Twitter, we find some parameters, like decaying rates, can both influence the cooperative diffusion process and the competitive process, while other parameters, like infectious rates only have influence on the competitive diffusion process. Besides, the parameters’ effect are more significant in the competitive diffusion than in the cooperative diffusion.

Secrets for a successful laparoscopic antireflux surgery: patients with extraesophageal symptoms

The outcomes for antireflux surgery in patients with extraesophageal symptoms of gastro esophageal reflux disease (GERD) are usually worse compared with patients with esophageal symptoms. This paper focuses on how to obtain a successful laparoscopic antireflux surgery in patients with extraesophageal symptoms. A successful laparoscopic antireflux surgery in patients with extraesophageal symptoms depends on: (I) an objective diagnosis for GERD. The diagnosis of pathological distal reflux is straightforward; however, the diagnosis of proximal reflux and to the target organs may be hard to be established; (II) the attribution of the symptoms to GERD. Extraesophageal symptoms may have a different cause than GERD even in the presence of GERD. A rational and complete workup is necessary to answer this question. A single test is not able to correlate symptoms to GERD. Judicious clinical decision based on a sum of different pieces of information is needed; and (III) the correct selection of patients based on predictors for good outcomes to show those who would benefit from surgery. Adequate surgical technical principles should be followed.

Commentary: Reporting on global warming: A study in headlines

Commentary: Reporting on global warming: A study in headlines