Weights Of Different Sources Research Articles

The sources of scale: Large employers in Britain in 1881

The article assesses the relative weight of different sources of workforce size, using both relative marginal effects and proportion of variance explained for the 545 largest British firms in 1881. Despite data uncertainties, integration is shown as the largest contributor to scale. Integration with mining had even larger effects, raising employment by 35%. Internal capital intensity reduced labour for the majority of firms by about 4 workers per £10,000 capital, but much more for tramways. Place-based externalities had greatest marginal effects for agglomerations (measured by population size). Generally, sectoral localisation was insignificant, but for small localities with more than one firm in a single sector, firm size increased 26–30% compared to diversified localities. Local monopsony (measured by workforce proportion of local population) explained a large proportion of variance because it occurred in a large number of small places. Of other variables explored, only legal form is of major importance.

The microstructure of intra- and interpersonal coordination.

Movements are naturally composed of submovements, i.e. recurrent speed pulses (2-3 Hz), possibly reflecting intermittent feedback-based motor adjustments. In visuomotor (unimanual) synchronization tasks, partners alternate submovements over time, indicating mutual coregulation. However, it is unclear whether submovement coordination is organized differently between and within individuals. Indeed, different types of information may be variably exploited for intrapersonal and interpersonal coordination. Participants performed a series of bimanual tasks alone or in pairs, with or without visual feedback (solo task only). We analysed the relative timing of submovements between their own hands or between their own hands and those of their partner. Distinct coordinative structures emerged at the submovement level depending on the relevance of visual feedback. Specifically, the relative timing of submovements (between partners/effectors) shifts from alternation to simultaneity and a mixture of both when coordination is achieved using vision (interpersonal), proprioception/efference-copy only (intrapersonal, without vision) or all information sources (intrapersonal, with vision), respectively. These results suggest that submovement coordination represents a behavioural proxy for the adaptive weighting of different sources of information within action-perception loops. In sum, the microstructure of movement reveals common principles governing the dynamics of sensorimotor control to achieve both intra- and interpersonal coordination.

Four- and 5-year-old children adapt to the reliability of conflicting sources of information to learn novel words

A central challenge in language acquisition is the integration of multiple sources of information, potentially in conflict, to acquire new knowledge and adjust current linguistic representations. One way to accomplish this is to assign more weight to more reliable sources of information in context. We tested the hypothesis that children adjust the weight of different sources of information during learning, considering two specific sources of information: their knowledge of the meaning of familiar words (semantics) and their familiarity with syntax. We varied the reliability of these sources of information through an induction phase (reliable syntax or reliable semantics). At test, French 4- and 5-year-old children and adults listened to sentences where information provided by these two cues conflicted and were asked to choose between two videos that illustrate the sentence. One video presented the reasonable choice if the sentence is assumed to be syntactically correct, but familiar words refer to novel things (e.g., une mange–“an eats” describes a novel object). The other video was the reasonable choice if the sentence is assumed to be syntactically incorrect and familiar words’ meaning is preserved (e.g., “an eats” describes a girl eating and actually should have been “she eats”). As predicted, the proportion of syntactic choices (e.g., interpreting mange–“eats” as a novel noun) was found to be higher in the reliable syntax condition than in the reliable semantics condition, showing that children and adults can adapt their expectations to the reliability of sources of information.

Proprioceptive Distance Cues Restore Perfect Size Constancy in Grasping, but Not Perception, When Vision Is Limited

Our brain integrates information from multiple modalities in the control of behavior. When information from one sensory source is compromised, information from another source can compensate for the loss. What is not clear is whether the nature of this multisensory integration and the re-weighting of different sources of sensory information are the same across different control systems. Here, we investigated whether proprioceptive distance information (position sense of body parts) can compensate for the loss of visual distance cues that support size constancy in perception (mediated by the ventral visual stream) [1, 2] versus size constancy in grasping (mediated by the dorsal visual stream) [3-6], in which the real-world size of an object is computed despite changes in viewing distance. We found that there was perfect size constancy in both perception and grasping in a full-viewing condition (lights on, binocular viewing) and that size constancy in both tasks was dramatically disrupted in the restricted-viewing condition (lights off; monocular viewing of the same but luminescent object through a 1-mm pinhole). Importantly, in the restricted-viewing condition, proprioceptive cues about viewing distance originating from the non-grasping limb (experiment 1) or the inclination of the torso and/or the elbow angle of the grasping limb (experiment 2) compensated for the loss of visual distance cues to enable a complete restoration of size constancy in grasping but only a modest improvement of size constancy in perception. This suggests that the weighting of different sources of sensory information varies as a function of the control system being used.

Inborn and experience-dependent models of categorical brain organization. A position paper.

The present review aims to summarize the debate in contemporary neuroscience between inborn and experience-dependent models of conceptual representations that goes back to the description of category-specific semantic disorders for biological and artifact categories. Experience-dependent models suggest that categorical disorders are the by-product of the differential weighting of different sources of knowledge in the representation of biological and artifact categories. These models maintain that semantic disorders are not really category-specific, because they do not respect the boundaries between different categories. They also argue that the brain structures which are disrupted in a given type of category-specific semantic disorder should correspond to the areas of convergence of the sensory-motor information which play a major role in the construction of that category. Furthermore, they provide a simple interpretation of gender-related categorical effects and are supported by studies assessing the importance of prior experience in the cortical representation of objects On the other hand, inborn models maintain that category-specific semantic disorders reflect the disruption of innate brain networks, which are shaped by natural selection to allow rapid identification of objects that are very relevant for survival. From the empirical point of view, these models are mainly supported by observations of blind subjects, which suggest that visual experience is not necessary for the emergence of category-specificity in the ventral stream of visual processing. The weight of the data supporting experience-dependent and inborn models is thoroughly discussed, stressing the fact observations made in blind subjects are still the subject of intense debate. It is concluded that at the present state of knowledge it is not possible to choose between experience-dependent and inborn models of conceptual representations.

Integration of bioinformatics tools in candidate gene prioritization of co-regulated gene sets in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

The availability of massive amounts of heterogeneous and distributed biological data has prompted the development of a wide range of data analysis and data mining tools in the area of bioinformatics. However, due to the nature of the biological data, performing a specific analysis by combining such tools can be complicated and cumbersome. Yet, integration of number of tools can provide complementary information, and improve the efficiency of the data analysis to further our understanding and knowledge discovery. The development of an integrated software platform can considerably enhance the usability of such tools and benefits the research communities at large. Towards that goal, this study focuses on systematically integrating a number of tools for analyzing Saccharomyces cerevisiae data in order to improve candidate gene prioritization from microarray data using evidences from complementary sources. Microarray data from a recent study by Ouyang et. al.[1] was used to evaluate the proposed framework. An array of free and open source bioinformatics tools were used to develop the Saccharomyces Integrated Software Platform (SISP). In particular, sources of information used in this analysis include literature data, Gene Ontology, physical and genetic interaction data as well as pathway information. SISP has the strength of combining prior knowledge with user-defined weighting of different sources of evidence. Access to the integrated tool will be facilitated by a user-friendly web interface with options including data query, import, export, analysis and visualization. The set of 142 genes from the microarray experiment was systematically reduced to sixteen genes (Figure ​(Figure1);1); four out of the sixteen genes were highly ranked based on various sources of information. The sixteen genes were part of thirteen inter-related pathways, with eight genes playing major roles in those pathways. This integrated analysis enhanced extraction of essential information, and the identification of key inter-related pathways and genes. Integration of bioinformatics tools allows merging complementary sources of information which are critical to the identification of candidate genes for further experimental validation. Figure 1 Experimental design of the candidate gene prioritization process. Information filtering is organized in three levels. At level 1, all the 142 genes are considered in the analysis. At the end of level 1, three sets of genes are obtained: 1) genes that ...

Removing bias against membrane proteins in interaction networks

BackgroundCellular interaction networks can be used to analyze the effects on cell signaling and other functional consequences of perturbations to cellular physiology. Thus, several methods have been used to reconstitute interaction networks from multiple published datasets. However, the structure and performance of these networks depends on both the quality and the unbiased nature of the original data. Due to the inherent bias against membrane proteins in protein-protein interaction (PPI) data, interaction networks can be compromised particularly if they are to be used in conjunction with drug screening efforts, since most drug-targets are membrane proteins.ResultsTo overcome the experimental bias against PPIs involving membrane-associated proteins we used a probabilistic approach based on a hypergeometric distribution followed by logistic regression to simultaneously optimize the weights of different sources of interaction data. The resulting less biased genome-scale network constructed for the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae revealed that the starvation pathway is a distinct subnetwork of autophagy and retrieved a more integrated network of unfolded protein response genes. We also observed that the centrality-lethality rule depends on the content of membrane proteins in networks.ConclusionsWe show here that the bias against membrane proteins can and should be corrected in order to have a better representation of the interactions and topological properties of protein interaction networks.

Different views about the nature of gender-related asymmetries in tasks based on biological or artefact categories.

Sex-related asymmetries in the ability to process different semantic categories have been reported both in normal subjects and in brain-damaged patients, but the nature of these asymmetries is still controversial. Some authors suggest that these differences might be due to social-role related familiarity factors, whereas others attribute them to inborn neural differences rooted in evolution. Drawing in part on this second line of thought, some authors have suggested that gender-related asymmetries might be due to differences in stimulus processing between men and women, namely, to the tendency of females to focus mainly on perceptual features and of males to focus equally on both perceptual and functional features. To test this hypothesis, we asked 53 male and 65 female undergraduate students to evaluate the relevance of a number of perceptual and functional features in the representation of various kinds of biological and artefact categories. Contrary to the hypothesis, evaluation of the weight of different sources of knowledge in representing living and artefact categories was similar in males and females.

Different Views about the Nature of Gender-Related Asymmetries in Tasks Based on Biological or Artefact Categories

Sex-related asymmetries in the ability to process different semantic categories have been reported both in normal subjects and in brain-damaged patients, but the nature of these asymmetries is still controversial. Some authors suggest that these differences might be due to social-role related familiarity factors, whereas others attribute them to inborn neural differences rooted in evolution. Drawing in part on this second line of thought, some authors have suggested that gender-related asymmetries might be due to differences in stimulus processing between men and women, namely, to the tendency of females to focus mainly on perceptual features and of males to focus equally on both perceptual and functional features. To test this hypothesis, we asked 53 male and 65 female undergraduate students to evaluate the relevance of a number of perceptual and functional features in the representation of various kinds of biological and artefact categories. Contrary to the hypothesis, evaluation of the weight of different sources of knowledge in representing living and artefact categories was similar in males and females.

SU-GG-T-40: Estimation of Dosimetric Uncertainties for a Patient Specific Treatment Plan in Brachytherapy

Purpose: To develop a patient specific quality assurance procedure for interstitial brachytherapy by estimating the dosimetric uncertainties of a treatment plan. Method and Materials: Three different sources of errors in brachytherapytreatment planning are considered in this study: Errors due to the limited CT slice thickness, errors due to limited accuracy of the spatial reconstruction of catheters and the corresponding dwell positions, and errors due to inter‐fraction motion of the catheters. The corresponding probability distributions of these errors are investigated and are used to estimate their impact on the dose distribution for a specific treatment plan. The quality assurance procedure consists of the quantitative comparison between the original dose distribution and the dose distribution calculated using the error probability distributions.Results:Dosimetric uncertainties of academic and clinical treatment plans indicate that the limited accuracy of the catheter reconstruction is most critical while the limited CT slice thickness mainly affects the dose distribution at locations near the tip or the connector end. The dosimetric uncertainties are depending on the magnitude of the errors and the relative weights of different sources of errors. As an example, the dosimetric impact of a 1 mm error in catheter reconstruction for a head and neck tumor is in the order of 5% for the PTV. Conclusion: In this work, a method for the estimation of dosimetric uncertainties for a brachytherapytreatment plan was developed. On a patient specific basis, different sources of errors and their particular dosimetric impact are analyzed. Consequently, by identifying and quantifying the sources of errors for an individual treatment plan, the method can be applied for highly efficient patient specific quality assurance procedures for interstitial brachytherapy.

The Peculiar Logic of Value

AbstractA system of values plays an important intermediary role in the human conceptual system. An individual associates a value – an abstract valence and quantity – with a past, present, or contemplated object or action in the environment, and uses values to help determine what actions to take. Value can be categorized into a number of different types, the most important of which for the purposes of the present article are affective value (how good the action is for someone), normative value (how good the action is of someone), and esteem (how good a reputation someone has). Normative value in turn divides into several subdomains such as moral value, legality, etiquette, and religious value. In addition, values can be divided along the orthogonal dimension of objective (value tout court) versus subjective (value in the eyes of a particular person). Each type of value plays its own characteristic role in affecting choice of action in interaction with the others.Given an explicit formulation of systems of value, it then becomes possible to work out more precise accounts of value-laden systems of concepts. Two are explored here: fairness and freely chosen reciprocity, the latter including retaliation, restitution, honoring, shaming, and apologizing.The overall hypothesis that emerges from the investigation is that the basic categories of value and the inference rules built on them are human universals. Cultures' value systems differ primarily in (a) what actions and objects are assigned what values and (b) the relative weighting of different sources of value in cases where they interact.

An integrated probabilistic model for functional prediction of proteins.

We develop an integrated probabilistic model to combine protein physical interactions, genetic interactions, highly correlated gene expression networks, protein complex data, and domain structures of individual proteins to predict protein functions. The model is an extension of our previous model for protein function prediction based on Markovian random field theory. The model is flexible in that other protein pairwise relationship information and features of individual proteins can be easily incorporated. Two features distinguish the integrated approach from other available methods for protein function prediction. One is that the integrated approach uses all available sources of information with different weights for different sources of data. It is a global approach that takes the whole network into consideration. The second feature is that the posterior probability that a protein has the function of interest is assigned. The posterior probability indicates how confident we are about assigning the function to the protein. We apply our integrated approach to predict functions of yeast proteins based upon MIPS protein function classifications and upon the interaction networks based on MIPS physical and genetic interactions, gene expression profiles, tandem affinity purification (TAP) protein complex data, and protein domain information. We study the recall and precision of the integrated approach using different sources of information by the leave-one-out approach. In contrast to using MIPS physical interactions only, the integrated approach combining all of the information increases the recall from 57% to 87% when the precision is set at 57%-an increase of 30%.

Resonance Raman scattering in InSb: Deformation potentials and interference effects at the E1 gap.

This paper presents a reevaluation of the optical-phonon deformation potential constants near the ${E}_{1}$ gap of InSb. The absolute values of the deformation potentials ${d}_{1}$,${0}^{5}$ and ${d}_{3}$,${0}^{5}$ are obtained from a measurement of the Raman efficiency for allowed LO-phonon scattering and a fit of previous uniaxial-stress experiments by using new ellipsometric data for the optical susceptibility. The signs of the deformation potentials are deduced from a study of the interference between the amplitudes for forbidden and allowed LO-Raman scattering. The values obtained are ${d}_{1}$,${0}^{5}$=-16.2\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}4 eV and ${d}_{3}$,${0}^{5}$=32.9\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}8 eV. The study of the interference also provides information about the relative weight of different sources of forbidden LO-Raman scattering.