Familiar Alternatives Research Articles

Electrophysiological Markers of Aberrant Cue-Specific Exploration in Hazardous Drinkers.

Hazardous drinking is associated with maladaptive alcohol-related decision-making. Existing studies have often focused on how participants learn to exploit familiar cues based on prior reinforcement, but little is known about the mechanisms that drive hazardous drinkers to explore novel alcohol cues when their value is not known. We investigated exploration of novel alcohol and non-alcohol cues in hazardous drinkers (N = 27) and control participants (N = 26) during electroencephalography (EEG). A normative computational model with two free parameters was fit to estimate participants' weighting of the future value of exploration and immediate value of exploitation. Hazardous drinkers demonstrated increased exploration of novel alcohol cues, and conversely, increased probability of exploiting familiar alternatives instead of exploring novel non-alcohol cues. The motivation to explore novel alcohol stimuli in hazardous drinkers was driven by an elevated relative future valuation of uncertain alcohol cues. P3a predicted more exploratory decision policies driven by an enhanced relative future valuation of novel alcohol cues. P3b did not predict choice behavior, but computational parameter estimates suggested that hazardous drinkers with enhanced P3b to alcohol cues were likely to learn to exploit their immediate expected value. Hazardous drinkers did not display atypical choice behavior, different P3a/P3b amplitudes, or computational estimates to novel non-alcohol cues-diverging from previous studies in addiction showing atypical generalized explore-exploit decisions with non-drug-related cues. These findings reveal that cue-specific neural computations may drive aberrant alcohol-related decision-making in hazardous drinkers-highlighting the importance of drug-relevant cues in studies of decision-making in addiction.

Analysing First Birth Interval by A CART Survival Tree.

BackgroundBirth spacing, especially the first birth interval (FBI), is a suitable index to investigate the delayed fertil- ity that results in a low fertility pattern. Non-parametric familiar alternatives to the Cox proportional hazard regression (CPH) model include survival trees that can automatically discover certain types of covariate interactions according to the survival length. The aim of this research is to study FBI influential factors by applying survival trees.Materials and MethodsIn this cross-sectional study, 610 married women (aged 15-49 years), were selected from different regions of Tehran, Iran in the Winter and Spring of 2017. Classification and regression trees (CART) for the FBI survival tree were fitted by taking into consideration the predictors of each woman’s age, age at first marriage, educational level, partner’s educational level, activity, region, house ownership, kinship, partner’s race, marriage time attitude, and expenditure using R packages.ResultsSince the PH assumption of the CPH model was not confirmed for the covariates of age at first marriage (P=0.001), kinship (P=0.000), partner’s race (P=0.001), and marriage time attitude (P=0.042), the results of this model were not valid. Thus, a CART survival tree was fitted. The validity of the fitted model in assessing FBI was confirmed by the significant result of the log rank test (P<0.01) for the terminal nodes and the value of the separation measure, which was greater than 1. The fitted tree had 13 terminal nodes and the most vital FBI predictor was women’s age. The longest FBI belonged to educated and employed women, ages 30-37 years.ConclusionAnalysing patterns of birth spacing by selecting the appropriate statistical method provides important informa- tion for health policymakers. In order to formulate appropriate demographic policies, it is essential to take into consideration age, educational level and job status of the women, all of which have essential roles on their decision to have children.

Distribution-free simultaneous tests for location-scale and Lehmann alternative in two-sample problem.

The paper deals with the classical two-sample testing problem for the equality of two populations, one of the most fundamental problems in biomedical experiments and case-control studies. The most familiar alternatives are the difference in location parameters or the difference in scale parameters or in both the parameters of the population density. All the tests designed for classical location or scale or location-scale alternatives assume that there is no change in the shape of the distribution. Some authors also consider the Lehmann-type alternative that addresses the change in shape. Two-sample tests under Lehmann alternative assume that the location and scale parameters are invariant. In real life, when a shift in the distribution occurs, one or more of the location, scale, and shape parameters may change simultaneously. We refer to change of one or more of the three parameters as a versatile alternative. Noting the dearth of literature for the equality two populations against such versatile alternative, we introduce two distribution-free tests based on the Euclidean and Mahalanobis distance. We obtain the asymptotic distributions of the two test statistics and study asymptotic power. We also discuss approximating p-values of the proposed tests in real applications with small samples. We compare the power performance of the two tests with several popular existing distribution-free tests against various fixed alternatives using Monte Carlo. We provide two illustrations based on biomedical experiments. Unlike existing tests which are suitable only in certain situations, proposed tests offer very good power in almost all types ofshifts.

Do simple infinitesimal parts solve Zeno’s paradox of measure?

In this paper, I develop an original view of the structure of space—called infinitesimal atomism—as a reply to Zeno’s paradox of measure. According to this view, space is composed of ultimate parts with infinitesimal size, where infinitesimals are understood within the framework of Robinson’s (Non-standard analysis. North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1966) nonstandard analysis. Notably, this view satisfies a version of additivity: for every region that has a size, its size is the sum of the sizes of its disjoint parts. In particular, the size of a finite region is the sum of the sizes of its infinitesimal parts. Although this view is a coherent approach to Zeno’s paradox and is preferable to Skyrms’s (Physics, philosophy and psychoanalysis. Volume 76 of the series Boston studies in the philosophy of science, pp 223–254, 1983) infinitesimal approach, it faces both the main problem for the standard view (the problem of unmeasurable regions) and the main problem for finite atomism (Weyl’s tile argument), leaving it with no clear advantage over these familiar alternatives.

Expertise Moderates Incidentally Learned Associations Between Words and Images.

Individuals with expertise in a domain of knowledge demonstrate superior learning for information in their area of expertise, relative to non-experts. In this study, we investigated whether expertise benefits extend to learning associations between words and images that are encountered incidentally. Sport-knowledge-experts and non-sports-experts encountered previously unknown faces through a basic perceptual task. The faces were incidentally presented as candidates for a position in a sports team (a focus of knowledge for only the sports-experts) or for a job in a business (a focus of knowledge for both the sports-experts and non-sports-experts). Participants later received a series of surprise memory tests that tested: ability to recognize each face as being old, the amount of information recalled about each face, and ability to select a correct face from equally familiar alternatives. Relative to non-sports-experts, participants with superior sports expertise were able to better recall the information associated with each face and could better select associated faces from similarly familiar options for the hypothetical prospective athletes. Hypothetical job candidates were recalled and selected at similar levels of performance in both groups. The groups were similarly familiar with the images (in a yes/no recognition memory test) when the faces were prospective athletes or job candidates. These findings suggest a specific effect of expertise on associative memory between words and images, but not for individual items, supporting a dissociation in how expertise modulates the human memory system for word–image pairings.

Information as a physical quantity

A new physical conception of classical information in quantum mechanical systems is explicated, critically assessed, and formalized in a quantitative measure. Observer-local referential (OLR) information—a shared physical property of entities accessible to a specified observer—is defined on the joint states of composite systems, distinguished from related conceptions of information, and tested against strict criteria that would simultaneously qualify it as a physical state quantity and as a meaningful measure of classical information. It is shown specifically to satisfy these criteria in the technological context of digital computation on quantum-physical substrates, where familiar alternatives—the von Neumann entropy and quantum mutual information (or correlation entropy)— fall short. The OLR conception provides a natural foundation for the fundamental physical description of information processing in digital computing systems, both because it defines information as a physical state quantity—placing it on an equal footing with other physical quantities appearing in such descriptions—and because it captures essential features of information in computational contexts that alternative physical conceptions do not. The OLR information measure enables straightforward and thoroughly physical quantification of digital information in general quantum systems and processes, enabling unambiguous determination of bounds on physical costs of generally noisy digital computation. More generally, OLR information offers a physical foundation for information that does not require the physical to be—ontologically or metaphorically—already informational.

Drug shortages: Implications for medical toxicology

Context. Drug shortages have significantly increased over the past decade. There are limited data describing how shortages impact medical toxicology of drugs. Objective. To characterize drug shortages affecting the management of poisoned patients. Materials and Methods. Drug shortage data from January 2001 to December 2013 were obtained from the University of Utah Drug Information Service. Shortage data for agents used to treat poisonings were analyzed. Information on drug type, formulation, reason for shortage, shortage duration, marketing, and whether the drug was available from a single source was collected. The availability of a substitute therapy and whether substitutes were in shortage during the study period were also investigated. Results. Of 1,751 shortages, 141 (8.1%) impacted drugs used to treat poisoned patients, and as of December 2013, 21 (14.9%) remained unresolved. New toxicology shortages increased steadily from the mid-2000s, reaching a high of 26 in 2011. Median shortage duration was 164 days (interquartile range: 76–434). Generic drugs were involved in 85.1% of shortages and 41.1% were single-source products. Parenteral formulations were often involved in shortages (89.4%). The most common medications in shortage were sedative/hypnotics (15.6%). An alternative agent was available for 121 (85.8%) drugs; however, 88 (72.7%) alternatives were also affected by shortages at some point during the study period. When present, the most common reasons reported were manufacturing delays (22.0%) and supply/demand issues (17.0%). Shortage reason was not reported for 48.2% of drugs. Discussion. Toxicology drug shortages are becoming increasingly prevalent, which can result in both suboptimal treatment and medication errors from using less familiar alternatives. Conclusion. Drug shortages affected a substantial number of critical agents used in the management of poisoned patients. Shortages were often of long duration and for drugs without alternatives. Providers caring for poisoned patients should be aware of current shortages and implement mitigation strategies to safeguard patient care.

Manipulations of choice familiarity in multiple-choice testing support a retrieval practice account of the testing effect.

We performed 4 experiments assessing the learning that occurs when taking a test. Our experiments used multiple-choice tests because the processes deployed during testing can be manipulated by varying the nature of the choice alternatives. Previous research revealed that a multiple-choice test that includes “none of the above” (NOTA) produces better performance on a subsequent test only when the correct answer is something other than NOTA (Odegard & Koen, 2007). However, when NOTA was an incorrect choice alternative, the correct answer was the only familiar alternative. Thus, familiarity may have allowed participants to identify the answer, which was then restudied. In other words, the testing benefit might have reflected a familiarity-guided restudy process rather than retrieval practice. In the current study, we examined the role of familiarity in the multiple-choice testing effect, manipulating the familiarity of alternatives. If NOTA was the correct answer, there was no testing benefit when the alternatives were all novel (Experiment 1) or all familiar (Experiment 3). Familiarity-guided restudy predicts memory impairment when there is a single familiar alternative for a NOTA-correct question. In contradiction to this hypothesis, there was a testing benefit for this condition (Experiments 2 and 4). Experiment 4 further collected metacognitive confidence ratings during the multiple-choice test, providing evidence of a recall-to-reject strategy for this condition. These results suggest that learning from multiple-choice tests is mainly due to retrieval practice rather than the use of familiarity.

Modeling Dynamic Volatilities and Correlations Under Skewness and Fat Tails

We propose a new model for dynamic volatilities and correlations of skewed and heavy-tailed data. Our model endows the Generalized Hyperbolic distribution with time-varying parameters driven by the score of the observation density function. The key novelty in our approach is the fact that the skewed and fat-tailed shape of the distribution directly affects the dynamic behavior of the time-varying parameters. It distinguishes our approach from familiar alternatives such as the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model and the dynamic conditional correlation model where distributional assumptions affect the likelihood but not the parameter dynamics. We present a modifi ed expectation-maximization algorithm to estimate the model. Simulated and empirical evidence shows that the model outperforms its close competitors if skewness and kurtosis are relevant features of the data.

What's new in the other general journals

Raloxifene is widely used in primary care to prevent and treat osteoporosis in postmenopausal women. Raloxifene can also protect women from breast cancer, and worked as well as tamoxifen in...

Conceptual Role Semantics for Moral Terms

One of the central questions of metaethics is semantical. An answer to this semantical question would be an account of the meaning of moral statements. There are three main approaches to this semantical question that are most familiar in contemporary metaethics: (i) noncognitivism or expressivism, (ii) noncircular analysis, and (iii) the causal theory of reference. In this paper, I shall present a new approach to this question, an approach that I call conceptual role semantics for moral terms. In conclusion, I shall try to indicate briefly why my approach is preferable to those three more familiar alternatives. First, however, I shall say something about this semantical question, and why it matters to the rest of metaethics.

Diskussion/Discussion. Morality and Society - The True and the Nasty

Abstract This paper is a reply to Anton Leist’s criticisms of the view I develop in my book, Morality, Normativity, and Society. Leist claims that my “standard-based” account of the truth conditions of moral propositions is incoherent. I argue that he is mistaken about this. Leist claims that my “society-centered” account of the justification of moral standards has “nasty” implications. In the course of answering this worry, I develop the idea of a “moral necessity”. My theory implies that although moral propositions are metaphysically contingent, they are most likely morally necessary. I also explain that, despite its relativism, the society-centered view is quite compatible with the idea that there are certain “moral universals”. Finally, Leist claims that the arguments I have given in favor of my view are unsuccessful. But it is a mistake to think that decisive arguments can be expected in this area. The most we can expect is a clear statement of the costs and benefits of a theory. I claim that my account of the nature and grounding of morality has important advantages over familiar alternatives.

Introduction

The last eight or nine years have provided more than enough material to astonish every student of Russian culture. Indeed, the period has been so remarkable that it is worth pausing occasionally to remember that the assumptions, divisions, polemics, and publications of, say, 1985 are only ancient history in the same sense that all time is flexible. The reintegration into one complex and contradictory, publicly available whole (all qualifications notwithstanding) of the divided pieces of Russian literature has completely transformed many interpretive tools and scales of values and rendered others obsolete. Not only does the term "Soviet literature," ever redolent of extraliterary preoccupations, now belong firmly to the past, but such familiar alternatives as tamizdat and samizdat are equally eloquent testimony of a completely different cultural situation. Suffice it to say that there are now millions of Russian readers (and some writers) who could not, as adults, have encountered these concepts as active terms in current literature.

The effects of hippocampal lesions on two neotic choice tasks

We report two experiments in which rats with hippocampal lesions were tested in two neotic choice tasks that provided a clear distinction between novel and familiar alternatives. In the first experiment, rats with either dorsal or complete lesions were tested in an emergence task in which they were permitted to enter and explore a novel alley from a familiar nest box. Hippocampally lesioned animals did not differ from cortical lesioned controls on the latency to enter the novel alley, the duration of time spent in the alley, or the total number of rearings in the alley during the 1-h test. However, animals with complete hippocampal lesions were more active than the controls; they showed a perseverative tendency to return repeatedly to the familiar nest box. In the second experiment, rats with complete hippocampal lesions and cortical lesioned controls were tested in a two-bottle taste neophobia task with their familiar tap water and a novel saccharin solution. There were no differences between the groups in either the initial avoidance of the novel saccharin solution or the subsequent increase in saccharin preference across repeated tests. In both experiments, hippocampally lesioned animals showed the same initial neophobic avoidance followed by the same exploratory habituation as did the controls. We discuss the similarity of the hippocampal perseveration to behavior found in other exploratory tasks and conclude that the hippocampus is not essential for neotic information processing.

Individual differences in emergence neophobia predict magnitude of perforant-path long-term potentiation (LTP) and plasma corticosterone levels in rats

Emergence neophobia was assessed in an emergence apparatus that provided a choice between novel and familiar alternatives. Two weeks after emergence testing, the threshold to induce perforant-path long-term potentiation (LTP) and the magnitude of perforant-path LTP in the dentate gyrus were assessed under pentobarbital anesthesia. Two measures of emergence behavior, the total duration of time spent in the alley during the 1-h test and the emergence duration per entry into the novel compartment, were significantly correlated with LTP of the extracellular population excitatory postsynaptic potential (EPSP), but not with the population spike. Neophobic animals that spent relatively little time in the novel alley during the 1-h test had a lower threshold to induce LTP and exhibited greater asymptotic EPSP LTP than did neophilic animals that readily entered and explored the novel alley. In a second experiment, plasma corticosterone levels in animals tested in the emergence task were also correlated with emergence duration and were generally lower in neophobic animals. Together, these data suggest that neotic behavior and LTP share a common mechanism, possibly one mediated by an interaction of glucocorticoid hormones and habituation.

Nonsmooth Problems with Conflicting Controls

This paper considers nonsmooth problems defined by ordinary differential equations and involving conflicting controls of two players. These problems differ from differential games in that the second player is informed of the first player’s choice of control function before making his own choice. It attempts, with only partial success, to generalize the results obtained for $C^1 $ problems in [J. Warga, Optimal Control of Differential and Functional Equations, Chaps. IX and X, Academic Press, 1972]. The results are in the form of a familiar alternative: either the problem is “strongly controllable” at a first player’s relaxed control $\sigma _0 $ or certain maximum principles and transversality conditions are valid. Two models are discussed in which the controls of the second player are relaxed controls, respectively, hyperrelaxed controls.

Habituation under stress: Shocked mice show nonassociative learning in a T-maze

Conflicting predictions of reinforcement and neophobia-arousal theories were evaluated in a simple choice task. Four groups of C57BL/6J mice were administered daily two-trial tests in a uniform T-maze for 10 consecutive days. For three groups, the contingencies of footshock treatments were manipulated to reinforce alternation, perseveration, or both. A control group that was not administered footshock alternated, but all three groups that were stressed perseverated more and more across tests, despite the differences in reinforcement contingencies. These results are inconsistent with the predictions of reinforcement theory but consistent with the view that stressed or aroused animals are neophobic and use nonassociative learning (habituation) to distinguish between novel and familiar alternatives.

Uncertainty and Novelty as Collative Motivation in Children

Abstract Novelty and uncertainty, distinguished by differences in the temporal distribution of variation in experience, were manipulated as independent factors to determine their relative incentive value for children. Forty first-and fourth-grade boys and girls were given 24 binary-choice preference tests which placed a moderately valued, constant incentive object into competition with a small opaque (uncertainty) or transparent (no uncertainty) package containing a relatively familiar or novel reward. Results showed that uncertainty, conceptualized as conflict within a set of expectations for the future, generated far greater collative arousal than novelty, conceptualized as conflict with respect to past experience. Novelty's collative effects were demonstrated in the choices of the older children and the girls, but the first-graders and the boys failed to differentiate between the familiar and novel alternatives. Attenuation of novelty-familiarity effects was attributed to contrast between the uncertain...

The zeros of entire functions: Theory and engineering applications

Functions that are analytic over a complex plane are called entire functions. They may be viewed as generalizations of polynomials because they admit power series expansions that converge everywhere. Entire functions are useful models for physical phenomena having finite "spectra," such as important classes of time-varying signals and spatially varying fields. Entire function models may be studied through the linear expansion techniques (e.g., Fourier series and integrals) familiar to most engineers, but product expansions akin to polynomial factorizations provide a less familiar alternative which is often more powerful when phenomena have a nonlinear character. This paper provides a tutorial introduction to relevant aspects of the theory of entire functions of a single complex variable, and also a discussion of exemplary applications. The paper deals specifically with a class of entire functions of exponential type, dubbed B-functions, which contain all functions that are band limited according to the variious extant definitions of bandlimitation. Product expansions are emphasized because they lead one to regard the real and complex zeros of a B-function as its information bearing attributes. This view leads naturally to the study of sampling, clipping, and similar applications, and to more general issues concerned with the sufficiency of zero-based representations and the recovery of a B-function's waveform from a zero-based representation.

Profit-and-Loss Accountancy at Norwich Cathedral Priory

Manorial accounts by their existence reflect, somewhat after the event, an administrative revolution that almost swept away the firmarii characteristic of an earlier stage in the management of large estates. During the greater part of the thirteenth century and of the next, lords (or their advisers) generally seem convinced that to manage their manors through fully accountable local officials was preferable to the familiar alternative of committing the property to men whose responsibility would be limited to producing a stipulated annual return. In the thirteenth century, also, many of these lords—monastic lords perhaps especially—displayed a remarkable readiness, sometimes a positive enthusiasm, to undertake the trouble and risks of demesne husbandry, instead of letting their demesnes entire or piecemeal to tenants. This addiction to demesne husbandry, though it may have weakened before the close of the century, persisted in the next; it survived the first consequences of the Black Death and was not widely given up until the last thirty years of the fourteenth century.