Walking on a User Similarity Network towards Personalized Recommendations

PubMed Central

Gan, Mingxin

2014-01-01

Personalized recommender systems have been receiving more and more attention in addressing the serious problem of information overload accompanying the rapid evolution of the world-wide-web. Although traditional collaborative filtering approaches based on similarities between users have achieved remarkable success, it has been shown that the existence of popular objects may adversely influence the correct scoring of candidate objects, which lead to unreasonable recommendation results. Meanwhile, recent advances have demonstrated that approaches based on diffusion and random walk processes exhibit superior performance over collaborative filtering methods in both the recommendation accuracy and diversity. Building on these results, we adopt three strategies (power-law adjustment, nearest neighbor, and threshold filtration) to adjust a user similarity network from user similarity scores calculated on historical data, and then propose a random walk with restart model on the constructed network to achieve personalized recommendations. We perform cross-validation experiments on two real data sets (MovieLens and Netflix) and compare the performance of our method against the existing state-of-the-art methods. Results show that our method outperforms existing methods in not only recommendation accuracy and diversity, but also retrieval performance. PMID:25489942

[-25]A Similarity Analysis of Audio Signal to Develop a Human Activity Recognition Using Similarity Networks.

PubMed

García-Hernández, Alejandra; Galván-Tejada, Carlos E; Galván-Tejada, Jorge I; Celaya-Padilla, José M; Gamboa-Rosales, Hamurabi; Velasco-Elizondo, Perla; Cárdenas-Vargas, Rogelio

2017-11-21

Human Activity Recognition (HAR) is one of the main subjects of study in the areas of computer vision and machine learning due to the great benefits that can be achieved. Examples of the study areas are: health prevention, security and surveillance, automotive research, and many others. The proposed approaches are carried out using machine learning techniques and present good results. However, it is difficult to observe how the descriptors of human activities are grouped. In order to obtain a better understanding of the the behavior of descriptors, it is important to improve the abilities to recognize the human activities. This paper proposes a novel approach for the HAR based on acoustic data and similarity networks. In this approach, we were able to characterize the sound of the activities and identify those activities looking for similarity in the sound pattern. We evaluated the similarity of the sounds considering mainly two features: the sound location and the materials that were used. As a result, the materials are a good reference classifying the human activities compared with the location.

Why different gas flux velocity parameterizations result in so similar flux results in the North Atlantic?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Piskozub, Jacek; Wróbel, Iwona

2016-04-01

The North Atlantic is a crucial region for both ocean circulation and the carbon cycle. Most of ocean deep waters are produced in the basin making it a large CO2 sink. The region, close to the major oceanographic centres has been well covered with cruises. This is why we have performed a study of net CO2 flux dependence upon the choice of gas transfer velocity k parameterization for this very region: the North Atlantic including European Arctic Seas. The study has been a part of a ESA funded OceanFlux GHG Evolution project and, at the same time, a PhD thesis (of I.W) funded by Centre of Polar Studies "POLAR-KNOW" (a project of the Polish Ministry of Science). Early results have been presented last year at EGU 2015 as a PICO presentation EGU2015-11206-1. We have used FluxEngine, a tool created within an earlier ESA funded project (OceanFlux Greenhouse Gases) to calculate the North Atlantic and global fluxes with different gas transfer velocity formulas. During the processing of the data, we have noticed that the North Atlantic results for different k formulas are more similar (in the sense of relative error) that global ones. This was true both for parameterizations using the same power of wind speed and when comparing wind squared and wind cubed parameterizations. This result was interesting because North Atlantic winds are stronger than the global average ones. Was the flux result similarity caused by the fact that the parameterizations were tuned to the North Atlantic area where many of the early cruises measuring CO2 fugacities were performed? A closer look at the parameterizations and their history showed that not all of them were based on North Atlantic data. Some of them were tuned to the South Ocean with even stronger winds while some were based on global budgets of 14C. However we have found two reasons, not reported before in the literature, for North Atlantic fluxes being more similar than global ones for different gas transfer velocity parametrizations

Self-similarity in incompressible Navier-Stokes equations.

PubMed

Ercan, Ali; Kavvas, M Levent

2015-12-01

The self-similarity conditions of the 3-dimensional (3D) incompressible Navier-Stokes equations are obtained by utilizing one-parameter Lie group of point scaling transformations. It is found that the scaling exponents of length dimensions in i = 1, 2, 3 coordinates in 3-dimensions are not arbitrary but equal for the self-similarity of 3D incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. It is also shown that the self-similarity in this particular flow process can be achieved in different time and space scales when the viscosity of the fluid is also scaled in addition to other flow variables. In other words, the self-similarity of Navier-Stokes equations is achievable under different fluid environments in the same or different gravity conditions. Self-similarity criteria due to initial and boundary conditions are also presented. Utilizing the proposed self-similarity conditions of the 3D hydrodynamic flow process, the value of a flow variable at a specified time and space can be scaled to a corresponding value in a self-similar domain at the corresponding time and space.

Prioritization of candidate disease genes by combining topological similarity and semantic similarity.

PubMed

Liu, Bin; Jin, Min; Zeng, Pan

2015-10-01

The identification of gene-phenotype relationships is very important for the treatment of human diseases. Studies have shown that genes causing the same or similar phenotypes tend to interact with each other in a protein-protein interaction (PPI) network. Thus, many identification methods based on the PPI network model have achieved good results. However, in the PPI network, some interactions between the proteins encoded by candidate gene and the proteins encoded by known disease genes are very weak. Therefore, some studies have combined the PPI network with other genomic information and reported good predictive performances. However, we believe that the results could be further improved. In this paper, we propose a new method that uses the semantic similarity between the candidate gene and known disease genes to set the initial probability vector of a random walk with a restart algorithm in a human PPI network. The effectiveness of our method was demonstrated by leave-one-out cross-validation, and the experimental results indicated that our method outperformed other methods. Additionally, our method can predict new causative genes of multifactor diseases, including Parkinson's disease, breast cancer and obesity. The top predictions were good and consistent with the findings in the literature, which further illustrates the effectiveness of our method. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Can deja vu result from similarity to a prior experience? Support for the similarity hypothesis of deja vu.

PubMed

Cleary, Anne M; Ryals, Anthony J; Nomi, Jason S

2009-12-01

The strange feeling of having been somewhere or done something before--even though there is evidence to the contrary--is called déjà vu. Although déjà vu is beginning to receive attention among scientists (Brown, 2003, 2004), few studies have empirically investigated the phenomenon. We investigated the hypothesis that déjà vu is related to feelings of familiarity and that it can result from similarity between a novel scene and that of a scene experienced in one's past. We used a variation of the recognition-without-recall method of studying familiarity (Cleary, 2004) to examine instances in which participants failed to recall a studied scene in response to a configurally similar novel test scene. In such instances, resemblance to a previously viewed scene increased both feelings of familiarity and of déjà vu. Furthermore, in the absence of recall, resemblance of a novel scene to a previously viewed scene increased the probability of a reported déjà vu state for the novel scene, and feelings of familiarity with a novel scene were directly related to feelings of being in a déjà vu state.

Does Language about Similarity Play a Role in Fostering Similarity Comparison in Children?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ozcaliskan, Seyda; Goldin-Meadow, Susan; Gentner, Dedre; Mylander, Carolyn

2009-01-01

Commenting on perceptual similarities between objects stands out as an important linguistic achievement, one that may pave the way towards noticing and commenting on more abstract relational commonalities between objects. To explore whether having a conventional linguistic system is necessary for children to comment on different types of…

Learning context-sensitive shape similarity by graph transduction.

PubMed

Bai, Xiang; Yang, Xingwei; Latecki, Longin Jan; Liu, Wenyu; Tu, Zhuowen

2010-05-01

Shape similarity and shape retrieval are very important topics in computer vision. The recent progress in this domain has been mostly driven by designing smart shape descriptors for providing better similarity measure between pairs of shapes. In this paper, we provide a new perspective to this problem by considering the existing shapes as a group, and study their similarity measures to the query shape in a graph structure. Our method is general and can be built on top of any existing shape similarity measure. For a given similarity measure, a new similarity is learned through graph transduction. The new similarity is learned iteratively so that the neighbors of a given shape influence its final similarity to the query. The basic idea here is related to PageRank ranking, which forms a foundation of Google Web search. The presented experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach yields significant improvements over the state-of-art shape matching algorithms. We obtained a retrieval rate of 91.61 percent on the MPEG-7 data set, which is the highest ever reported in the literature. Moreover, the learned similarity by the proposed method also achieves promising improvements on both shape classification and shape clustering.

Relationship between the Wide Range Achievement Test 3 and the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test.

PubMed

Smith, T D; Smith, B L

1998-12-01

The present study examined the relationship between the Wide Range Achievement Test 3 and the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test for a sample of children with learning disabilities in two rural school districts. Data were collected for 87 school children who had been classified as learning disabled and placed in special education resource services. Pearson product-moment correlations between scores on the two measures were significant and moderate to high; however, mean scores were not significantly different on Reading, Spelling, and Arithmetic subtests of the Wide Range Achievement Test 3 compared to those for the basic Reading, Spelling, and Mathematics Reasoning subtests of the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test. Although there were significant mean differences between scores on Reading and Reading Comprehension and on Arithmetic and Numerical Operations, magnitudes were small. It appears that the two tests provide similar results when screening for reading, spelling, and arithmetic.

Determinants of Academic Achievement of Middle Schoolers in Turkey

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Börkan, Bengü; Bakis, Ozan

2016-01-01

The purpose of this study is to discuss student and school factors, including cross level interaction, that cause inequalities in seven and eighth grade students' achievement in Turkish context by using national achievement test scores with a multi-level statistical approach. Our results are in line with most other studies with similar purpose.…

RAPSearch: a fast protein similarity search tool for short reads

PubMed Central

2011-01-01

Background Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) is producing enormous corpuses of short DNA reads, affecting emerging fields like metagenomics. Protein similarity search--a key step to achieve annotation of protein-coding genes in these short reads, and identification of their biological functions--faces daunting challenges because of the very sizes of the short read datasets. Results We developed a fast protein similarity search tool RAPSearch that utilizes a reduced amino acid alphabet and suffix array to detect seeds of flexible length. For short reads (translated in 6 frames) we tested, RAPSearch achieved ~20-90 times speedup as compared to BLASTX. RAPSearch missed only a small fraction (~1.3-3.2%) of BLASTX similarity hits, but it also discovered additional homologous proteins (~0.3-2.1%) that BLASTX missed. By contrast, BLAT, a tool that is even slightly faster than RAPSearch, had significant loss of sensitivity as compared to RAPSearch and BLAST. Conclusions RAPSearch is implemented as open-source software and is accessible at http://omics.informatics.indiana.edu/mg/RAPSearch. It enables faster protein similarity search. The application of RAPSearch in metageomics has also been demonstrated. PMID:21575167

Laparoscopic and open subtotal colectomies have similar short-term results.

PubMed

Hoogenboom, Froukje J; Bosker, Robbert J I; Groen, Henk; Meijerink, Wilhelmus J H J; Lamme, Bas; Pierie, Jean Pierre E N

2013-01-01

Laparoscopic subtotal colectomy (STC) is a complex procedure. It is possible that short-term benefits for segmental resections cannot be attributed to this complex procedure. This study aims to assess differences in short-term results for laparoscopic versus open STC during a 15-year single-institute experience. We reviewed consecutive patients undergoing laparoscopic or open elective or subacute STC from January 1997 to December 2012. Fifty-six laparoscopic and 50 open STCs were performed. The operation time was significantly longer in the laparoscopic group, median 266 min (range 121-420 min), compared to 153 min (range 90-408 min) in the open group (p < 0.001). Median hospital stay showed no statistical difference, 14 days (range 1-129 days) in the laparoscopic and 13 days (range 1-85 days) in the open group. Between-group postoperative complications were not statistically different. Laparoscopic STC has short-term results similar to the open procedure, except for a longer operation time. The laparoscopic approach for STC is therefore only advisable in selected patients combined with extensive preoperative counseling. Copyright © 2013 S. Karger AG, Basel.

A blended design in acute care training: similar learning results, less training costs compared with a traditional format.

PubMed

Dankbaar, Mary E W; Storm, Diana J; Teeuwen, Irene C; Schuit, Stephanie C E

2014-09-01

Introduction There is a demand for more attractive and efficient training programmes in postgraduate health care training. This retrospective study aims to show the effectiveness of a blended versus traditional face-to-face training design. For nurses in postgraduate Acute and Intensive Care training, the effectiveness of a blended course design was compared with a traditional design. Methods In a first pilot study 57 students took a traditional course (2-h lecture and 2-h workshop) and 46 students took a blended course (2-h lecture and 2-h online self-study material). Test results were compared for both groups. After positive results in the pilot study, the design was replicated for the complete programme in Acute and Intensive Care. Now 16 students followed the traditional programme (11 days face-to-face education) and 31 students did the blended programme (7 days face-to-face and 40 h online self-study). An evaluation was done after the pilot and course costs were calculated. Results Results show that the traditional and blended groups were similar regarding the main characteristics and did not differ in learning results for both the pilot and the complete programme. Student evaluations of both designs were positive; however, the blended group were more confident that they had achieved the learning objectives. Training costs were reduced substantially. Conclusion The blended training design offers an effective and attractive training solution, leading to a significant reduction in costs.

Socially Oriented Motivational Goals and Academic Achievement: Similarities between Native and Anglo Americans

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ali, Jinnat; McInerney, Dennis M.; Craven, Rhonda G.; Yeung, Alexander Seeshing; King, Ronnel B.

2014-01-01

The authors examined the relations between two socially oriented dimensions of student motivation and academic achievement of Native (Navajo) American and Anglo American students. Using confirmatory factor analysis, a multidimensional and hierarchical model was found to explain the relations between performance and social goals. Four first-order…

Male Learners' Vocabulary Achievement through Concept Mapping and Mind Mapping: Differences and Similarities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tarkashvand, Zahra

2015-01-01

While learning English plays an essential role in today's life, vocabulary achievement is helpful to overcome the difficulties of commanding the language. Drawing on data from three months experimental work, this article explores how two mapping strategies affect the learning vocabularies in EFL male learners. While females were studied before,…

Fewer doses of HPV vaccine result in immune response similar to three-dose regimen

Cancer.gov

NCI scientists report that two doses of a human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, trademarked as Cervarix, resulted in similar serum antibody levels against two of the most carcinogenic types of HPV (16 and 18), compared to a standard three dose regimen.

Assessment Results and Student Achievement; a Correlation Study Regarding Ability Grouping

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Slonaker, Richard V.

2013-01-01

School leaders face increased pressure to identify instructional and administrative practices that increase student achievement. However, achievement gaps persist between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged student groups. This study highlighted relationships between ability grouping and academic achievement in a suburban school district.…

Examining Cultural Capital and Student Achievement: Results of a Meta-Analytic Review

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tan, Cheng Yong

2017-01-01

This meta-analysis summarized the relationships between cultural capital and student achievement (155 effect sizes involving 685,393 K-12 students) published in education journals between 1981 and 2015. Results showed a small-to-medium overall mean effect size, and larger individual effect sizes for parental education and parental expectations…

Semantic similarity measure in biomedical domain leverage web search engine.

PubMed

Chen, Chi-Huang; Hsieh, Sheau-Ling; Weng, Yung-Ching; Chang, Wen-Yung; Lai, Feipei

2010-01-01

Semantic similarity measure plays an essential role in Information Retrieval and Natural Language Processing. In this paper we propose a page-count-based semantic similarity measure and apply it in biomedical domains. Previous researches in semantic web related applications have deployed various semantic similarity measures. Despite the usefulness of the measurements in those applications, measuring semantic similarity between two terms remains a challenge task. The proposed method exploits page counts returned by the Web Search Engine. We define various similarity scores for two given terms P and Q, using the page counts for querying P, Q and P AND Q. Moreover, we propose a novel approach to compute semantic similarity using lexico-syntactic patterns with page counts. These different similarity scores are integrated adapting support vector machines, to leverage the robustness of semantic similarity measures. Experimental results on two datasets achieve correlation coefficients of 0.798 on the dataset provided by A. Hliaoutakis, 0.705 on the dataset provide by T. Pedersen with physician scores and 0.496 on the dataset provided by T. Pedersen et al. with expert scores.

Undergraduate Education and Professional Achievement of MSWs.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Specht, Harry; And Others

1984-01-01

Investigated the differences in professional achievement of graduates of master's of social work (MSW) programs having a bachelor of social work (BSW) background (N=125) versus a bachelor of arts (BA), or similar background (N=594). Results indicated that the MSW/BA graduates, as a group, outperform the MSW/BSW graduates. (LLL)

Higher Education Counts: Achieving Results. 2007 Executive Summary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Connecticut Department of Higher Education (NJ1), 2007

2007-01-01

"Higher Education Counts" is the annual accountability report on Connecticut's system of higher education. Since 2000, the report has been the primary vehicle for reporting higher education's progress toward achieving six, statutorily-defined state goals: (1) To enhance student learning and promote academic excellence; (2) To join with…

Higher Education Counts: Achieving Results, 2008. Executive Summary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Connecticut Department of Higher Education (NJ1), 2008

2008-01-01

"Higher Education Counts" is the annual accountability report on Connecticut's system of higher education. Since 2000, the report has been the primary vehicle for reporting higher education's progress toward achieving six, statutorily-defined state goals: (1) To enhance student learning and promote academic excellence; (2) To join with…

Higher Education Counts: Achieving Results. 2009 Executive Summary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Connecticut Department of Higher Education (NJ1), 2009

2009-01-01

"Higher Education Counts" is the annual accountability report on Connecticut's system of higher education. Since 2000, the report has been the primary vehicle for reporting higher education's progress toward achieving six, statutorily-defined state goals: (1) To enhance student learning and promote academic excellence; (2) To join with…

Full-Day Kindergarten Results in Significant Achievement Gains

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Raskin, Candace F.; Haar, Jean M.

2009-01-01

In 2004, after an in-depth review of student achievement data for over 4,000 students, the administration of a school district in southern Minnesota identified the following challenges: (1) above-state-average number of special education students; (2) increasing number of English as Second Language (ESL) students; (3) increasing number of students…

Results achieved by emergency physicians in teaching basic cardiopulmonary resuscitation to secondary school students.

PubMed

Jiménez-Fábrega, Xavier; Escalada-Roig, Xavier; Sánchez, Miquel; Culla, Alexandre; Díaz, Núria; Gómez, Xavier; Villena, Olga; Rodríguez, Esther; Gaspar, Alberto; Molina, José Emilio; Salvador, Jordi; Miró, Oscar

2009-06-01

We investigated the results obtained with a basic cardiopulmonary resuscitation (b-CPR) program (PROCES) specifically designed for secondary school students (14-16 years old) and taught by emergency physicians. We used a multiple-choice test with 20 questions (10 on theory and 10 on skills) answered before and immediately after and 1 year after receiving the b-CPR course. Satisfactory learning was considered when at least 8 out of 10 skill questions were correctly answered. We investigated student variables associated with better immediate and deferred (1 year after) PROCES performance. We compared the results with those obtained using a more standardized program to teach b-CPR to police cadets. We enrolled 600 high school students. PROCES achieved significant improvement in overall, theory and skill marks immediately after the course (P<0.001), with a significant decay in all of them 1 year after the course (P<0.001). Satisfactory learning was achieved by 57% of school students immediately after PROCES and by 37% when assessed 1 year later. Students without pending study subjects (P=0.001) and those from private schools (P<0.01) achieved significantly better performance immediately after PROCES and only female students achieved greater performance 1 year after the course (P<0.05). With respect to police cadets instructed through a standardized course, immediate satisfactory learning of school students was lower (79 vs. 57%, respectively; P<0.001), whereas deferred satisfactory learning was higher (23 vs. 37%, respectively; P<0.05). Emergency physicians can satisfactorily instruct secondary school students in b-CPR using PROCES, and this specific program achieves a reasonable amount of satisfactory learning.

Exemplar pediatric collaborative improvement networks: achieving results.

PubMed

Billett, Amy L; Colletti, Richard B; Mandel, Keith E; Miller, Marlene; Muething, Stephen E; Sharek, Paul J; Lannon, Carole M

2013-06-01

A number of pediatric collaborative improvement networks have demonstrated improved care and outcomes for children. Regionally, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center Physician Hospital Organization has sustained key asthma processes, substantially increased the percentage of their asthma population receiving "perfect care," and implemented an innovative pay-for-performance program with a large commercial payor based on asthma performance measures. The California Perinatal Quality Care Collaborative uses its outcomes database to improve care for infants in California NICUs. It has achieved reductions in central line-associated blood stream infections (CLABSI), increased breast-milk feeding rates at hospital discharge, and is now working to improve delivery room management. Solutions for Patient Safety (SPS) has achieved significant improvements in adverse drug events and surgical site infections across all 8 Ohio children's hospitals, with 7700 fewer children harmed and >$11.8 million in avoided costs. SPS is now expanding nationally, aiming to eliminate all events of serious harm at children's hospitals. National collaborative networks include ImproveCareNow, which aims to improve care and outcomes for children with inflammatory bowel disease. Reliable adherence to Model Care Guidelines has produced improved remission rates without using new medications and a significant increase in the proportion of Crohn disease patients not taking prednisone. Data-driven collaboratives of the Children's Hospital Association Quality Transformation Network initially focused on CLABSI in PICUs. By September 2011, they had prevented an estimated 2964 CLABSI, saving 355 lives and $103,722,423. Subsequent improvement efforts include CLABSI reductions in additional settings and populations.

The influence of achievement goals on the constructive activity of low achievers during collaborative problem solving.

PubMed

Gabriele, Anthony J

2007-03-01

Previous research on small-group learning has found that level of constructive activity (solving or explaining how to solve problems using ideas stated or implied in the explanation provided by a partner) was a better predictor of post-test achievement than either a student's prior achievement or the quality of help received (Webb, Troper, & Fall, 1995). The purpose of this study was to extend this research by examining the influence of additional factors, in particular, achievement goals and comprehension monitoring, on low achieving students' constructive activity after receiving help from a high achieving peer. Thirty-two low achieving upper elementary students from an urban school district in the mid-west of the United States were paired with high achieving partners. Videotape data from a previously reported study on peer collaboration were transcribed and reanalyzed. In that study, dyads were randomly assigned instructions designed to induce either a learning or performance goal and were videotaped as they worked together to solve a set of mathematical word problems. The following day, students were individually post-tested on problems similar to the ones worked on in pairs. Consistent with previous research, low achieving students' level of constructive activity predicted post-test performance. In addition, constructive activity was found to mediate the relationship between achievement goals and learning. However, achievement goals were not related to low achievers constructive use of help. Instead, achievement goals were related to low achievers' relative accuracy in comprehension monitoring, which in turn was related to level of constructive activity. The meaning of these results for understanding the processes by which low achievers learn from peer help and implications for classroom practice are discussed.

Finland and Singapore in PISA 2009: Similarities and Differences in Achievements and School Management

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Soh, Kaycheng

2014-01-01

In PISA 2009, Finland and Singapore were both ranked high among the participating nations and have caught much attention internationally. However, a secondary analysis of the means for Reading achievement show that the differences are rather small and are attributable to spurious precision. Hence, the two nations should be considered as being on…

Next Generation Scientists, Next Opportunities: EPA's Science To Achieve Results (STAR) Program

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jones, M.

2004-12-01

Scientific research is one of the most powerful tools we have for understanding and protecting our environment. It provides the foundation for what we know about our planet, how it has changed, and how it could be altered in the future. The National Center for Environmental Research (NCER) in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Office of Research and Development (ORD) supports high-quality, extramural research by the nation's leading scientists and engineers to strengthen the basis for decisions about local and national environmental issues. NCER works with academia, state and local governments, other federal agencies, and scientists in EPA to increase human knowledge of how to protect our health and natural resources through its three major programs: · Science to Achieve Results (STAR) Grants · Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) · Science to Achieve Results (STAR) Fellowships STAR, NCER's primary program, funds research grants and graduate fellowships in environmental science and engineering. Developing the next generation of environmental scientists and engineers is one of NCER's most important objectives. Each year, NCER helps between 80 and 160 students achieve Master's or Ph.D. degrees in environmental science and engineering through its STAR and Greater Research Opportunities (GRO) fellowships. Some of these students have moved on to careers in government while others are now full-time professors and researchers. Still others are working for state environmental agencies or furthering their studies through postdoctoral positions at universities. Since the inception of the NCER program, STAR fellowships (along with grants and SBIR projects) have been awarded in every state in the country. With the help of STAR, current and future scientists and engineers have been able to explore ways to preserve and protect human health and our precious resources.

Diffusion-like recommendation with enhanced similarity of objects

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

An, Ya-Hui; Dong, Qiang; Sun, Chong-Jing; Nie, Da-Cheng; Fu, Yan

2016-11-01

In the last decade, diversity and accuracy have been regarded as two important measures in evaluating a recommendation model. However, a clear concern is that a model focusing excessively on one measure will put the other one at risk, thus it is not easy to greatly improve diversity and accuracy simultaneously. In this paper, we propose to enhance the Resource-Allocation (RA) similarity in resource transfer equations of diffusion-like models, by giving a tunable exponent to the RA similarity, and traversing the value of this exponent to achieve the optimal recommendation results. In this way, we can increase the recommendation scores (allocated resource) of many unpopular objects. Experiments on three benchmark data sets, MovieLens, Netflix and RateYourMusic show that the modified models can yield remarkable performance improvement compared with the original ones.

Similarly shaped letters evoke similar colors in grapheme-color synesthesia.

PubMed

Brang, David; Rouw, Romke; Ramachandran, V S; Coulson, Seana

2011-04-01

Grapheme-color synesthesia is a neurological condition in which viewing numbers or letters (graphemes) results in the concurrent sensation of color. While the anatomical substrates underlying this experience are well understood, little research to date has investigated factors influencing the particular colors associated with particular graphemes or how synesthesia occurs developmentally. A recent suggestion of such an interaction has been proposed in the cascaded cross-tuning (CCT) model of synesthesia, which posits that in synesthetes connections between grapheme regions and color area V4 participate in a competitive activation process, with synesthetic colors arising during the component-stage of grapheme processing. This model more directly suggests that graphemes sharing similar component features (lines, curves, etc.) should accordingly activate more similar synesthetic colors. To test this proposal, we created and regressed synesthetic color-similarity matrices for each of 52 synesthetes against a letter-confusability matrix, an unbiased measure of visual similarity among graphemes. Results of synesthetes' grapheme-color correspondences indeed revealed that more similarly shaped graphemes corresponded with more similar synesthetic colors, with stronger effects observed in individuals with more intense synesthetic experiences (projector synesthetes). These results support the CCT model of synesthesia, implicate early perceptual mechanisms as driving factors in the elicitation of synesthetic hues, and further highlight the relationship between conceptual and perceptual factors in this phenomenon. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Testing for Results: Helping Families, Schools and Communities Understand and Improve Student Achievement.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Department of Education, Washington, DC. Office of the Under Secretary.

Redefining the federal government's role in kindergarten through grade 12 education, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 is designed to close the achievement gap between disadvantaged and minority students and their peers. The act is based on four principles, the first of which is stronger accountability for results, entailing creation of…

Teacher expectations, classroom context, and the achievement gap.

PubMed

McKown, Clark; Weinstein, Rhona S

2008-06-01

In two independent datasets with 1872 elementary-aged children in 83 classrooms, Studies 1 and 2 examined the role of classroom context in moderating the relationship between child ethnicity and teacher expectations. For Study 1 overall and Study 2 mixed-grade classrooms, in ethnically diverse classrooms where students reported high levels of differential teacher treatment (PDT) towards high and low achieving students, teacher expectations of European American and Asian American students were between .75 and 1.00 standard deviations higher than teacher expectations of African American and Latino students with similar records of achievement. In highly diverse low-PDT classrooms in Study 1 and highly diverse low-PDT mixed-grade classrooms in Study 2, teachers held similar expectations for all students with similar records of achievement. Study 3 estimated the contribution of teacher expectations to the year-end ethnic achievement gap in high- and low-bias classrooms. In high-bias classrooms, teacher expectancy effects accounted for an average of .29 and up to .38 standard deviations of the year-end ethnic achievement gap.

Low and High Mathematics Achievement in Japanese, Chinese, and American Elementary-School Children.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Uttal, David H.; And Others

1988-01-01

First and fifth grade students who scored high or low on a mathematics test were tested for intellectual ability and reading achievement. Students and their mothers were interviewed. Results indicated that factors associated with levels of achievement in mathematics operate in a similar fashion across three cultures that differ greatly in their…

The Reciprocal Relations between Self-Concept, Motivation and Achievement: Juxtaposing Academic Self-Concept and Achievement Goal Orientations for Mathematics Success

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Seaton, Marjorie; Parker, Philip; Marsh, Herbert W.; Craven, Rhonda G.; Yeung, Alexander Seeshing

2014-01-01

Research suggests that motivated students and those with high academic self-concepts perform better academically. Although substantial evidence supports a reciprocal relation between academic self-concept and achievement, there is less evidence supporting a similar relation between achievement goal orientations and achievement. There is also a…

Inferring gene ontologies from pairwise similarity data

PubMed Central

Kramer, Michael; Dutkowski, Janusz; Yu, Michael; Bafna, Vineet; Ideker, Trey

2014-01-01

Motivation: While the manually curated Gene Ontology (GO) is widely used, inferring a GO directly from -omics data is a compelling new problem. Recognizing that ontologies are a directed acyclic graph (DAG) of terms and hierarchical relations, algorithms are needed that: analyze a full matrix of gene–gene pairwise similarities from -omics data;infer true hierarchical structure in these data rather than enforcing hierarchy as a computational artifact; andrespect biological pleiotropy, by which a term in the hierarchy can relate to multiple higher level terms. Methods addressing these requirements are just beginning to emerge—none has been evaluated for GO inference. Methods: We consider two algorithms [Clique Extracted Ontology (CliXO), LocalFitness] that uniquely satisfy these requirements, compared with methods including standard clustering. CliXO is a new approach that finds maximal cliques in a network induced by progressive thresholding of a similarity matrix. We evaluate each method’s ability to reconstruct the GO biological process ontology from a similarity matrix based on (a) semantic similarities for GO itself or (b) three -omics datasets for yeast. Results: For task (a) using semantic similarity, CliXO accurately reconstructs GO (>99% precision, recall) and outperforms other approaches (<20% precision, <20% recall). For task (b) using -omics data, CliXO outperforms other methods using two -omics datasets and achieves ∼30% precision and recall using YeastNet v3, similar to an earlier approach (Network Extracted Ontology) and better than LocalFitness or standard clustering (20–25% precision, recall). Conclusion: This study provides algorithmic foundation for building gene ontologies by capturing hierarchical and pleiotropic structure embedded in biomolecular data. Contact: tideker@ucsd.edu PMID:24932003

The Effects of CSCOPE on Student Achievement as Measured by Both TAKS and STAAR Test Results

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Helm, Maricela Robledo

2013-01-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of CSCOPE curriculum on student achievement. CSCOPE is a curriculum management system used in 750 of the 1,039 school districts in the state of Texas. Student achievement is based on the results acquired from the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) and the new version of the state…

Unsupervised Approaches for Post-Processing in Computationally Efficient Waveform-Similarity-Based Earthquake Detection

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bergen, K.; Yoon, C. E.; OReilly, O. J.; Beroza, G. C.

2015-12-01

Recent improvements in computational efficiency for waveform correlation-based detections achieved by new methods such as Fingerprint and Similarity Thresholding (FAST) promise to allow large-scale blind search for similar waveforms in long-duration continuous seismic data. Waveform similarity search applied to datasets of months to years of continuous seismic data will identify significantly more events than traditional detection methods. With the anticipated increase in number of detections and associated increase in false positives, manual inspection of the detection results will become infeasible. This motivates the need for new approaches to process the output of similarity-based detection. We explore data mining techniques for improved detection post-processing. We approach this by considering similarity-detector output as a sparse similarity graph with candidate events as vertices and similarities as weighted edges. Image processing techniques are leveraged to define candidate events and combine results individually processed at multiple stations. Clustering and graph analysis methods are used to identify groups of similar waveforms and assign a confidence score to candidate detections. Anomaly detection and classification are applied to waveform data for additional false detection removal. A comparison of methods will be presented and their performance will be demonstrated on a suspected induced and non-induced earthquake sequence.

The Value of Full Correction: Achieving Excellent and Affordable Results.

PubMed

Kaplan, Julie Bass

2016-01-01

Patients often come to medical aesthetic offices with hopes to fully correct lost facial volume and achieve a natural appearance. Unfortunately, the cost per syringe of dermal filler can be a barrier to desired outcomes. Many aesthetic practitioners do the best they can with the amount of product the patient can afford, often falling short of the "wow" effect for the patient. This article describes what one office implemented to solve the conundrum of affordability while still allowing offices to cover its own financial realities. This tool can help patients achieve beautiful, natural, and affordable outcomes while helping offices advance in manufacturer's tiers, improve word-of-mouth advertising, and increase job satisfaction.

Nature, nurture and academic achievement: a twin study of teacher assessments of 7-year-olds.

PubMed

Walker, Sheila O; Petrill, Stephen A; Spinath, Frank M; Plomin, Robert

2004-09-01

Twin research has consistently shown substantial genetic influence on individual differences in cognitive ability; however, much less is known about the genetic and environmental aetiologies of school achievement. Our goal is to test the hypotheses that teacher-assessed achievement in the early school years shows substantial genetic influence but only modest shared environmental influence when children are assessed by the same teachers and by different teachers. 1,189 monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs born in 1994 in England and Wales. Teachers evaluated academic achievement for 7-year-olds in Mathematics and English. Results were based on the twin method, which compares the similarity between identical and fraternal twins. Suggested substantial genetic influence in that identical twins were almost twice as similar as fraternal twins when compared on teacher assessments for Mathematics, English and a total score. The results confirm prior research suggesting that teacher assessments of academic achievement are substantially influenced by genetics. This finding holds even when twins are assessed independently by different teachers.

Relationship between the Learning Styles Preferences and Academic Achievement

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Awang, H.; Samad, N. Abd; Faiz, N. S. Mohd; Roddin, R.; Kankia, J. D.

2017-08-01

The individual learning differences that have been much explored relate to differences in personality, learning styles, strategies and conceptual of learning. This article studies the learning style profile exhibited by students towards the academic achievement in Malaysian Polytechnic. The relationship between learning styles of Polytechnic students and their academic achievement based on VARK learning styles model. The target population was international business students of Malaysian Polytechnic. By means of randomly sampling method, 103 students were selected as sample of research. By descriptive - survey research method and a questionnaire adapted from VARK Learning Style Index, required data were collected. According to the results, no significantly difference between learning style and academic achievement of students. Students academic achievement was quite similar to their individual learning styles. These facts reveal that each learning style has its own strengths and weaknesses.

Can paying for results help to achieve the Millennium Development Goals? Overview of the effectiveness of results-based financing.

PubMed

Oxman, Andrew D; Fretheim, Atle

2009-05-01

Results-based financing and pay-for-performance refer to the transfer of money or material goods conditional on taking a measurable action or achieving a predetermined performance target. Results-based financing is widely advocated for achieving health goals, including the Millennium Development Goals. We undertook an overview of systematic reviews of the effectiveness of RBF. We searched the Cochrane Library, EMBASE, and MEDLINE (up to August 2007). We also searched for related articles in PubMed, checked the reference lists of retrieved articles, and contacted key informants. We included reviews with a methods section that addressed the effects of any results-based financing in the health sector targeted at patients, providers, organizations, or governments. We summarized the characteristics and findings of each review using a structured format. We found 12 systematic reviews that met our inclusion criteria. Based on the findings of these reviews, financial incentives targeting recipients of health care and individual healthcare professionals are effective in the short run for simple and distinct, well-defined behavioral goals. There is less evidence that financial incentives can sustain long-term changes. Conditional cash transfers to poor and disadvantaged groups in Latin America are effective at increasing the uptake of some preventive services. There is otherwise very limited evidence of the effects of results-based financing in low- or middle-income countries. Results-based financing can have undesirable effects, including motivating unintended behaviors, distortions (ignoring important tasks that are not rewarded with incentives), gaming (improving or cheating on reporting rather than improving performance), widening the resource gap between rich and poor, and dependency on financial incentives. There is limited evidence of the effectiveness of results-based financing and almost no evidence of the cost-effectiveness of results-based financing. Based on the

Bilateral Trade Flows and Income Distribution Similarity.

PubMed

Martínez-Zarzoso, Inmaculada; Vollmer, Sebastian

2016-01-01

Current models of bilateral trade neglect the effects of income distribution. This paper addresses the issue by accounting for non-homothetic consumer preferences and hence investigating the role of income distribution in the context of the gravity model of trade. A theoretically justified gravity model is estimated for disaggregated trade data (Dollar volume is used as dependent variable) using a sample of 104 exporters and 108 importers for 1980-2003 to achieve two main goals. We define and calculate new measures of income distribution similarity and empirically confirm that greater similarity of income distribution between countries implies more trade. Using distribution-based measures as a proxy for demand similarities in gravity models, we find consistent and robust support for the hypothesis that countries with more similar income-distributions trade more with each other. The hypothesis is also confirmed at disaggregated level for differentiated product categories.

Bilateral Trade Flows and Income Distribution Similarity

PubMed Central

2016-01-01

Current models of bilateral trade neglect the effects of income distribution. This paper addresses the issue by accounting for non-homothetic consumer preferences and hence investigating the role of income distribution in the context of the gravity model of trade. A theoretically justified gravity model is estimated for disaggregated trade data (Dollar volume is used as dependent variable) using a sample of 104 exporters and 108 importers for 1980–2003 to achieve two main goals. We define and calculate new measures of income distribution similarity and empirically confirm that greater similarity of income distribution between countries implies more trade. Using distribution-based measures as a proxy for demand similarities in gravity models, we find consistent and robust support for the hypothesis that countries with more similar income-distributions trade more with each other. The hypothesis is also confirmed at disaggregated level for differentiated product categories. PMID:27137462

Semantic Clustering of Search Engine Results

PubMed Central

Soliman, Sara Saad; El-Sayed, Maged F.; Hassan, Yasser F.

2015-01-01

This paper presents a novel approach for search engine results clustering that relies on the semantics of the retrieved documents rather than the terms in those documents. The proposed approach takes into consideration both lexical and semantics similarities among documents and applies activation spreading technique in order to generate semantically meaningful clusters. This approach allows documents that are semantically similar to be clustered together rather than clustering documents based on similar terms. A prototype is implemented and several experiments are conducted to test the prospered solution. The result of the experiment confirmed that the proposed solution achieves remarkable results in terms of precision. PMID:26933673

Comparing Cognitive Interviewing and Online Probing: Do They Find Similar Results?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Meitinger, Katharina; Behr, Dorothée

2016-01-01

This study compares the application of probing techniques in cognitive interviewing (CI) and online probing (OP). Even though the probing is similar, the methods differ regarding typical mode setting, sample size, level of interactivity, and goals. We analyzed probing answers to the International Social Survey Programme item battery on specific…

Pulmonary function in pubertal synchronized swimmers: 1-year follow-up results and its relation to competitive achievement.

PubMed

Gabrilo, Goran; Peric, Mia; Stipic, Marija

2011-03-01

Pulmonary function (PF) is particularly important in synchronized swimming, considering the characteristics of this sport. However, the sanitizing agents (chlorine) used in pools can have a possible negative influence on the PF parameters. In this study, we observed 24 swimmers (all women, 14 to 16 years of age) and measured their PF and competitive achievement. PF was measured before and after a 1-year period and included standard spirometric variables. Competitive achievement was evidenced during the National Championship. The t-test showed significant increases in body height and weight of the participants and a resulting increase in most of the absolute respiratory flows and pulmonary capacities. Forced vital capacity (FVC) and forced expiratory volume (both in proportion to norm for body height, gender, and age) increased significantly within the study period. FVC significantly predicted the competitive achievement of young swimmers, most probably because artists have to achieve exceptional breath control when upside down underwater. In conclusion, we found no evidence for the eventual negative influence of chlorine and its compounds on the PF of swimmers, and results showed that regular synchronized swim training could improve the PF of young artists.

Towards Personalized Medicine: Leveraging Patient Similarity and Drug Similarity Analytics

PubMed Central

Zhang, Ping; Wang, Fei; Hu, Jianying; Sorrentino, Robert

2014-01-01

The rapid adoption of electronic health records (EHR) provides a comprehensive source for exploratory and predictive analytic to support clinical decision-making. In this paper, we investigate how to utilize EHR to tailor treatments to individual patients based on their likelihood to respond to a therapy. We construct a heterogeneous graph which includes two domains (patients and drugs) and encodes three relationships (patient similarity, drug similarity, and patient-drug prior associations). We describe a novel approach for performing a label propagation procedure to spread the label information representing the effectiveness of different drugs for different patients over this heterogeneous graph. The proposed method has been applied on a real-world EHR dataset to help identify personalized treatments for hypercholesterolemia. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach and suggest that the combination of appropriate patient similarity and drug similarity analytics could lead to actionable insights for personalized medicine. Particularly, by leveraging drug similarity in combination with patient similarity, our method could perform well even on new or rarely used drugs for which there are few records of known past performance. PMID:25717413

Does achievement motivation mediate the semantic achievement priming effect?

PubMed

Engeser, Stefan; Baumann, Nicola

2014-10-01

The aim of our research was to understand the processes of the prime-to-behavior effects with semantic achievement primes. We extended existing models with a perspective from achievement motivation theory and additionally used achievement primes embedded in the running text of excerpts of school textbooks to simulate a more natural priming condition. Specifically, we proposed that achievement primes affect implicit achievement motivation and conducted pilot experiments and 3 main experiments to explore this proposition. We found no reliable positive effect of achievement primes on implicit achievement motivation. In light of these findings, we tested whether explicit (instead of implicit) achievement motivation is affected by achievement primes and found this to be the case. In the final experiment, we found support for the assumption that higher explicit achievement motivation implies that achievement priming affects the outcome expectations. The implications of the results are discussed, and we conclude that primes affect achievement behavior by heightening explicit achievement motivation and outcome expectancies.

Peroral Endoscopic Myotomy Achieves Similar Clinical Response but Incurs Lesser Charges Compared to Robotic Heller Myotomy

PubMed Central

Khashab, Mouen A.; Kumbhari, Vivek; Tieu, Alan H.; El Zein, Mohamad H.; Ismail, Amr; Ngamruengphong, Saowanee; Singh, Vikesh K.; Kalloo, Anthony N.; Clarke, John O.; Stein, Ellen M.

2017-01-01

Background/Aim: Several uncontrolled studies comparing peroral endoscopic myotomy (POEM) and Heller myotomy have demonstrated equivalent short-term efficacy and safety. However, no data exists rergarding the cost of POEM and how it compares to that of robotic Heller myotomy (RHM). The primary aim of this study was to compare the inpatient charges incurred in patients who underwent POEM or RHM for the treatment of achalasia. Patients and Methods: A retrospective single center review was conducted among 52 consecutive POEM patients (2012–2014) and 52 consecutive RHM patients (2009–2014). All RHM procedures included a Toupet fundoplication and were performed via a transabdominal approach. All POEM procedures were performed by a gastroenterologist in the endoscopy unit. Clinical response was defined by improvement of symptoms and decrease in Eckardt stage to ≤I. All procedural and facility charges were obtained from review of the hospital finance records. Results: There was no difference between POEM and RHM with regards to age, gender, symptom duration, achalasia subtype, manometry findings, or Eckardt symptom stage. There was no significant difference in the rate of adverse events (19.2% vs 9.6%, P = 0.26) or the length of stay (1.9 vs. 2.3, P = 0.18) between both groups. Clinical response rate of patients in the POEM groups was similar to that in the RHM group (94.3% vs. 88.5%, P = 0.48). POEM incurred significantly less total charges compared to LHM ($14481 vs. $17782, P = 0.02). Conclusions: POEM when performed in an endoscopy unit was similar in efficacy and safety to RHM. However, POEM was associated with significant cost savings ($3301/procedure). PMID:28361839

Bioturbo similarity searching: combining chemical and biological similarity to discover structurally diverse bioactive molecules.

PubMed

Wassermann, Anne Mai; Lounkine, Eugen; Glick, Meir

2013-03-25

Virtual screening using bioactivity profiles has become an integral part of currently applied hit finding methods in pharmaceutical industry. However, a significant drawback of this approach is that it is only applicable to compounds that have been biologically tested in the past and have sufficient activity annotations for meaningful profile comparisons. Although bioactivity data generated in pharmaceutical institutions are growing on an unprecedented scale, the number of biologically annotated compounds still covers only a minuscule fraction of chemical space. For a newly synthesized compound or an isolated natural product to be biologically characterized across multiple assays, it may take a considerable amount of time. Consequently, this chemical matter will not be included in virtual screening campaigns based on bioactivity profiles. To overcome this problem, we herein introduce bioturbo similarity searching that uses chemical similarity to map molecules without biological annotations into bioactivity space and then searches for biologically similar compounds in this reference system. In benchmark calculations on primary screening data, we demonstrate that our approach generally achieves higher hit rates and identifies structurally more diverse compounds than approaches using chemical information only. Furthermore, our method is able to discover hits with novel modes of inhibition that traditional 2D and 3D similarity approaches are unlikely to discover. Test calculations on a set of natural products reveal the practical utility of the approach for identifying novel and synthetically more accessible chemical matter.

Physical Attrativeness, Perceived Attitude Similarity, and Academic Achievement as Contributors to Interpersonal Attraction among Adolescents

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cavior, Norman N.; Dokecki, Paul R.

1973-01-01

Fifth- and eleventh-grade males and females who knew each other ( knowers'') judged classmates' photographs on physical attractiveness, perceived attitude similarity, and interpersonal attraction. Nonknowers'' (male and female classmates in different schools in the same grades) judged the same photographs on physical attractiveness. (Editor)

Privacy-preserving matching of similar patients.

PubMed

Vatsalan, Dinusha; Christen, Peter

2016-02-01

The identification of similar entities represented by records in different databases has drawn considerable attention in many application areas, including in the health domain. One important type of entity matching application that is vital for quality healthcare analytics is the identification of similar patients, known as similar patient matching. A key component of identifying similar records is the calculation of similarity of the values in attributes (fields) between these records. Due to increasing privacy and confidentiality concerns, using the actual attribute values of patient records to identify similar records across different organizations is becoming non-trivial because the attributes in such records often contain highly sensitive information such as personal and medical details of patients. Therefore, the matching needs to be based on masked (encoded) values while being effective and efficient to allow matching of large databases. Bloom filter encoding has widely been used as an efficient masking technique for privacy-preserving matching of string and categorical values. However, no work on Bloom filter-based masking of numerical data, such as integer (e.g. age), floating point (e.g. body mass index), and modulus (numbers wrap around upon reaching a certain value, e.g. date and time), which are commonly required in the health domain, has been presented in the literature. We propose a framework with novel methods for masking numerical data using Bloom filters, thereby facilitating the calculation of similarities between records. We conduct an empirical study on publicly available real-world datasets which shows that our framework provides efficient masking and achieves similar matching accuracy compared to the matching of actual unencoded patient records. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Retaining Hard-to-Reach Women in HIV Prevention and Vaccine Trials: Project ACHIEVE

PubMed Central

Brown-Peterside, Pamela; Rivera, Evelyn; Lucy, Debbie; Slaughter, Izzie; Ren, Leigh; Chiasson, Mary Ann; Koblin, Beryl A.

2001-01-01

Project ACHIEVE, which conducts HIV prevention research studies, maintains a women's site in the South Bronx in New York City. Owing to a focused retention effort at the South Bronx site, high retention rates were achieved in a vaccine preparedness study for women at high risk of HIV infection. Comparable retention rates have been achieved in HIV vaccine trials with similar cohorts of women at this site. These results suggest that concerns about retaining hard-to-reach populations should not cause these populations to be excluded from HIV vaccine and prevention trials. PMID:11527761

Case study, comparison of trial burn results from similar sulfuric acid regeneration plants

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Milaszewski, M.; Johns, T.; Dickerson, W.F.

The primary business of Rhodia Eco Services (Rhodia) is the regeneration of sulfuric acid. Sulfuric acid regeneration requires thermal decomposition of acid to sulfur dioxide, and remaking the acid through chemical reaction. The sulfuric acid regeneration furnace is the ideal place to process pumpable wastes for energy recovery and for thermal destruction. Rhodia is regulated by the Boiler and Industrial Furnace (BIF) regulations (40 CFR 266, Subpart H). The Hammond, Indiana plant is an interim status BIF facility and the Houston, Texas facility is renewing its RCRA incineration permit as a BIF facility. Both plants have conducted BIF Trial Burnsmore » with very similar results. The performance levels demonstrated were at levels better than RCRA/BIF standards for destruction and removal efficiency, metal, HCl/Cl, particulate, dioxin/furan, and organic emissions.« less

Self-similar gravity wave spectra resulting from the modulation of bound waves

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Michel, Guillaume; Semin, Benoît; Cazaubiel, Annette; Haudin, Florence; Humbert, Thomas; Lepot, Simon; Bonnefoy, Félicien; Berhanu, Michaël; Falcon, Éric

2018-05-01

We experimentally study the properties of nonlinear surface gravity waves in a large-scale basin. We consider two different configurations: a one-dimensional (1D) monochromatic wave forcing, and a two-dimensional (2D) forcing with bichromatic waves satisfying resonant-wave interaction conditions. For the 1D forcing, we find a discrete wave-energy spectrum dominated at high frequencies by bound waves whose amplitudes decrease as a power law of the frequency. Bound waves (e.g., to the carrier) are harmonics superimposed on the carrier wave propagating with the same phase velocity as the one of the carrier. When a narrow frequency random modulation is applied to this carrier, the high-frequency part of the wave-energy spectrum becomes continuous with the same frequency-power law. Similar results are found for the 2D forcing when a random modulation is also applied to both carrier waves. Our results thus show that all these nonlinear gravity wave spectra are dominated at high frequencies by the presence of bound waves, even in the configuration where resonant interactions occur. Moreover, in all these configurations, the power-law exponent of the spectrum is found to depend on the forcing amplitude with the same trend as the one found in previous gravity wave turbulence experiments. Such a set of bound waves may thus explain this dependence that was previously poorly understood.

Academic Effort and Achievement in Science: Beyond a Gendered Relationship

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Adamuti-Trache, Maria; Sweet, Robert

2013-12-01

This study employs the 2004 School Achievement Indicators Program (SAIP) data to examine whether academic effort manifested by greater investments in school and homework does result in higher literacy scores in science for Canadian students. The study compares four gender-immigrant profiles: Canadian-born males, immigrant males, Canadian-born females, and immigrant females on their scores on teacher-assigned grades in science and on the SAIP science literacy test, and across a range of dispositions, beliefs, and behaviors suggested in the literature as predictive of achievement in science. Study findings show that Canadian-born students, particularly boys, have higher performance in the science literacy test despite their lower achievement in the science classroom and the least investments of time in doing science homework. In contrast, immigrant female students demonstrate the highest academic effort and achievement in science courses which are not matched by similar results in the science literacy test. We discuss these results in relation to different socialization experiences with science and technology that limit female and immigrant students' abilities to transfer knowledge to new situations that have not been learned in the classroom.

The Impact of Personal Digital Assistants on Academic Achievement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bick, Alexander

2005-01-01

A positive correlation has been found between laptops and student achievement. Laptops are similar to Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) in many respects. This study seeks to determine the effect of PDA usage on high school student academic achievement. It was hypothesized that a positive correlation between PDA usage and academic achievement in…

Investigating Correlation between Protein Sequence Similarity and Semantic Similarity Using Gene Ontology Annotations.

PubMed

Ikram, Najmul; Qadir, Muhammad Abdul; Afzal, Muhammad Tanvir

2018-01-01

Sequence similarity is a commonly used measure to compare proteins. With the increasing use of ontologies, semantic (function) similarity is getting importance. The correlation between these measures has been applied in the evaluation of new semantic similarity methods, and in protein function prediction. In this research, we investigate the relationship between the two similarity methods. The results suggest absence of a strong correlation between sequence and semantic similarities. There is a large number of proteins with low sequence similarity and high semantic similarity. We observe that Pearson's correlation coefficient is not sufficient to explain the nature of this relationship. Interestingly, the term semantic similarity values above 0 and below 1 do not seem to play a role in improving the correlation. That is, the correlation coefficient depends only on the number of common GO terms in proteins under comparison, and the semantic similarity measurement method does not influence it. Semantic similarity and sequence similarity have a distinct behavior. These findings are of significant effect for future works on protein comparison, and will help understand the semantic similarity between proteins in a better way.

Effective Teaching Results in Increased Science Achievement for All Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Johnson, Carla C.; Kahle, Jane Butler; Fargo, Jamison D.

2007-01-01

This study of teacher effectiveness and student achievement in science demonstrated that effective teachers positively impact student learning. A general linear mixed model was used to assess change in student scores on the Discovery Inquiry Test as a function of time, race, teacher effectiveness, gender, and impact of teacher effectiveness in…

Gender Gap Linked to Differential Socialization for High-Achieving Senior Mathematics Students.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Campbell, James R.; Beaudry, Jeffrey S.

1998-01-01

Examined whether 11th-grade girls and boys enrolled in advanced mathematics courses nationwide were socialized in similar ways, using Campbell's differential socialization paradigm. Results uncovered a gender gap favoring boys. Self-imposed pressure and persistence had important direct effects on achievement. Self-concept had important direct…

User recommendation in healthcare social media by assessing user similarity in heterogeneous network.

PubMed

Jiang, Ling; Yang, Christopher C

2017-09-01

The rapid growth of online health social websites has captured a vast amount of healthcare information and made the information easy to access for health consumers. E-patients often use these social websites for informational and emotional support. However, health consumers could be easily overwhelmed by the overloaded information. Healthcare information searching can be very difficult for consumers, not to mention most of them are not skilled information searcher. In this work, we investigate the approaches for measuring user similarity in online health social websites. By recommending similar users to consumers, we can help them to seek informational and emotional support in a more efficient way. We propose to represent the healthcare social media data as a heterogeneous healthcare information network and introduce the local and global structural approaches for measuring user similarity in a heterogeneous network. We compare the proposed structural approaches with the content-based approach. Experiments were conducted on a dataset collected from a popular online health social website, and the results showed that content-based approach performed better for inactive users, while structural approaches performed better for active users. Moreover, global structural approach outperformed local structural approach for all user groups. In addition, we conducted experiments on local and global structural approaches using different weight schemas for the edges in the network. Leverage performed the best for both local and global approaches. Finally, we integrated different approaches and demonstrated that hybrid method yielded better performance than the individual approach. The results indicate that content-based methods can effectively capture the similarity of inactive users who usually have focused interests, while structural methods can achieve better performance when rich structural information is available. Local structural approach only considers direct connections

Do the associations of parenting styles with behavior problems and academic achievement vary by culture? Results from a meta-analysis.

PubMed

Pinquart, Martin; Kauser, Rubina

2018-01-01

The study tested whether associations of parenting styles with internalizing problems, externalizing problems, and academic achievement vary between ethnic groups in western countries, between different regions of the globe, and by level of collectivism/individualism of individual countries. A systematic search in electronic databases and cross referencing identified 428 studies that were included in the random-effects meta-analysis. More ethnic and regional similarities than differences were identified. In western countries, associations of authoritative parenting with academic achievement were stronger in non-Hispanic, White families than in Asian minorities. In these countries, associations of authoritarian parenting with academic achievement were less negative in Hispanic families than in non-Hispanic, White families. Authoritative parenting was associated with at least 1 positive child outcome and authoritarian parenting was associated with at least 1 negative outcome in all regions of the globe, with some regional variation. Finally, associations of authoritarian parenting with child outcomes were weaker in countries with a higher individualism score, as were associations of authoritative parenting with academic performance. Parents across the globe could be recommended to behave authoritatively, although authoritarian and permissive parenting is, to some extent, tolerable in a few cultural contexts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Academic Achievement in Children With Oral Clefts Versus Unaffected Siblings

PubMed Central

Wehby, George L.; Barron, Sheila; Romitti, Paul A.; Ansley, Timothy N.; Speltz, Matthew L.

2014-01-01

Objective To compare academic achievement in children with oral-facial clefts (OFC) with their unaffected siblings. Methods 256 children with OFC were identified from the Iowa Registry for Congenital and Inherited Disorders, and 387 unaffected siblings were identified from birth certificates. These data were linked to Iowa Testing Programs achievement data. We compared academic achievement in children with OFC with their unaffected siblings using linear regression models, adjusted for potential confounders. In post hoc analyses, we explored modifiers of siblings’ academic performance. Results Achievement scores were similar between children with OFC and their siblings. Children with cleft palate only were significantly more likely to use special education than their unaffected siblings. Siblings’ academic achievement was inversely related to distance in birth order and age from the affected child. Conclusion Children with OFC and their siblings received similar achievement scores. Younger siblings, in particular, may share a vulnerability to poor academic outcomes. PMID:24993102

Spatiotemporal dynamics of similarity-based neural representations of facial identity.

PubMed

Vida, Mark D; Nestor, Adrian; Plaut, David C; Behrmann, Marlene

2017-01-10

Humans' remarkable ability to quickly and accurately discriminate among thousands of highly similar complex objects demands rapid and precise neural computations. To elucidate the process by which this is achieved, we used magnetoencephalography to measure spatiotemporal patterns of neural activity with high temporal resolution during visual discrimination among a large and carefully controlled set of faces. We also compared these neural data to lower level "image-based" and higher level "identity-based" model-based representations of our stimuli and to behavioral similarity judgments of our stimuli. Between ∼50 and 400 ms after stimulus onset, face-selective sources in right lateral occipital cortex and right fusiform gyrus and sources in a control region (left V1) yielded successful classification of facial identity. In all regions, early responses were more similar to the image-based representation than to the identity-based representation. In the face-selective regions only, responses were more similar to the identity-based representation at several time points after 200 ms. Behavioral responses were more similar to the identity-based representation than to the image-based representation, and their structure was predicted by responses in the face-selective regions. These results provide a temporally precise description of the transformation from low- to high-level representations of facial identity in human face-selective cortex and demonstrate that face-selective cortical regions represent multiple distinct types of information about face identity at different times over the first 500 ms after stimulus onset. These results have important implications for understanding the rapid emergence of fine-grained, high-level representations of object identity, a computation essential to human visual expertise.

Spatiotemporal dynamics of similarity-based neural representations of facial identity

PubMed Central

Vida, Mark D.; Nestor, Adrian; Plaut, David C.; Behrmann, Marlene

2017-01-01

Humans’ remarkable ability to quickly and accurately discriminate among thousands of highly similar complex objects demands rapid and precise neural computations. To elucidate the process by which this is achieved, we used magnetoencephalography to measure spatiotemporal patterns of neural activity with high temporal resolution during visual discrimination among a large and carefully controlled set of faces. We also compared these neural data to lower level “image-based” and higher level “identity-based” model-based representations of our stimuli and to behavioral similarity judgments of our stimuli. Between ∼50 and 400 ms after stimulus onset, face-selective sources in right lateral occipital cortex and right fusiform gyrus and sources in a control region (left V1) yielded successful classification of facial identity. In all regions, early responses were more similar to the image-based representation than to the identity-based representation. In the face-selective regions only, responses were more similar to the identity-based representation at several time points after 200 ms. Behavioral responses were more similar to the identity-based representation than to the image-based representation, and their structure was predicted by responses in the face-selective regions. These results provide a temporally precise description of the transformation from low- to high-level representations of facial identity in human face-selective cortex and demonstrate that face-selective cortical regions represent multiple distinct types of information about face identity at different times over the first 500 ms after stimulus onset. These results have important implications for understanding the rapid emergence of fine-grained, high-level representations of object identity, a computation essential to human visual expertise. PMID:28028220

Wordform Similarity Increases With Semantic Similarity: An Analysis of 100 Languages.

PubMed

Dautriche, Isabelle; Mahowald, Kyle; Gibson, Edward; Piantadosi, Steven T

2017-11-01

Although the mapping between form and meaning is often regarded as arbitrary, there are in fact well-known constraints on words which are the result of functional pressures associated with language use and its acquisition. In particular, languages have been shown to encode meaning distinctions in their sound properties, which may be important for language learning. Here, we investigate the relationship between semantic distance and phonological distance in the large-scale structure of the lexicon. We show evidence in 100 languages from a diverse array of language families that more semantically similar word pairs are also more phonologically similar. This suggests that there is an important statistical trend for lexicons to have semantically similar words be phonologically similar as well, possibly for functional reasons associated with language learning. Copyright © 2016 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Marital assortment for genetic similarity.

PubMed

Eckman, Ronael E; Williams, Robert; Nagoshi, Craig

2002-10-01

The present study involved analyses of a Caucasian American sample (n=949) and a Japanese American sample (n=400) for factors supporting Genetic Similarity Theory (GST). The analyses found no evidence for the presence of genetic similarity between spouses in either sample for the blood group analyses of nine loci. All results indicated random mating for blood group genes. The results did not provide consistent substantial support to show that spousal similarity is correlated with the degree of genetic component of a trait for a set of seventeen individual differences variables, with only the Caucasian sample yielding significant correlations for this analysis. A third analysis examining the correlation between presence of spousal genetic similarity and spousal similarity on observable traits was not performed because spousal genetic similarity was not observed in either sample. The overall implication of the study is that GST is not supported as an explanation for spousal similarity in humans.

Weighted augmented Jacobian matrix with a variable coefficient method for kinematics mapping of space teleoperation based on human-robot motion similarity

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Shi, Zhong; Huang, Xuexiang; Hu, Tianjian; Tan, Qian; Hou, Yuzhuo

2016-10-01

Space teleoperation is an important space technology, and human-robot motion similarity can improve the flexibility and intuition of space teleoperation. This paper aims to obtain an appropriate kinematics mapping method of coupled Cartesian-joint space for space teleoperation. First, the coupled Cartesian-joint similarity principles concerning kinematics differences are defined. Then, a novel weighted augmented Jacobian matrix with a variable coefficient (WAJM-VC) method for kinematics mapping is proposed. The Jacobian matrix is augmented to achieve a global similarity of human-robot motion. A clamping weighted least norm scheme is introduced to achieve local optimizations, and the operating ratio coefficient is variable to pursue similarity in the elbow joint. Similarity in Cartesian space and the property of joint constraint satisfaction is analysed to determine the damping factor and clamping velocity. Finally, a teleoperation system based on human motion capture is established, and the experimental results indicate that the proposed WAJM-VC method can improve the flexibility and intuition of space teleoperation to complete complex space tasks.

Meta-Storms: efficient search for similar microbial communities based on a novel indexing scheme and similarity score for metagenomic data.

PubMed

Su, Xiaoquan; Xu, Jian; Ning, Kang

2012-10-01

It has long been intriguing scientists to effectively compare different microbial communities (also referred as 'metagenomic samples' here) in a large scale: given a set of unknown samples, find similar metagenomic samples from a large repository and examine how similar these samples are. With the current metagenomic samples accumulated, it is possible to build a database of metagenomic samples of interests. Any metagenomic samples could then be searched against this database to find the most similar metagenomic sample(s). However, on one hand, current databases with a large number of metagenomic samples mostly serve as data repositories that offer few functionalities for analysis; and on the other hand, methods to measure the similarity of metagenomic data work well only for small set of samples by pairwise comparison. It is not yet clear, how to efficiently search for metagenomic samples against a large metagenomic database. In this study, we have proposed a novel method, Meta-Storms, that could systematically and efficiently organize and search metagenomic data. It includes the following components: (i) creating a database of metagenomic samples based on their taxonomical annotations, (ii) efficient indexing of samples in the database based on a hierarchical taxonomy indexing strategy, (iii) searching for a metagenomic sample against the database by a fast scoring function based on quantitative phylogeny and (iv) managing database by index export, index import, data insertion, data deletion and database merging. We have collected more than 1300 metagenomic data from the public domain and in-house facilities, and tested the Meta-Storms method on these datasets. Our experimental results show that Meta-Storms is capable of database creation and effective searching for a large number of metagenomic samples, and it could achieve similar accuracies compared with the current popular significance testing-based methods. Meta-Storms method would serve as a suitable

Similar efficacy, safety and immunogenicity of adalimumab biosimilar BI 695501 and Humira reference product in patients with moderately to severely active rheumatoid arthritis: results from the phase III randomised VOLTAIRE-RA equivalence study.

PubMed

Cohen, Stanley B; Alonso-Ruiz, Alberto; Klimiuk, Piotr A; Lee, Eric C; Peter, Nuala; Sonderegger, Ivo; Assudani, Deepak

2018-06-01

To demonstrate clinical equivalence of adalimumab biosimilar candidate BI 695501 with Humira. Patients with active rheumatoid arthritis on stable methotrexate were randomised to BI 695501 or Humira in a double-blind, parallel-group, equivalence study. At week 24, patients were rerandomised to continue BI 695501 or Humira, or switch from Humira to BI 695501. The coprimary endpoints were the percentage of patients achieving the American College of Rheumatology 20% response criteria (ACR20) at weeks 12 and 24. Further efficacy and safety endpoints and immunogenicity were assessed up to week 58. 645 patients were randomised. At week 12, 67.0% and 61.1% (90% CI -0.9 to 12.7) of patients receiving BI 695501 (n=324) and Humira (n=321), respectively, achieved ACR20; at week 24 the corresponding values were 69.0% and 64.5% (95% CI -3.4 to 12.5). These differences were within prespecified margins (week 12: 90% CI (-12% to 15%); week 24: 95% CI (-15% to 15%)), demonstrating therapeutic bioequivalence. 593 patients were rerandomised at week 24. Up to week 48, mean change from baseline in Disease Activity Score 28-erythrocyte sedimentation rate and ACR20/ACR50/ACR70 response rates were similar across the switched (n=147), continuous BI 695501 (n=298) and continuous Humira (n=148) groups. Similar immunogenicity (antidrug antibodies (ADAs), ADA titres and neutralising antibodies) was seen between BI 695501 and Humira (to week 24) and across rerandomised groups (to week 48). Safety and tolerability profiles were similar between groups. BI 695501 demonstrated similar efficacy, safety and immunogenicity to Humira; switch from Humira to BI 695501 had no impact on efficacy, safety and immunogenicity. NCT02137226, Results. © Article author(s) (or their employer(s) unless otherwise stated in the text of the article) 2018. All rights reserved. No commercial use is permitted unless otherwise expressly granted.

Self-reflection, gender and science achievement

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Shoop, Kathleen A.

Drawing on socio-cognitive learning theory, this study compared achievement scores of 134 male and female high school biology students randomly assigned to groups which either used self-reflection, used self-reflection and received feedback, or did not self-reflect. Following a pretest, the teacher provided self-reflection strategy instruction to students in the two intervention groups and then subsequently provided in-class self-reflection time for these groups. The posttest concluded the unit; the retention measure was five weeks later. A quasi-experimental 3 x 3 x 2 (time x intervention x gender) factorial repeated-measures control group design was used for this study; a repeated measures ANOVA and several one-way ANOVA's were used to answer the research questions. Results from the repeated-measures ANOVA revealed significant results for Time and Time x Intervention, with the reflection group demonstrating significantly lower gains from pretest to posttest than the other two groups. The ANOVA examining differences between those who reflected and those who reflected and received feedback provided significant results with similar results for the difference between the control group and the reflection group. For teachers and students this study provides several areas of practical significance. Primarily, teachers may find lower student achievement if students regularly self-reflect but do not receive feedback for their reflection.

Asymptotic structure and similarity solutions for three-dimensional turbulent boundary layers

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Degani, A. T.; Walker, J. D. A.

1989-01-01

The asymptotic structure of the three-dimensional turbulent boundary layer is investigated in the limit of large Reynolds numbers. A self-consistent, but relatively complex, two-layer structure exists and the simplest situation, corresponding to a plane of symmetry, is considered in this paper as a first step. The adjustment of the streamwise velocity to relative rest, through an outer defect layer and then an inner wall layer, is similar to that in two-dimensional flow. The adjustment of the cross-streamwise velocity is more complicated and it is shown that two terms in the expansion are required to obtain useful results, and in particular to obtain the velocity skew angle at the wall near the symmetry plane. The conditions under which self-similarity is achieved near a plane of symmetry are investigated. A set of ordinary differential equations is developed which describe the streamwise and cross-streamwise velocities near a plane of symmetry in a self-similar flow through two orders of magnitude. Calculated numerical solutions of these equations yield trends which are consistent with experimental observations.

Privacy-Preserving Patient Similarity Learning in a Federated Environment: Development and Analysis

PubMed Central

Sun, Jimeng; Wang, Fei; Wang, Shuang; Jun, Chi-Hyuck; Jiang, Xiaoqian

2018-01-01

Background There is an urgent need for the development of global analytic frameworks that can perform analyses in a privacy-preserving federated environment across multiple institutions without privacy leakage. A few studies on the topic of federated medical analysis have been conducted recently with the focus on several algorithms. However, none of them have solved similar patient matching, which is useful for applications such as cohort construction for cross-institution observational studies, disease surveillance, and clinical trials recruitment. Objective The aim of this study was to present a privacy-preserving platform in a federated setting for patient similarity learning across institutions. Without sharing patient-level information, our model can find similar patients from one hospital to another. Methods We proposed a federated patient hashing framework and developed a novel algorithm to learn context-specific hash codes to represent patients across institutions. The similarities between patients can be efficiently computed using the resulting hash codes of corresponding patients. To avoid security attack from reverse engineering on the model, we applied homomorphic encryption to patient similarity search in a federated setting. Results We used sequential medical events extracted from the Multiparameter Intelligent Monitoring in Intensive Care-III database to evaluate the proposed algorithm in predicting the incidence of five diseases independently. Our algorithm achieved averaged area under the curves of 0.9154 and 0.8012 with balanced and imbalanced data, respectively, in κ-nearest neighbor with κ=3. We also confirmed privacy preservation in similarity search by using homomorphic encryption. Conclusions The proposed algorithm can help search similar patients across institutions effectively to support federated data analysis in a privacy-preserving manner. PMID:29653917

Recognition of Similar Shaped Handwritten Marathi Characters Using Artificial Neural Network

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jane, Archana P.; Pund, Mukesh A.

2012-03-01

The growing need have handwritten Marathi character recognition in Indian offices such as passport, railways etc has made it vital area of a research. Similar shape characters are more prone to misclassification. In this paper a novel method is provided to recognize handwritten Marathi characters based on their features extraction and adaptive smoothing technique. Feature selections methods avoid unnecessary patterns in an image whereas adaptive smoothing technique form smooth shape of charecters.Combination of both these approaches leads to the better results. Previous study shows that, no one technique achieves 100% accuracy in handwritten character recognition area. This approach of combining both adaptive smoothing & feature extraction gives better results (approximately 75-100) and expected outcomes.

Similarity preserving low-rank representation for enhanced data representation and effective subspace learning.

PubMed

Zhang, Zhao; Yan, Shuicheng; Zhao, Mingbo

2014-05-01

Latent Low-Rank Representation (LatLRR) delivers robust and promising results for subspace recovery and feature extraction through mining the so-called hidden effects, but the locality of both similar principal and salient features cannot be preserved in the optimizations. To solve this issue for achieving enhanced performance, a boosted version of LatLRR, referred to as Regularized Low-Rank Representation (rLRR), is proposed through explicitly including an appropriate Laplacian regularization that can maximally preserve the similarity among local features. Resembling LatLRR, rLRR decomposes given data matrix from two directions by seeking a pair of low-rank matrices. But the similarities of principal and salient features can be effectively preserved by rLRR. As a result, the correlated features are well grouped and the robustness of representations is also enhanced. Based on the outputted bi-directional low-rank codes by rLRR, an unsupervised subspace learning framework termed Low-rank Similarity Preserving Projections (LSPP) is also derived for feature learning. The supervised extension of LSPP is also discussed for discriminant subspace learning. The validity of rLRR is examined by robust representation and decomposition of real images. Results demonstrated the superiority of our rLRR and LSPP in comparison to other related state-of-the-art algorithms. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A shortest-path graph kernel for estimating gene product semantic similarity.

PubMed

Alvarez, Marco A; Qi, Xiaojun; Yan, Changhui

2011-07-29

Existing methods for calculating semantic similarity between gene products using the Gene Ontology (GO) often rely on external resources, which are not part of the ontology. Consequently, changes in these external resources like biased term distribution caused by shifting of hot research topics, will affect the calculation of semantic similarity. One way to avoid this problem is to use semantic methods that are "intrinsic" to the ontology, i.e. independent of external knowledge. We present a shortest-path graph kernel (spgk) method that relies exclusively on the GO and its structure. In spgk, a gene product is represented by an induced subgraph of the GO, which consists of all the GO terms annotating it. Then a shortest-path graph kernel is used to compute the similarity between two graphs. In a comprehensive evaluation using a benchmark dataset, spgk compares favorably with other methods that depend on external resources. Compared with simUI, a method that is also intrinsic to GO, spgk achieves slightly better results on the benchmark dataset. Statistical tests show that the improvement is significant when the resolution and EC similarity correlation coefficient are used to measure the performance, but is insignificant when the Pfam similarity correlation coefficient is used. Spgk uses a graph kernel method in polynomial time to exploit the structure of the GO to calculate semantic similarity between gene products. It provides an alternative to both methods that use external resources and "intrinsic" methods with comparable performance.

Nuclear markers reveal that inter-lake cichlids' similar morphologies do not reflect similar genealogy.

PubMed

Kassam, Daud; Seki, Shingo; Horic, Michio; Yamaoka, Kosaku

2006-08-01

The apparent inter-lake morphological similarity among East African Great Lakes' cichlid species/genera has left evolutionary biologists asking whether such similarity is due to sharing of common ancestor or mere convergent evolution. In order to answer such question, we first used Geometric Morphometrics, GM, to quantify morphological similarity and then subsequently used Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism, AFLP, to determine if similar morphologies imply shared ancestry or convergent evolution. GM revealed that not all presumed morphological similar pairs were indeed similar, and the dendrogram generated from AFLP data indicated distinct clusters corresponding to each lake and not inter-lake morphological similar pairs. Such results imply that the morphological similarity is due to convergent evolution and not shared ancestry. The congruency of GM and AFLP generated dendrograms imply that GM is capable of picking up phylogenetic signal, and thus GM can be potential tool in phylogenetic systematics.

The Gender Similarities Hypothesis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hyde, Janet Shibley

2005-01-01

The differences model, which argues that males and females are vastly different psychologically, dominates the popular media. Here, the author advances a very different view, the gender similarities hypothesis, which holds that males and females are similar on most, but not all, psychological variables. Results from a review of 46 meta-analyses…

High-risk population health management--achieving improved patient outcomes and near-term financial results.

PubMed

Lynch, J P; Forman, S A; Graff, S; Gunby, M C

2000-07-01

A managed care organization sought to achieve efficiencies in care delivery and cost savings by anticipating and better caring for its frail and least stable members. Time sequence case study of program intervention across an entire managed care population in its first year compared with the prior baseline year. Key attributes of the intervention included predictive registries of at-risk members based on existing data, relentless focus on the high-risk group, an integrated clinical and psychosocial approach to assessments and are planning, a reengineered care management process, secured Internet applications enabling rapid implementation and broad connectivity, and population-based outcomes metrics derived from widely used measures of resource utilization and functional status. Concentrating on the highest-risk group, which averaged just 1.1% prevalence in the total membership, yielded bottom line results. When the year before program implementation (July 1997 through June 1998) was compared with the subsequent year, the total population's annualized commercial admission rate was reduced 5.3%, and seniors' was reduced 3.0%. A claims-paid analysis exclusively of the highest-risk group revealed that their efficiencies and savings overwhelmingly contributed to the membershipwide effect. This subgroup's costs dropped 35.7% from preprogram levels of $2590 per member per month (excluding pharmaceuticals). During the same time, patient-derived cross-sectional functional status rose 12.5%. A sharply focused, Internet-deployed case management strategy achieved economic and functional status results on a population basis and produced systemwide savings in its first year of implementation.

Application of kernel functions for accurate similarity search in large chemical databases.

PubMed

Wang, Xiaohong; Huan, Jun; Smalter, Aaron; Lushington, Gerald H

2010-04-29

Similarity search in chemical structure databases is an important problem with many applications in chemical genomics, drug design, and efficient chemical probe screening among others. It is widely believed that structure based methods provide an efficient way to do the query. Recently various graph kernel functions have been designed to capture the intrinsic similarity of graphs. Though successful in constructing accurate predictive and classification models, graph kernel functions can not be applied to large chemical compound database due to the high computational complexity and the difficulties in indexing similarity search for large databases. To bridge graph kernel function and similarity search in chemical databases, we applied a novel kernel-based similarity measurement, developed in our team, to measure similarity of graph represented chemicals. In our method, we utilize a hash table to support new graph kernel function definition, efficient storage and fast search. We have applied our method, named G-hash, to large chemical databases. Our results show that the G-hash method achieves state-of-the-art performance for k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) classification. Moreover, the similarity measurement and the index structure is scalable to large chemical databases with smaller indexing size, and faster query processing time as compared to state-of-the-art indexing methods such as Daylight fingerprints, C-tree and GraphGrep. Efficient similarity query processing method for large chemical databases is challenging since we need to balance running time efficiency and similarity search accuracy. Our previous similarity search method, G-hash, provides a new way to perform similarity search in chemical databases. Experimental study validates the utility of G-hash in chemical databases.

Hydrolysis of aluminum dross material to achieve zero hazardous waste.

PubMed

David, E; Kopac, J

2012-03-30

A simple method with high efficiency for generating high pure hydrogen by hydrolysis in tap water of highly activated aluminum dross is established. Aluminum dross is activated by mechanically milling to particles of about 45 μm. This leads to removal of surface layer of the aluminum particles and creation of a fresh chemically active metal surface. In contact with water the hydrolysis reaction takes place and hydrogen is released. In this process a Zero Waste concept is achieved because the other product of reaction is aluminum oxide hydroxide (AlOOH), which is nature-friendly and can be used to make high quality refractory or calcium aluminate cement. For comparison we also used pure aluminum powder and alkaline tap water solution (NaOH, KOH) at a ratio similar to that of aluminum dross content. The rates of hydrogen generated in hydrolysis reaction of pure aluminum and aluminum dross have been found to be similar. As a result of the experimental setup, a hydrogen generator was designed and assembled. Hydrogen volume generated by hydrolysis reaction was measured. The experimental results obtained reveal that aluminum dross could be economically recycled by hydrolysis process with achieving zero hazardous aluminum dross waste and hydrogen generation. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Experimental and Theoretical Study on Minimum Achievable Foil Thickness during Asymmetric Rolling

PubMed Central

Tang, Delin; Liu, Xianghua; Song, Meng; Yu, Hailiang

2014-01-01

Parts produced by microforming are becoming ever smaller. Similarly, the foils required in micro-machines are becoming ever thinner. The asymmetric rolling technique is capable of producing foils that are thinner than those produced by the conventional rolling technique. The difference between asymmetric rolling and conventional rolling is the ‘cross-shear’ zone. However, the influence of the cross-shear zone on the minimum achievable foil thickness during asymmetric rolling is still uncertain. In this paper, we report experiments designed to understand this critical influencing factor on the minimum achievable thickness in asymmetric rolling. Results showed that the minimum achievable thickness of rolled foils produced by asymmetric rolling with a rolling speed ratio of 1.3 can be reduced to about 30% of that possible by conventional rolling technique. Furthermore, the minimum achievable thickness during asymmetric rolling could be correlated to the cross-shear ratio, which, in turn, could be related to the rolling speed ratio. From the experimental results, a formula to calculate the minimum achievable thickness was established, considering the parameters cross-shear ratio, friction coefficient, work roll radius, etc. in asymmetric rolling. PMID:25203265

Improving Achievement in Low-Performing Schools: Key Results for School Leaders

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ward, Randolph E.; Burke, Mary Ann

2004-01-01

As accountability in schools becomes more crucial, educators are looking for comprehensive and innovative management practices that respond to challenges and realities of student academic achievement. In order to improve academic performance and the quality of instruction, the entire school community needs to be involved. This book provides six…

Functional grouping of similar genes using eigenanalysis on minimum spanning tree based neighborhood graph.

PubMed

Jothi, R; Mohanty, Sraban Kumar; Ojha, Aparajita

2016-04-01

Gene expression data clustering is an important biological process in DNA microarray analysis. Although there have been many clustering algorithms for gene expression analysis, finding a suitable and effective clustering algorithm is always a challenging problem due to the heterogeneous nature of gene profiles. Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) based clustering algorithms have been successfully employed to detect clusters of varying shapes and sizes. This paper proposes a novel clustering algorithm using Eigenanalysis on Minimum Spanning Tree based neighborhood graph (E-MST). As MST of a set of points reflects the similarity of the points with their neighborhood, the proposed algorithm employs a similarity graph obtained from k(') rounds of MST (k(')-MST neighborhood graph). By studying the spectral properties of the similarity matrix obtained from k(')-MST graph, the proposed algorithm achieves improved clustering results. We demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed algorithm on 12 gene expression datasets. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm performs better than the standard clustering algorithms. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Why Evaluations Fail: To Achieve Meaningful Results, Address These Common Challenges

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Killion, Joellen

2017-01-01

Evaluation of professional learning illuminates the interactions that occur in the implementation of planned learning experiences and the necessary supports designed to improve professional practice and its effects on students. It investigates how a set of actions designed to achieve defined short- and long-term outcomes occur over time and how…

The gender similarities hypothesis.

PubMed

Hyde, Janet Shibley

2005-09-01

The differences model, which argues that males and females are vastly different psychologically, dominates the popular media. Here, the author advances a very different view, the gender similarities hypothesis, which holds that males and females are similar on most, but not all, psychological variables. Results from a review of 46 meta-analyses support the gender similarities hypothesis. Gender differences can vary substantially in magnitude at different ages and depend on the context in which measurement occurs. Overinflated claims of gender differences carry substantial costs in areas such as the workplace and relationships. Copyright (c) 2005 APA, all rights reserved.

An adaptive image sparse reconstruction method combined with nonlocal similarity and cosparsity for mixed Gaussian-Poisson noise removal

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chen, Yong-fei; Gao, Hong-xia; Wu, Zi-ling; Kang, Hui

2018-01-01

Compressed sensing (CS) has achieved great success in single noise removal. However, it cannot restore the images contaminated with mixed noise efficiently. This paper introduces nonlocal similarity and cosparsity inspired by compressed sensing to overcome the difficulties in mixed noise removal, in which nonlocal similarity explores the signal sparsity from similar patches, and cosparsity assumes that the signal is sparse after a possibly redundant transform. Meanwhile, an adaptive scheme is designed to keep the balance between mixed noise removal and detail preservation based on local variance. Finally, IRLSM and RACoSaMP are adopted to solve the objective function. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method is superior to conventional CS methods, like K-SVD and state-of-art method nonlocally centralized sparse representation (NCSR), in terms of both visual results and quantitative measures.

Earthquake detection through computationally efficient similarity search

PubMed Central

Yoon, Clara E.; O’Reilly, Ossian; Bergen, Karianne J.; Beroza, Gregory C.

2015-01-01

Seismology is experiencing rapid growth in the quantity of data, which has outpaced the development of processing algorithms. Earthquake detection—identification of seismic events in continuous data—is a fundamental operation for observational seismology. We developed an efficient method to detect earthquakes using waveform similarity that overcomes the disadvantages of existing detection methods. Our method, called Fingerprint And Similarity Thresholding (FAST), can analyze a week of continuous seismic waveform data in less than 2 hours, or 140 times faster than autocorrelation. FAST adapts a data mining algorithm, originally designed to identify similar audio clips within large databases; it first creates compact “fingerprints” of waveforms by extracting key discriminative features, then groups similar fingerprints together within a database to facilitate fast, scalable search for similar fingerprint pairs, and finally generates a list of earthquake detections. FAST detected most (21 of 24) cataloged earthquakes and 68 uncataloged earthquakes in 1 week of continuous data from a station located near the Calaveras Fault in central California, achieving detection performance comparable to that of autocorrelation, with some additional false detections. FAST is expected to realize its full potential when applied to extremely long duration data sets over a distributed network of seismic stations. The widespread application of FAST has the potential to aid in the discovery of unexpected seismic signals, improve seismic monitoring, and promote a greater understanding of a variety of earthquake processes. PMID:26665176

What difference reveals about similarity.

PubMed

Sagi, Eyal; Gentner, Dedre; Lovett, Andrew

2012-08-01

Detecting that two images are different is faster for highly dissimilar images than for highly similar images. Paradoxically, we showed that the reverse occurs when people are asked to describe how two images differ--that is, to state a difference between two images. Following structure-mapping theory, we propose that this disassociation arises from the multistage nature of the comparison process. Detecting that two images are different can be done in the initial (local-matching) stage, but only for pairs with low overlap; thus, "different" responses are faster for low-similarity than for high-similarity pairs. In contrast, identifying a specific difference generally requires a full structural alignment of the two images, and this alignment process is faster for high-similarity pairs. We described four experiments that demonstrate this dissociation and show that the results can be simulated using the Structure-Mapping Engine. These results pose a significant challenge for nonstructural accounts of similarity comparison and suggest that structural alignment processes play a significant role in visual comparison. Copyright © 2012 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Personalized mortality prediction driven by electronic medical data and a patient similarity metric.

PubMed

Lee, Joon; Maslove, David M; Dubin, Joel A

2015-01-01

Clinical outcome prediction normally employs static, one-size-fits-all models that perform well for the average patient but are sub-optimal for individual patients with unique characteristics. In the era of digital healthcare, it is feasible to dynamically personalize decision support by identifying and analyzing similar past patients, in a way that is analogous to personalized product recommendation in e-commerce. Our objectives were: 1) to prove that analyzing only similar patients leads to better outcome prediction performance than analyzing all available patients, and 2) to characterize the trade-off between training data size and the degree of similarity between the training data and the index patient for whom prediction is to be made. We deployed a cosine-similarity-based patient similarity metric (PSM) to an intensive care unit (ICU) database to identify patients that are most similar to each patient and subsequently to custom-build 30-day mortality prediction models. Rich clinical and administrative data from the first day in the ICU from 17,152 adult ICU admissions were analyzed. The results confirmed that using data from only a small subset of most similar patients for training improves predictive performance in comparison with using data from all available patients. The results also showed that when too few similar patients are used for training, predictive performance degrades due to the effects of small sample sizes. Our PSM-based approach outperformed well-known ICU severity of illness scores. Although the improved prediction performance is achieved at the cost of increased computational burden, Big Data technologies can help realize personalized data-driven decision support at the point of care. The present study provides crucial empirical evidence for the promising potential of personalized data-driven decision support systems. With the increasing adoption of electronic medical record (EMR) systems, our novel medical data analytics contributes to

Can paying for results help to achieve the Millennium Development Goals? A critical review of selected evaluations of results-based financing.

PubMed

Oxman, Andrew D; Fretheim, Atle

2009-08-01

Results-based financing (RBF) refers to the transfer of money or material goods conditional on taking a measurable action or achieving a predetermined performance target. RBF is being promoted for helping to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). We undertook a critical appraisal of selected evaluations of RBF schemes in the health sector in low and middle-income countries (LMIC). In addition, key informants were interviewed to identify literature relevant to the use of RBF in the health sector in LMIC, key examples, evaluations, and other key informants. The use of RBF in LMIC has commonly been a part of a package that may include increased funding, technical support, training, changes in management, and new information systems. It is not possible to disentangle the effects of financial incentives as one element of RBF schemes, and there is very limited evidence of RBF per se having an effect. RBF schemes can have unintended effects. When RBF schemes are used, they should be designed carefully, including the level at which they are targeted, the choice of targets and indicators, the type and magnitude of incentives, the proportion of financing that is paid based on results, and the ancillary components of the scheme. For RBF to be effective, it must be part of an appropriate package of interventions, and technical capacity or support must be available. RBF schemes should be monitored for possible unintended effects and evaluated using rigorous study designs. © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd and Chinese Cochrane Center, West China Hospital of Sichuan University.

FRESCO: Referential compression of highly similar sequences.

PubMed

Wandelt, Sebastian; Leser, Ulf

2013-01-01

In many applications, sets of similar texts or sequences are of high importance. Prominent examples are revision histories of documents or genomic sequences. Modern high-throughput sequencing technologies are able to generate DNA sequences at an ever-increasing rate. In parallel to the decreasing experimental time and cost necessary to produce DNA sequences, computational requirements for analysis and storage of the sequences are steeply increasing. Compression is a key technology to deal with this challenge. Recently, referential compression schemes, storing only the differences between a to-be-compressed input and a known reference sequence, gained a lot of interest in this field. In this paper, we propose a general open-source framework to compress large amounts of biological sequence data called Framework for REferential Sequence COmpression (FRESCO). Our basic compression algorithm is shown to be one to two orders of magnitudes faster than comparable related work, while achieving similar compression ratios. We also propose several techniques to further increase compression ratios, while still retaining the advantage in speed: 1) selecting a good reference sequence; and 2) rewriting a reference sequence to allow for better compression. In addition,we propose a new way of further boosting the compression ratios by applying referential compression to already referentially compressed files (second-order compression). This technique allows for compression ratios way beyond state of the art, for instance,4,000:1 and higher for human genomes. We evaluate our algorithms on a large data set from three different species (more than 1,000 genomes, more than 3 TB) and on a collection of versions of Wikipedia pages. Our results show that real-time compression of highly similar sequences at high compression ratios is possible on modern hardware.

Reading Achievement State by State, 1999. Goal 3: Student Achievement and Citizenship.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

National Education Goals Panel (ED), Washington, DC.

Noting that performance at the highest levels of achievement on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is evidence that students have demonstrated competency over challenging subject matter and achieved the third National Educational Goal, this report presents the most up-to-date results in reading achievement for the states and…

A path-based measurement for human miRNA functional similarities using miRNA-disease associations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ding, Pingjian; Luo, Jiawei; Xiao, Qiu; Chen, Xiangtao

2016-09-01

Compared with the sequence and expression similarity, miRNA functional similarity is so important for biology researches and many applications such as miRNA clustering, miRNA function prediction, miRNA synergism identification and disease miRNA prioritization. However, the existing methods always utilized the predicted miRNA target which has high false positive and false negative to calculate the miRNA functional similarity. Meanwhile, it is difficult to achieve high reliability of miRNA functional similarity with miRNA-disease associations. Therefore, it is increasingly needed to improve the measurement of miRNA functional similarity. In this study, we develop a novel path-based calculation method of miRNA functional similarity based on miRNA-disease associations, called MFSP. Compared with other methods, our method obtains higher average functional similarity of intra-family and intra-cluster selected groups. Meanwhile, the lower average functional similarity of inter-family and inter-cluster miRNA pair is obtained. In addition, the smaller p-value is achieved, while applying Wilcoxon rank-sum test and Kruskal-Wallis test to different miRNA groups. The relationship between miRNA functional similarity and other information sources is exhibited. Furthermore, the constructed miRNA functional network based on MFSP is a scale-free and small-world network. Moreover, the higher AUC for miRNA-disease prediction indicates the ability of MFSP uncovering miRNA functional similarity.

Analysis of perceived similarity between pairs of microcalcification clusters in mammograms

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Wang, Juan; Jing, Hao; Wernick, Miles N.

2014-05-15

Purpose: Content-based image retrieval aims to assist radiologists by presenting example images with known pathology that are visually similar to the case being evaluated. In this work, the authors investigate several fundamental issues underlying the similarity ratings between pairs of microcalcification (MC) lesions on mammograms as judged by radiologists: the degree of variability in the similarity ratings, the impact of this variability on agreement between readers in retrieval of similar lesions, and the factors contributing to the readers’ similarity ratings. Methods: The authors conduct a reader study on a set of 1000 image pairs of MC lesions, in which amore » group of experienced breast radiologists rated the degree of similarity between each image pair. The image pairs are selected, from among possible pairings of 222 cases (110 malignant, 112 benign), based on quantitative image attributes (features) and the results of a preliminary reader study. Next, the authors apply analysis of variance (ANOVA) to quantify the level of variability in the readers’ similarity ratings, and study how the variability in individual reader ratings affects consistency between readers. The authors also measure the extent to which readers agree on images which are most similar to a given query, for which the Dice coefficient is used. To investigate how the similarity ratings potentially relate to the attributes underlying the cases, the authors study the fraction of perceptually similar images that also share the same benign or malignant pathology as the query image; moreover, the authors apply multidimensional scaling (MDS) to embed the cases according to their mutual perceptual similarity in a two-dimensional plot, which allows the authors to examine the manner in which similar lesions relate to one another in terms of benign or malignant pathology and clustered MCs. Results: The ANOVA results show that the coefficient of determination in the reader similarity ratings

Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions Resulting as Picometer Interactions with Similarity to K-Shell Electron Capture

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hora, H.; Miley, G. H.; Li, X. Z.; Kelly, J. C.; Osman, F.

2006-02-01

Since the appeal by Brian Josephson at the meeting of the Nobel Laureates July 2004, it seems to be indicated to summarize the following serious, reproducible and confirmed observations on reactions of protons or deuterons incorporated in host metals such as palladium. Some reflections to Rutherford's discovery of nuclear physics, the Cockroft-Oliphant discovery of anomalous low-energy fusion reactions and the chemist Hahn's discovery of fission had to be included. Using gaseous atmosphere or discharges between palladium targets, rather significant results were seen e.g. from the "life after death" heat production of such high values per host atom that only nuclear reactions can be involved. This supports the earlier evaluation of neutron generation in fully reversible experiments with gas discharges hinting that a reasonable screening effect - preferably in the swimming electron layer - may lead to reactions at nuclear distances d of picometers with reaction probability times U of about megaseconds similar to the K-shell capture radioactivity. Further electrolytic experiments led to low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR) where the involvement of pollution could be excluded from the appearance of very seldom rare earth elements. A basically new theory for DD cross-sections is used to confirm the picometer-megasecond reactions of cold fusion. Other theoretical aspects are given from measured heavy element distributions similar to the standard abundance distribution, SAD, in the Universe with consequences on endothermic heavy nuclei generation, magic numbers and to quark-gluon plasmas.

A cloud-based system for measuring radiation treatment plan similarity

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Andrea, Jennifer

PURPOSE: Radiation therapy is used to treat cancer using carefully designed plans that maximize the radiation dose delivered to the target and minimize damage to healthy tissue, with the dose administered over multiple occasions. Creating treatment plans is a laborious process and presents an obstacle to more frequent replanning, which remains an unsolved problem. However, in between new plans being created, the patient's anatomy can change due to multiple factors including reduction in tumor size and loss of weight, which results in poorer patient outcomes. Cloud computing is a newer technology that is slowly being used for medical applications with promising results. The objective of this work was to design and build a system that could analyze a database of previously created treatment plans, which are stored with their associated anatomical information in studies, to find the one with the most similar anatomy to a new patient. The analyses would be performed in parallel on the cloud to decrease the computation time of finding this plan. METHODS: The system used SlicerRT, a radiation therapy toolkit for the open-source platform 3D Slicer, for its tools to perform the similarity analysis algorithm. Amazon Web Services was used for the cloud instances on which the analyses were performed, as well as for storage of the radiation therapy studies and messaging between the instances and a master local computer. A module was built in SlicerRT to provide the user with an interface to direct the system on the cloud, as well as to perform other related tasks. RESULTS: The cloud-based system out-performed previous methods of conducting the similarity analyses in terms of time, as it analyzed 100 studies in approximately 13 minutes, and produced the same similarity values as those methods. It also scaled up to larger numbers of studies to analyze in the database with a small increase in computation time of just over 2 minutes. CONCLUSION: This system successfully analyzes a

Semantic Similarity in Biomedical Ontologies

PubMed Central

Pesquita, Catia; Faria, Daniel; Falcão, André O.; Lord, Phillip; Couto, Francisco M.

2009-01-01

In recent years, ontologies have become a mainstream topic in biomedical research. When biological entities are described using a common schema, such as an ontology, they can be compared by means of their annotations. This type of comparison is called semantic similarity, since it assesses the degree of relatedness between two entities by the similarity in meaning of their annotations. The application of semantic similarity to biomedical ontologies is recent; nevertheless, several studies have been published in the last few years describing and evaluating diverse approaches. Semantic similarity has become a valuable tool for validating the results drawn from biomedical studies such as gene clustering, gene expression data analysis, prediction and validation of molecular interactions, and disease gene prioritization. We review semantic similarity measures applied to biomedical ontologies and propose their classification according to the strategies they employ: node-based versus edge-based and pairwise versus groupwise. We also present comparative assessment studies and discuss the implications of their results. We survey the existing implementations of semantic similarity measures, and we describe examples of applications to biomedical research. This will clarify how biomedical researchers can benefit from semantic similarity measures and help them choose the approach most suitable for their studies. Biomedical ontologies are evolving toward increased coverage, formality, and integration, and their use for annotation is increasingly becoming a focus of both effort by biomedical experts and application of automated annotation procedures to create corpora of higher quality and completeness than are currently available. Given that semantic similarity measures are directly dependent on these evolutions, we can expect to see them gaining more relevance and even becoming as essential as sequence similarity is today in biomedical research. PMID:19649320

Optimal design of multichannel equalizers for the structural similarity index.

PubMed

Chai, Li; Sheng, Yuxia

2014-12-01

The optimization of multichannel equalizers is studied for the structural similarity (SSIM) criteria. The closed-form formula is provided for the optimal equalizer when the mean of the source is zero. The formula shows that the equalizer with maximal SSIM index is equal to the one with minimal mean square error (MSE) multiplied by a positive real number, which is shown to be equal to the inverse of the achieved SSIM index. The relation of the maximal SSIM index to the minimal MSE is also established for given blurring filters and fixed length equalizers. An algorithm is also presented to compute the suboptimal equalizer for the general sources. Various numerical examples are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the results.

Achievement strategies at school: types and correlates.

PubMed

Määttä, Sami; Stattin, Häkan; Nurmi, Jari-Erik

2002-02-01

In this study we made an effort to identify the kinds of strategies adolescents deploy in achievement context in an unselected sample of Swedish adolescents. The participants were 880 14-15-year-old comprehensive school students (399 boys and 481 girls) from a middle-sized town in central Sweden. Six groups of adolescents were identified according to the strategies they deployed. Four of them, i.e. optimistic, defensive pessimistic, self-handicapping and learned helplessness strategies, were similar to those described previously in the literature. The results showed that membership in the functional strategy groups, such as in mastery-oriented and defensive pessimist groups, was associated with well-being, school adjustment and achievement, and low levels of norm-breaking behaviour. By contrast, membership in the dysfunctional, for example self-handicapping and learned helplessness strategy groups, was associated with low levels of well-being, and of school adjustment, and a higher level of norm-breaking behaviour. Copyright 2002 The Association for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

MOST: most-similar ligand based approach to target prediction.

PubMed

Huang, Tao; Mi, Hong; Lin, Cheng-Yuan; Zhao, Ling; Zhong, Linda L D; Liu, Feng-Bin; Zhang, Ge; Lu, Ai-Ping; Bian, Zhao-Xiang

2017-03-11

Many computational approaches have been used for target prediction, including machine learning, reverse docking, bioactivity spectra analysis, and chemical similarity searching. Recent studies have suggested that chemical similarity searching may be driven by the most-similar ligand. However, the extent of bioactivity of most-similar ligands has been oversimplified or even neglected in these studies, and this has impaired the prediction power. Here we propose the MOst-Similar ligand-based Target inference approach, namely MOST, which uses fingerprint similarity and explicit bioactivity of the most-similar ligands to predict targets of the query compound. Performance of MOST was evaluated by using combinations of different fingerprint schemes, machine learning methods, and bioactivity representations. In sevenfold cross-validation with a benchmark Ki dataset from CHEMBL release 19 containing 61,937 bioactivity data of 173 human targets, MOST achieved high average prediction accuracy (0.95 for pKi ≥ 5, and 0.87 for pKi ≥ 6). Morgan fingerprint was shown to be slightly better than FP2. Logistic Regression and Random Forest methods performed better than Naïve Bayes. In a temporal validation, the Ki dataset from CHEMBL19 were used to train models and predict the bioactivity of newly deposited ligands in CHEMBL20. MOST also performed well with high accuracy (0.90 for pKi ≥ 5, and 0.76 for pKi ≥ 6), when Logistic Regression and Morgan fingerprint were employed. Furthermore, the p values associated with explicit bioactivity were found be a robust index for removing false positive predictions. Implicit bioactivity did not offer this capability. Finally, p values generated with Logistic Regression, Morgan fingerprint and explicit activity were integrated with a false discovery rate (FDR) control procedure to reduce false positives in multiple-target prediction scenario, and the success of this strategy it was demonstrated with a case of fluanisone

Melody Alignment and Similarity Metric for Content-Based Music Retrieval

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhu, Yongwei; Kankanhalli, Mohan S.

2003-01-01

Music query-by-humming has attracted much research interest recently. It is a challenging problem since the hummed query inevitably contains much variation and inaccuracy. Furthermore, the similarity computation between the query tune and the reference melody is not easy due to the difficulty in ensuring proper alignment. This is because the query tune can be rendered at an unknown speed and it is usually an arbitrary subsequence of the target reference melody. Many of the previous methods, which adopt note segmentation and string matching, suffer drastically from the errors in the note segmentation, which affects retrieval accuracy and efficiency. Some methods solve the alignment issue by controlling the speed of the articulation of queries, which is inconvenient because it forces users to hum along a metronome. Some other techniques introduce arbitrary rescaling in time but this is computationally very inefficient. In this paper, we introduce a melody alignment technique, which addresses the robustness and efficiency issues. We also present a new melody similarity metric, which is performed directly on melody contours of the query data. This approach cleanly separates the alignment and similarity measurement in the search process. We show how to robustly and efficiently align the query melody with the reference melodies and how to measure the similarity subsequently. We have carried out extensive experiments. Our melody alignment method can reduce the matching candidate to 1.7% with 95% correct alignment rate. The overall retrieval system achieved 80% recall in the top 10 rank list. The results demonstrate the robustness and effectiveness the proposed methods.

Relations between sedentary behavior and FITNESSGRAM healthy fitness zone achievement and physical activity.

PubMed

Tucker, Jacob S; Martin, Scott; Jackson, Allen W; Morrow, James R; Greenleaf, Christy A; Petrie, Trent A

2014-07-01

To investigate the relations between sedentary behaviors and health-related physical fitness and physical activity in middle school boys and girls. Students (n = 1515) in grades 6-8 completed the Youth Risk Behavior Survey sedentary behavior questions, the FITNESSGRAM physical fitness items, and FITNESSGRAM physical activity self-report questions. When students reported ≤ 2 hours per day of sedentary behaviors, their odds of achieving the FITNESSGRAM Healthy Fitness Zone for aerobic capacity, muscular strength and endurance, flexibility, and body composition increased. Similarly, the odds of achieving physical activity guidelines for children increased when students reported ≤ 2 hours per day of sedentary behaviors. Results illustrate the importance of keeping sedentary behaviors to ≤ 2 hours per day in middle school children, thus increasing the odds that the student will achieve sufficient health-related fitness benefits and be more likely to achieve the national physical activity guidelines.

Fifteen Years of Collaborative Innovation and Achievement: NASA Nebraska Space Grant Consortium 15-Year Program Performance and Results Report

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Schaaf, Michaela M.; Bowen, Brent D.; Fink, Mary M.; Nickerson, Jocelyn S.; Avery, Shelly; Carstenson, Larry; Dugan, James; Farritor, Shane; Joyce, James; Rebrovich, Barb

2003-01-01

Condensing five years of significant work into a brief narrative fitting PPR requirements gave the affiliates of the Nebraska Space Grant a valuable chance for reflection. Achievements of Space Grant in Nebraska were judiciously chosen for this document that best illustrate the resultant synergism of this consortium, keeping in mind that these examples are only a representation of greater activity throughout the state. Following are highlights of many of the finer and personal achievements for Nebraska Space Grant. The Consortium welcomes inquiries to elaborate on any of these accomplishments.

Similarities among receptor pockets and among compounds: analysis and application to in silico ligand screening.

PubMed

Fukunishi, Yoshifumi; Mikami, Yoshiaki; Nakamura, Haruki

2005-09-01

We developed a new method to evaluate the distances and similarities between receptor pockets or chemical compounds based on a multi-receptor versus multi-ligand docking affinity matrix. The receptors were classified by a cluster analysis based on calculations of the distance between receptor pockets. A set of low homologous receptors that bind a similar compound could be classified into one cluster. Based on this line of reasoning, we proposed a new in silico screening method. According to this method, compounds in a database were docked to multiple targets. The new docking score was a slightly modified version of the multiple active site correction (MASC) score. Receptors that were at a set distance from the target receptor were not included in the analysis, and the modified MASC scores were calculated for the selected receptors. The choice of the receptors is important to achieve a good screening result, and our clustering of receptors is useful to this purpose. This method was applied to the analysis of a set of 132 receptors and 132 compounds, and the results demonstrated that this method achieves a high hit ratio, as compared to that of a uniform sampling, using a receptor-ligand docking program, Sievgene, which was newly developed with a good docking performance yielding 50.8% of the reconstructed complexes at a distance of less than 2 A RMSD.

An application of belief-importance theory in the domain of academic achievement.

PubMed

Petrides, K V; Frederickson, Norah

2011-03-01

BACKGROUND. Belief-importance (belimp; Petrides, 2010a,b) theory posits that personality traits confer on the individual a propensity to perceive convergences and divergences between their belief that they can attain goals and the importance that they place on these goals. The theory suggests that these convergences and divergences have important implications for affect, motivation, and action. AIMS. To test belimp theory using performance-based criteria relating to academic achievement and constructs from the personality domain. SAMPLES. Two hundred and forty-two students, of whom 121 were male and 117 were female (4 unreported). They were approximately 18 years old at the time of testing. METHODS. Data were collected on the belief and importance of academic achievement, the Giant Three personality dimensions, and trait emotional intelligence (trait EI). Academic achievement was operationalized via Key Stage 3 and A-level assessment results. RESULTS. Four hypotheses concerning academic achievement were tested and confirmed, with the Motivation quadrant scoring higher than the other three belimp quadrants (Hubris, Depression, and Apathy). Four hypotheses concerning personality were tested, of which two were confirmed, with the Hubris quadrant scoring highest on psychoticism and the Depression quadrant scoring highest on neuroticism. Four hierarchical regressions demonstrated the incremental validity of the belief and importance belimp coordinates over the Giant Three personality dimensions in the prediction of academic achievement. CONCLUSIONS. The results are encouraging for belimp theory and complement similarly supportive findings in Petrides (2010b,c). ©2010 The British Psychological Society.

Usage of Computers and Calculators and Students' Achievement: Results from TIMSS 2003

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Antonijevic, Radovan

2007-01-01

The paper deals with the facts obtained from TIMSS 2003 (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study). This international comparative study, which includes 47 participant countries worldwide, explores dependence between eighth grade students' achievement in the areas of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and geography, and basic…

GH treatment to final height produces similar height gains in patients with SHOX deficiency and Turner syndrome: results of a multicenter trial.

PubMed

Blum, Werner F; Ross, Judith L; Zimmermann, Alan G; Quigley, Charmian A; Child, Christopher J; Kalifa, Gabriel; Deal, Cheri; Drop, Stenvert L S; Rappold, Gudrun; Cutler, Gordon B

2013-08-01

Growth impairment in short stature homeobox-containing gene (SHOX) deficiency and Turner syndrome share a similar etiology. Because of the established effect of GH treatment on height in patients with Turner syndrome, we hypothesized that GH therapy would also stimulate growth in patients with SHOX deficiency. Our objectives were to evaluate long-term efficacy of GH treatment in short patients with SHOX deficiency and to compare the effect on final (adult) height (FH) in patients with SHOX deficiency and Turner syndrome. A prospective, multinational, open-label, randomized 3-arm study consisting of a 2-year control period and a subsequent extension period to FH. The treatment groups were 1) SHOX-D-C/GH (untreated during the control period, GH-treated during the extension), 2) SHOX-D-GH/GH, and 3) Turner-GH/GH (GH-treated during both study periods). Short-statured prepubertal patients with genetically confirmed SHOX deficiency (n = 49) or Turner syndrome (n = 24) who participated in the extension. Depending on the study arm, patients received a daily sc injection of 0.05 mg/kg recombinant human GH from start of the study or start of the extension until attainment of FH or study closure. Height SD score gain from start of GH treatment to FH was similar between the combined SHOX-deficient groups (n = 28, 1.34 ± 0.18 [least-squares mean ± SE]) and the Turner group (n = 19, 1.32 ± 0.22). In this FH population, 57% of the patients with SHOX deficiency and 32% of the patients with Turner syndrome achieved a FH greater than -2 SD score. GH treatment in short children with SHOX deficiency showed similar long-term efficacy as seen in girls with Turner syndrome.

G-Hash: Towards Fast Kernel-based Similarity Search in Large Graph Databases.

PubMed

Wang, Xiaohong; Smalter, Aaron; Huan, Jun; Lushington, Gerald H

2009-01-01

Structured data including sets, sequences, trees and graphs, pose significant challenges to fundamental aspects of data management such as efficient storage, indexing, and similarity search. With the fast accumulation of graph databases, similarity search in graph databases has emerged as an important research topic. Graph similarity search has applications in a wide range of domains including cheminformatics, bioinformatics, sensor network management, social network management, and XML documents, among others.Most of the current graph indexing methods focus on subgraph query processing, i.e. determining the set of database graphs that contains the query graph and hence do not directly support similarity search. In data mining and machine learning, various graph kernel functions have been designed to capture the intrinsic similarity of graphs. Though successful in constructing accurate predictive and classification models for supervised learning, graph kernel functions have (i) high computational complexity and (ii) non-trivial difficulty to be indexed in a graph database.Our objective is to bridge graph kernel function and similarity search in graph databases by proposing (i) a novel kernel-based similarity measurement and (ii) an efficient indexing structure for graph data management. Our method of similarity measurement builds upon local features extracted from each node and their neighboring nodes in graphs. A hash table is utilized to support efficient storage and fast search of the extracted local features. Using the hash table, a graph kernel function is defined to capture the intrinsic similarity of graphs and for fast similarity query processing. We have implemented our method, which we have named G-hash, and have demonstrated its utility on large chemical graph databases. Our results show that the G-hash method achieves state-of-the-art performance for k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) classification. Most importantly, the new similarity measurement and the index

Laterality of Oral Clefts and Academic Achievement.

PubMed

Gallagher, Emily R; Collett, Brent R; Barron, Sheila; Romitti, Paul; Ansley, Timothy; Wehby, George L

2017-02-01

Children with isolated oral clefts have lower academic performance when compared with unaffected peers, yet few studies have examined specific attributes of clefts that may modify this risk. Oral clefts have nonrandom laterality, with left-sided clefts being more common than right-sided clefts, a pattern that may be genetically or environmentally influenced. The objective of this study was to evaluate the association between cleft laterality and academic achievement in a population-based sample of children with and without isolated oral clefts. The study included 292 children with isolated unilateral cleft lip with or without cleft palate identified by using the Iowa Registry for Congenital and Inherited Disorders matched with 908 unaffected classmates. This group provided 1953 child-grade observations for cases and 6829 for classmates. Academic achievement was evaluated by using high-quality standardized test data on multiple academic domains as well as use of special education. We found that children with right-sided clefts had similar achievement scores and usage of special education services compared with their unaffected classmates. Children with left-sided clefts had lower reading scores than children with right-sided clefts by nearly 7 percentiles (P < .05). They also had lower scores on all evaluated domains by 4 to 6 percentiles and greater use of special education services by 6 percentage points than their classmates. Children with left-sided clefts had poorer academic performance than their classmates or children with right-sided clefts, who showed similar academic achievement compared with their unaffected classmates. Copyright © 2017 by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Minnesota Developmental Achievement Centers: 1987 Survey Results. Policy Analysis Series, No. 28.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Minnesota Governor's Planning Council on Developmental Disabilities, St. Paul.

This paper presents data collected from rehabilitation centers serving individuals with developmental disabilities in Minnesota, called Developmental Achievement Centers (DACs). The data focus on finances, programs, and clients, and are compared with data from previous years. All 97 providers of adult services in Minnesota completed the survey,…

Personalized Mortality Prediction Driven by Electronic Medical Data and a Patient Similarity Metric

PubMed Central

Lee, Joon; Maslove, David M.; Dubin, Joel A.

2015-01-01

Background Clinical outcome prediction normally employs static, one-size-fits-all models that perform well for the average patient but are sub-optimal for individual patients with unique characteristics. In the era of digital healthcare, it is feasible to dynamically personalize decision support by identifying and analyzing similar past patients, in a way that is analogous to personalized product recommendation in e-commerce. Our objectives were: 1) to prove that analyzing only similar patients leads to better outcome prediction performance than analyzing all available patients, and 2) to characterize the trade-off between training data size and the degree of similarity between the training data and the index patient for whom prediction is to be made. Methods and Findings We deployed a cosine-similarity-based patient similarity metric (PSM) to an intensive care unit (ICU) database to identify patients that are most similar to each patient and subsequently to custom-build 30-day mortality prediction models. Rich clinical and administrative data from the first day in the ICU from 17,152 adult ICU admissions were analyzed. The results confirmed that using data from only a small subset of most similar patients for training improves predictive performance in comparison with using data from all available patients. The results also showed that when too few similar patients are used for training, predictive performance degrades due to the effects of small sample sizes. Our PSM-based approach outperformed well-known ICU severity of illness scores. Although the improved prediction performance is achieved at the cost of increased computational burden, Big Data technologies can help realize personalized data-driven decision support at the point of care. Conclusions The present study provides crucial empirical evidence for the promising potential of personalized data-driven decision support systems. With the increasing adoption of electronic medical record (EMR) systems, our

Learning nanotechnology with texts and comics: the impacts on students of different achievement levels

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lin, Shu-Fen; Lin, Huann-shyang

2016-05-01

Comics are popular with adolescents because of their features of humor, narrative, and visual imagery. The purposes of this study were to examine the learning outcomes and emotional perceptions of reading a science comic book and a science text booklet for students of different levels of achievement, and to explore the main factors of the two media which attract high-school students to learn science. A mixed-method quasi-experimental design was adopted. The participants were 697 grade ten students from eight schools with different levels of academic achievement. Two similar classes in each of the eight schools were assigned as the comic group or the text group. The results indicated that the science comic book benefited medium achievers more than the science text booklet did, but the contrary result was found for the high achievers. In comparison, the two media benefited the low achievers equally, but both had only a limited effect due to the students' lack of prior knowledge. We conclude four kinds of evidence, including perceived difficulty of comprehension, reasons for interest/disinterest, emotional perceptions of learning science, and learning time, to support the phenomenon of the learning benefit of media specific to certain achievers' science learning.

Confidence in Science and Achievement Outcomes of Fourth-Grade Students in Korea: Results from the TIMSS 2011 Assessment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

House, J. Daniel; Telese, James A.

2017-01-01

Findings from assessments of fourth-grade science have indicated that students in Korea scored higher than international averages. Research results have also shown that attitudes toward science were related to achievement outcomes for Korean students. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between confidence in science and…

Comparing Relations of Motivation, Engagement, and Achievement among Struggling and Advanced Adolescent Readers

PubMed Central

Lutz Klauda, Susan; Guthrie, John T.

2014-01-01

This longitudinal study examined the development of reading motivation, engagement, and achievement in early adolescence by comparing interrelations of these variables in struggling and advanced readers. Participants were 183 pairs of seventh grade students matched in gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and school attended. They completed measures of reading motivations, engagement and comprehension for information text as well as measures of general reading comprehension and reading fluency twice during the school year. Advanced readers showed stronger relations of motivation and engagement with achievement than struggling readers. However, motivation predicted concurrent engagement and growth in engagement similarly for struggling and advanced readers. These results are interpreted as support for the hypothesis that cognitive challenges limit the relations of motivation and engagement to achievement for struggling readers. The discussion also considers the impact of the focus on the information text genre on the relations observed and implications of the findings for achievement motivation theories. PMID:25663747

Development of similarity theory for control systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Myshlyaev, L. P.; Evtushenko, V. F.; Ivushkin, K. A.; Makarov, G. V.

2018-05-01

The area of effective application of the traditional similarity theory and the need necessity of its development for systems are discussed. The main statements underlying the similarity theory of control systems are given. The conditions for the similarity of control systems and the need for similarity control control are formulated. Methods and algorithms for estimating and similarity control of control systems and the results of research of control systems based on their similarity are presented. The similarity control of systems includes the current evaluation of the degree of similarity of control systems and the development of actions controlling similarity, and the corresponding targeted change in the state of any element of control systems.

SoRS: Social recommendation using global rating reputation and local rating similarity

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Qian, Fulan; Zhao, Shu; Tang, Jie; Zhang, Yanping

2016-11-01

Recommendation is an important and also challenging problem in online social networks. It needs to consider not only users' personalized interests, but also social relations between users. Indeed, in practice, users are often inclined to accept recommendations from friends or opinion leaders (users with high reputations). In this paper, we present a novel recommendation framework, social recommendation using global rating reputation and local rating similarity, which combine user reputation and social similarity based on ratings. User reputation can be obtained by iteratively calculating the correlation of historical ratings of user and intrinsic qualities of items. We view the user reputation as the user's global influence and the similarity based on rating of social relation as the user's local influence, introduce it in the basic social recommender model. Thus users with high reputation have a strong influence on the others, and on the other hand, the effect of a user with low reputation has been weakened. The recommendation accuracy of proposed framework can be improved by effectively removing nature noise because of less rigorous user ratings and strengthening the effect of user influence with high reputation. We also improve the similarity based on ratings by avoiding the high similarity with the less common ratings between friends. We evaluate our approach on three datasets including Movielens, Epinions and Douban. Empirical results demonstrate that proposed framework achieves significant improvements on recommendation accuracy. User reputation and local similarity which are both based on ratings have a lot of helpful in improvement of prediction accuracy. The reputation also can help to improve the recommendation precision with the small training sets.

Privacy-Preserving Patient Similarity Learning in a Federated Environment: Development and Analysis.

PubMed

Lee, Junghye; Sun, Jimeng; Wang, Fei; Wang, Shuang; Jun, Chi-Hyuck; Jiang, Xiaoqian

2018-04-13

There is an urgent need for the development of global analytic frameworks that can perform analyses in a privacy-preserving federated environment across multiple institutions without privacy leakage. A few studies on the topic of federated medical analysis have been conducted recently with the focus on several algorithms. However, none of them have solved similar patient matching, which is useful for applications such as cohort construction for cross-institution observational studies, disease surveillance, and clinical trials recruitment. The aim of this study was to present a privacy-preserving platform in a federated setting for patient similarity learning across institutions. Without sharing patient-level information, our model can find similar patients from one hospital to another. We proposed a federated patient hashing framework and developed a novel algorithm to learn context-specific hash codes to represent patients across institutions. The similarities between patients can be efficiently computed using the resulting hash codes of corresponding patients. To avoid security attack from reverse engineering on the model, we applied homomorphic encryption to patient similarity search in a federated setting. We used sequential medical events extracted from the Multiparameter Intelligent Monitoring in Intensive Care-III database to evaluate the proposed algorithm in predicting the incidence of five diseases independently. Our algorithm achieved averaged area under the curves of 0.9154 and 0.8012 with balanced and imbalanced data, respectively, in κ-nearest neighbor with κ=3. We also confirmed privacy preservation in similarity search by using homomorphic encryption. The proposed algorithm can help search similar patients across institutions effectively to support federated data analysis in a privacy-preserving manner. ©Junghye Lee, Jimeng Sun, Fei Wang, Shuang Wang, Chi-Hyuck Jun, Xiaoqian Jiang. Originally published in JMIR Medical Informatics (http

Mathematics beliefs and achievement of adolescent students in Japan: results from the TIMSS 1999 assessment.

PubMed

House, J Daniel

2005-12-01

A recent study (1) of undergraduate students in a precalculus course indicated that they expressed slightly positive attitudes toward mathematics. It is important, however, to examine relationships between students' initial attitudes and achievement outcomes. The present purpose was to assess the relationship between self-beliefs and mathematics achievement for a large national sample of students from the TIMSS 1999 international sample (eighth graders) from Japan. Several significant relationships between mathematics beliefs and test scores were noted. In addition, the overall multiple regression equation that assessed the joint significance of the complete set of self-belief variables was significant (F7.65 = 159.48, p < .001) and explained 20.6% of the variance in mathematics achievement test scores.

Manufacturing of glassy thin shell for adaptive optics: results achieved

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Poutriquet, F.; Rinchet, A.; Carel, J.-L.; Leplan, H.; Ruch, E.; Geyl, R.; Marque, G.

2012-07-01

Glassy thin shells are key components for the development of adaptive optics and are part of future & innovative projects such as ELT. However, manufacturing thin shells is a real challenge. Even though optical requirements for the front face - or optical face - are relaxed compared to conventional passive mirrors, requirements concerning thickness uniformity are difficult to achieve. In addition, process has to be completely re-defined as thin mirror generates new manufacturing issues. In particular, scratches and digs requirement is more difficult as this could weaken the shell, handling is also an important issue due to the fragility of the mirror. Sagem, through REOSC program, has recently manufactured different types of thin shells in the frame of European projects: E-ELT M4 prototypes and VLT Deformable Secondary Mirror (VLT DSM).

Econo-ESA in semantic text similarity.

PubMed

Rahutomo, Faisal; Aritsugi, Masayoshi

2014-01-01

Explicit semantic analysis (ESA) utilizes an immense Wikipedia index matrix in its interpreter part. This part of the analysis multiplies a large matrix by a term vector to produce a high-dimensional concept vector. A similarity measurement between two texts is performed between two concept vectors with numerous dimensions. The cost is expensive in both interpretation and similarity measurement steps. This paper proposes an economic scheme of ESA, named econo-ESA. We investigate two aspects of this proposal: dimensional reduction and experiments with various data. We use eight recycling test collections in semantic text similarity. The experimental results show that both the dimensional reduction and test collection characteristics can influence the results. They also show that an appropriate concept reduction of econo-ESA can decrease the cost with minor differences in the results from the original ESA.

Developmental cascade models linking peer victimization, depression, and academic achievement in Chinese children.

PubMed

Liu, Junsheng; Bullock, Amanda; Coplan, Robert J; Chen, Xinyin; Li, Dan; Zhou, Ying

2018-03-01

This study explored the longitudinal relations among peer victimization, depression, and academic achievement in Chinese primary school students. Participants were N = 945 fourth-grade students (485 boys, 460 girls; M age  = 10.16 years, SD = 2 months) attending elementary schools in Shanghai, People's Republic of China. Three waves of data on peer victimization, depression, and academic achievement were collected from peer nominations, self-reports, and school records, respectively. The results indicated that peer victimization had both direct and indirect effects on later depression and academic achievement. Depression also had both direct and indirect negative effects on later academic achievement, but demonstrated only an indirect effect on later peer victimization. Finally, academic achievement had both direct and indirect negative effects on later peer victimization and depression. The findings show that there are cross-cultural similarities and differences in the various transactions that exist among peer victimization, depression, and academic achievement. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Peer victimization directly and indirectly relates to depression and academic achievement. Depression directly and indirectly relates to academic achievement. Academic achievement directly and indirectly relates to depression. What the present study adds? A developmental cascade approach was used to assess the interrelations among peer victimization, depression, and academic achievement. Academic achievement mediates the relation between peer victimization and depression. Depression is related to peer victimization through academic achievement. Academic achievement directly and indirectly relates to peer victimization. Academic achievement is related to depression through peer victimization. © 2017 The British Psychological Society.

Modeling of cw OIL energy performance based on similarity criteria

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mezhenin, Andrey V.; Pichugin, Sergey Y.; Azyazov, Valeriy N.

2012-01-01

A simplified two-level generation model predicts that power extraction from an cw oxygen-iodine laser (OIL) with stable resonator depends on three similarity criteria. Criterion τd is the ratio of the residence time of active medium in the resonator to the O2(1Δ) reduction time at the infinitely large intraresonator intensity. Criterion Π is small-signal gain to the threshold ratio. Criterion Λ is the relaxation to excitation rate ratio for the electronically excited iodine atoms I(2P1/2). Effective power extraction from a cw OIL is achieved when the values of the similarity criteria are located in the intervals: τd=5-8, Π=3-8 and Λ<=0.01.

Impact of Academic and Nonacademic Support Structures on Third Grade Reading Achievement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Peugeot, Megan A.

2017-01-01

Through a Whole Child lens a cross-sectional quantitative research design evaluated the impact of academic and nonacademic support structures on student reading achievement per the third grade Ohio Achievement Assessment (OAA). Two demographically similar public school districts within geographical proximity in Ohio were involved utilizing…

Peroral endoscopic myotomy achieves similar clinical response but incurs lesser charges compared to robotic heller myotomy.

PubMed

Khashab, Mouen A; Kumbhari, Vivek; Tieu, Alan H; El Zein, Mohamad H; Ismail, Amr; Ngamruengphong, Saowanee; Singh, Vikesh K; Kalloo, Anthony N; Clarke, John O; Stein, Ellen M

2017-01-01

Several uncontrolled studies comparing peroral endoscopic myotomy (POEM) and Heller myotomy have demonstrated equivalent short-term efficacy and safety. However, no data exists rergarding the cost of POEM and how it compares to that of robotic Heller myotomy (RHM). The primary aim of this study was to compare the inpatient charges incurred in patients who underwent POEM or RHM for the treatment of achalasia. A retrospective single center review was conducted among 52 consecutive POEM patients (2012-2014) and 52 consecutive RHM patients (2009-2014). All RHM procedures included a Toupet fundoplication and were performed via a transabdominal approach. All POEM procedures were performed by a gastroenterologist in the endoscopy unit. Clinical response was defined by improvement of symptoms and decrease in Eckardt stage to ≤I. All procedural and facility charges were obtained from review of the hospital finance records. There was no difference between POEM and RHM with regards to age, gender, symptom duration, achalasia subtype, manometry findings, or Eckardt symptom stage. There was no significant difference in the rate of adverse events (19.2% vs 9.6%, P = 0.26) or the length of stay (1.9 vs. 2.3, P = 0.18) between both groups. Clinical response rate of patients in the POEM groups was similar to that in the RHM group (94.3% vs. 88.5%, P = 0.48). POEM incurred significantly less total charges compared to LHM ($14481 vs. $17782, P = 0.02). POEM when performed in an endoscopy unit was similar in efficacy and safety to RHM. However, POEM was associated with significant cost savings ($3301/procedure).

Physical activity and academic achievement across the curriculum: Results from a 3-year cluster-randomized trial.

PubMed

Donnelly, Joseph E; Hillman, Charles H; Greene, Jerry L; Hansen, David M; Gibson, Cheryl A; Sullivan, Debra K; Poggio, John; Mayo, Matthew S; Lambourne, Kate; Szabo-Reed, Amanda N; Herrmann, Stephen D; Honas, Jeffery J; Scudder, Mark R; Betts, Jessica L; Henley, Katherine; Hunt, Suzanne L; Washburn, Richard A

2017-06-01

We compared changes in academic achievement across 3years between children in elementary schools receiving the Academic Achievement and Physical Activity Across the Curriculum intervention (A+PAAC), in which classroom teachers were trained to deliver academic lessons using moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) compared to a non-intervention control. Elementary schools in eastern Kansas (n=17) were cluster randomized to A+PAAC (N=9, target ≥100min/week) or control (N=8). Academic achievement (math, reading, spelling) was assessed using the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test-Third Edition (WIAT-III) in a sample of children (A+PAAC=316, Control=268) in grades 2 and 3 at baseline (Fall 2011) and repeated each spring across 3years. On average 55min/week of A+PACC lessons were delivered each week across the intervention. Baseline WIAT-III scores (math, reading, spelling) were significantly higher in students in A+PAAC compared with control schools and improved in both groups across 3years. However, linear mixed modeling, accounting for baseline between group differences in WIAT-III scores, ethnicity, family income, and cardiovascular fitness, found no significant impact of A+PAAC on any of the academic achievement outcomes as determined by non-significant group by time interactions. A+PAAC neither diminished or improved academic achievement across 3-years in elementary school children compared with controls. Our target of 100min/week of active lessons was not achieved; however, students attending A+PAAC schools received an additional 55min/week of MVPA which may be associated with both physical and mental health benefits, without a reduction in time devoted to academic instruction. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Similar call signs

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2010-08-18

This presentation was given at the Partnership for Safety Meeting in Washington, DC. It examines the similarities that are found when calls signs are visually similar or similar sounding. Visually similar call signs increase the chances of controller...

A similarity learning approach to content-based image retrieval: application to digital mammography.

PubMed

El-Naqa, Issam; Yang, Yongyi; Galatsanos, Nikolas P; Nishikawa, Robert M; Wernick, Miles N

2004-10-01

In this paper, we describe an approach to content-based retrieval of medical images from a database, and provide a preliminary demonstration of our approach as applied to retrieval of digital mammograms. Content-based image retrieval (CBIR) refers to the retrieval of images from a database using information derived from the images themselves, rather than solely from accompanying text indices. In the medical-imaging context, the ultimate aim of CBIR is to provide radiologists with a diagnostic aid in the form of a display of relevant past cases, along with proven pathology and other suitable information. CBIR may also be useful as a training tool for medical students and residents. The goal of information retrieval is to recall from a database information that is relevant to the user's query. The most challenging aspect of CBIR is the definition of relevance (similarity), which is used to guide the retrieval machine. In this paper, we pursue a new approach, in which similarity is learned from training examples provided by human observers. Specifically, we explore the use of neural networks and support vector machines to predict the user's notion of similarity. Within this framework we propose using a hierarchal learning approach, which consists of a cascade of a binary classifier and a regression module to optimize retrieval effectiveness and efficiency. We also explore how to incorporate online human interaction to achieve relevance feedback in this learning framework. Our experiments are based on a database consisting of 76 mammograms, all of which contain clustered microcalcifications (MCs). Our goal is to retrieve mammogram images containing similar MC clusters to that in a query. The performance of the retrieval system is evaluated using precision-recall curves computed using a cross-validation procedure. Our experimental results demonstrate that: 1) the learning framework can accurately predict the perceptual similarity reported by human observers, thereby

Rigor and academic achievement: Career academies versus traditional class structure

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kyees, Linda L.

The purpose of this study was to determine if students who attended high school Career Academy classes, as part of Career and Technical Education, showed greater academic achievement than students who attended traditional high school classes. While all participants attended schools in the same school district, and were seeking the same goal of graduation with a standard diploma, the Career Academy students had the benefit of all classes being directed by a team of teachers who helped them connect their learning to their desired career through collaborative learning projects and assignments. The traditional high school classes taught each subject independent of other subjects and did not have specific connections to desired career goals of the students. The study used a causal-comparative research design and the participants included 1,142 students from 11th and 12th grades who attended 9 high schools in a diversely populated area of central Florida with 571 enrolled in the Career Academies and 571 enrolled in traditional classes. The 10th-grade FCAT scores served as the dependent variable. All students attended similar classes with similar content, making the primary variable the difference in academic gains between students participating in the Career Academy design and the traditional design classes. Using the Man-Whitney U Test resulted in the Career Academy group achieving the higher scores overall. This resulted in rejection of the first null-hypothesis. Further examination determined that the 10th-grade FCAT scores were greater for the average students group, which comprised the largest portion of the participant group, also resulted in rejection of the second null-hypothesis. The gifted and at-risk student group scores resulted in failure to reject the third and fourth null-hypotheses.

Some Effects of Similarity Self-Disclosure

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Murphy, Kevin C.; Strong, Stanley R.

1972-01-01

College males were interviewed about how college had altered their friendships, values, and plans. The interviewers diclosed experiences and feelings similar to those revealed by the students. Results support Byrne's Law of Similarity in generating interpersonal attraction in the interview and suggest that the timing of self-disclosures is…

A meta-analysis of self-reported achievement goals and nonself-report performance across three achievement domains (work, sports, and education).

PubMed

Van Yperen, Nico W; Blaga, Monica; Postmes, Tom

2014-01-01

During the past three decades, the achievement goal approach to achievement motivation has emerged as an influential area of research, and is dedicated to understanding the reasons behind the individual's drive to achieve competence and performance. However, the current literature on achievement goals is segmented rather than integrated. That is, citations across the three major and distinct achievement domains (work, education, and sports) are more the exception than the rule and similarities and differences between findings for the different achievement domains have yet to be tested. The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationships between self-reported achievement goals and nonself-report performance through meta-analysis, and the moderating potential of achievement domain. Identifying achievement domain as moderator improves our understanding to which contexts we can (not) generalize conclusions to, it helps to understand seemingly inconsistent findings, and opens avenues for future research on the underlying processes. Because the achievement goal (AG) measure used in a study is partially confounded with achievement domain, we examined the moderating role of this variable as well. Our findings suggest that - overall - approach goals (either mastery or performance) were associated positively with performance attainment, whereas avoidance goals (either mastery or performance) were associated negatively with performance attainment. These relationships were moderated by achievement domain. For example, relative to the education or work domain, in the sports domain, we did not observe negative correlations between avoidance goals and performance. The absence of statistical moderation due to AG measure suggests that the observed moderation of achievement domain cannot be explained by the AG measure utilized. We suggest further steps to integrate the achievement goal literature, and accordingly, to broaden and deepen understanding of performance

A Meta-Analysis of Self-Reported Achievement Goals and Nonself-Report Performance across Three Achievement Domains (Work, Sports, and Education)

PubMed Central

Van Yperen, Nico W.; Blaga, Monica; Postmes, Tom

2014-01-01

During the past three decades, the achievement goal approach to achievement motivation has emerged as an influential area of research, and is dedicated to understanding the reasons behind the individual’s drive to achieve competence and performance. However, the current literature on achievement goals is segmented rather than integrated. That is, citations across the three major and distinct achievement domains (work, education, and sports) are more the exception than the rule and similarities and differences between findings for the different achievement domains have yet to be tested. The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationships between self-reported achievement goals and nonself-report performance through meta-analysis, and the moderating potential of achievement domain. Identifying achievement domain as moderator improves our understanding to which contexts we can (not) generalize conclusions to, it helps to understand seemingly inconsistent findings, and opens avenues for future research on the underlying processes. Because the achievement goal (AG) measure used in a study is partially confounded with achievement domain, we examined the moderating role of this variable as well. Our findings suggest that – overall – approach goals (either mastery or performance) were associated positively with performance attainment, whereas avoidance goals (either mastery or performance) were associated negatively with performance attainment. These relationships were moderated by achievement domain. For example, relative to the education or work domain, in the sports domain, we did not observe negative correlations between avoidance goals and performance. The absence of statistical moderation due to AG measure suggests that the observed moderation of achievement domain cannot be explained by the AG measure utilized. We suggest further steps to integrate the achievement goal literature, and accordingly, to broaden and deepen understanding of

A Deep Learning-Based Method for Similar Patient Question Retrieval in Chinese.

PubMed

Tang, Guo Yu; Ni, Yuan; Xie, Guo Tong; Fan, Xin Li; Shi, Yan Ling

2017-01-01

The online patient question and answering (Q&A) system, either as a website or a mobile application, attracts an increasing number of users in China. Patients will post their questions and the registered doctors then provide the corresponding answers. A large amount of questions with answers from doctors are accumulated. Instead of awaiting the response from a doctor, the newly posted question could be quickly answered by finding a semantically equivalent question from the Q&A achive. In this study, we investigated a novel deep learning based method to retrieve the similar patient question in Chinese. An unsupervised learning algorithm using deep neural network is performed on the corpus to generate the word embedding. The word embedding was then used as the input to a supervised learning algorithm using a designed deep neural network, i.e. the supervised neural attention model (SNA), to predict the similarity between two questions. The experimental results showed that our SNA method achieved P@1 = 77% and P@5 = 84%, which outperformed all other compared methods.

Counterfactual Plausibility and Comparative Similarity.

PubMed

Stanley, Matthew L; Stewart, Gregory W; Brigard, Felipe De

2017-05-01

Counterfactual thinking involves imagining hypothetical alternatives to reality. Philosopher David Lewis (1973, 1979) argued that people estimate the subjective plausibility that a counterfactual event might have occurred by comparing an imagined possible world in which the counterfactual statement is true against the current, actual world in which the counterfactual statement is false. Accordingly, counterfactuals considered to be true in possible worlds comparatively more similar to ours are judged as more plausible than counterfactuals deemed true in possible worlds comparatively less similar. Although Lewis did not originally develop his notion of comparative similarity to be investigated as a psychological construct, this study builds upon his idea to empirically investigate comparative similarity as a possible psychological strategy for evaluating the perceived plausibility of counterfactual events. More specifically, we evaluate judgments of comparative similarity between episodic memories and episodic counterfactual events as a factor influencing people's judgments of plausibility in counterfactual simulations, and we also compare it against other factors thought to influence judgments of counterfactual plausibility, such as ease of simulation and prior simulation. Our results suggest that the greater the perceived similarity between the original memory and the episodic counterfactual event, the greater the perceived plausibility that the counterfactual event might have occurred. While similarity between actual and counterfactual events, ease of imagining, and prior simulation of the counterfactual event were all significantly related to counterfactual plausibility, comparative similarity best captured the variance in ratings of counterfactual plausibility. Implications for existing theories on the determinants of counterfactual plausibility are discussed. Copyright © 2016 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

InfAcrOnt: calculating cross-ontology term similarities using information flow by a random walk.

PubMed

Cheng, Liang; Jiang, Yue; Ju, Hong; Sun, Jie; Peng, Jiajie; Zhou, Meng; Hu, Yang

2018-01-19

Since the establishment of the first biomedical ontology Gene Ontology (GO), the number of biomedical ontology has increased dramatically. Nowadays over 300 ontologies have been built including extensively used Disease Ontology (DO) and Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO). Because of the advantage of identifying novel relationships between terms, calculating similarity between ontology terms is one of the major tasks in this research area. Though similarities between terms within each ontology have been studied with in silico methods, term similarities across different ontologies were not investigated as deeply. The latest method took advantage of gene functional interaction network (GFIN) to explore such inter-ontology similarities of terms. However, it only used gene interactions and failed to make full use of the connectivity among gene nodes of the network. In addition, all existent methods are particularly designed for GO and their performances on the extended ontology community remain unknown. We proposed a method InfAcrOnt to infer similarities between terms across ontologies utilizing the entire GFIN. InfAcrOnt builds a term-gene-gene network which comprised ontology annotations and GFIN, and acquires similarities between terms across ontologies through modeling the information flow within the network by random walk. In our benchmark experiments on sub-ontologies of GO, InfAcrOnt achieves a high average area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) (0.9322 and 0.9309) and low standard deviations (1.8746e-6 and 3.0977e-6) in both human and yeast benchmark datasets exhibiting superior performance. Meanwhile, comparisons of InfAcrOnt results and prior knowledge on pair-wise DO-HPO terms and pair-wise DO-GO terms show high correlations. The experiment results show that InfAcrOnt significantly improves the performance of inferring similarities between terms across ontologies in benchmark set.

Proteins with similar architecture exhibit similar large-scale dynamic behavior.

PubMed Central

Keskin, O; Jernigan, R L; Bahar, I

2000-01-01

We have investigated the similarities and differences in the computed dynamic fluctuations exhibited by six members of a protein fold family with a coarse-grained Gaussian network model. Specifically, we consider the cofactor binding fragment of CysB; the lysine/arginine/ornithine-binding protein (LAO); the enzyme porphobilinogen deaminase (PBGD); the ribose-binding protein (RBP); the N-terminal lobe of ovotransferrin in apo-form (apo-OVOT); and the leucine/isoleucine/valine-binding protein (LIVBP). All have domains that resemble a Rossmann fold, but there are also some significant differences. Results indicate that similar global dynamic behavior is preserved for the members of a fold family, and that differences usually occur in regions only where specific function is localized. The present work is a computational demonstration that the scaffold of a protein fold may be utilized for diverse purposes. LAO requires a bound ligand before it conforms to the large-scale fluctuation behavior of the three other members of the family, CysB, PBGD, and RBP, all of which contain a substrate (cofactor) at the active site cleft. The dynamics of the ligand-free enzymes LIVBP and apo-OVOT, on the other hand, concur with that of unliganded LAO. The present results suggest that it is possible to construct structure alignments based on dynamic fluctuation behavior. PMID:10733987

Bench press and push-up at comparable levels of muscle activity results in similar strength gains.

PubMed

Calatayud, Joaquin; Borreani, Sebastien; Colado, Juan C; Martin, Fernando; Tella, Victor; Andersen, Lars L

2015-01-01

Electromyography (EMG) exercise evaluation is commonly used to measure the intensity of muscle contraction. Although researchers assume that biomechanically comparable resistance exercises with similar high EMG levels will produce similar strength gains over the long term, no studies have actually corroborated this hypothesis. This study evaluated EMG levels during 6 repetition maximum (6RM) bench press and push-up, and subsequently performed a 5-week training period where subjects were randomly divided into 3 groups (i.e., 6RM bench press group, 6RM elastic band push-up group, or control group) to evaluate muscle strength gains. Thirty university students with advanced resistance training experience participated in the 2-part study. During the training period, exercises were performed using the same loads and variables that were used during the EMG data collection. At baseline, EMG amplitude showed no significant difference between 6RM bench press and band push-up. Significant differences among the groups were found for percent change (Δ) between pretest and posttest for 6RM (p = 0.017) and for 1 repetition maximum (1RM) (p < 0.001). Six repetition maximum bench press group and 6RM elastic band push-up group improved their 1RM and 6RM (Δ ranging from 13.65 to 22.21) tests significantly with similar gains, whereas control group remains unchanged. Thus, when the EMG values are comparable and the same conditions are reproduced, the aforementioned exercises can provide similar muscle strength gains.

Taking advantage of ground data systems attributes to achieve quality results in testing software

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Sigman, Clayton B.; Koslosky, John T.; Hageman, Barbara H.

1994-01-01

During the software development life cycle process, basic testing starts with the development team. At the end of the development process, an acceptance test is performed for the user to ensure that the deliverable is acceptable. Ideally, the delivery is an operational product with zero defects. However, the goal of zero defects is normally not achieved but is successful to various degrees. With the emphasis on building low cost ground support systems while maintaining a quality product, a key element in the test process is simulator capability. This paper reviews the Transportable Payload Operations Control Center (TPOCC) Advanced Spacecraft Simulator (TASS) test tool that is used in the acceptance test process for unmanned satellite operations control centers. The TASS is designed to support the development, test and operational environments of the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) operations control centers. The TASS uses the same basic architecture as the operations control center. This architecture is characterized by its use of distributed processing, industry standards, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and software components, and reusable software. The TASS uses much of the same TPOCC architecture and reusable software that the operations control center developer uses. The TASS also makes use of reusable simulator software in the mission specific versions of the TASS. Very little new software needs to be developed, mainly mission specific telemetry communication and command processing software. By taking advantage of the ground data system attributes, successful software reuse for operational systems provides the opportunity to extend the reuse concept into the test area. Consistency in test approach is a major step in achieving quality results.

Implementing vertical and horizontal engineering students' integration and assessment of consequence academic achievement

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Al-Zubaidy, Sarim; Abdulaziz, Nidhal; Dashtpour, Reza

2012-08-01

Recent scholarship references indicate that integration of the student body can result in an enhanced learning experience for students and also greater satisfaction. This paper reports the results of a case study whereby mechanical engineering students studying at a newly established branch campus in Dubai of a British university were exposed to vertical and horizontal integration. Different activities have been embedded to ensure that students integrated and worked together with their peers and colleagues at different levels. The implemented processes and practices led to improved academic achievements, which were better than those of a similar cohort of students where no effort had been made to integrate. The analysis revealed that cooperative learning and the degree of academic support provided by teachers are positively and directly correlated with academic as well as the students' own sense of personal achievement. The results are discussed in light of previous research and with reference to the cultural context of the study.

Interdependency in Multimodel Climate Projections: Component Replication and Result Similarity

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Boé, Julien

2018-03-01

Multimodel ensembles are the main way to deal with model uncertainties in climate projections. However, the interdependencies between models that often share entire components make it difficult to combine their results in a satisfactory way. In this study, how the replication of components (atmosphere, ocean, land, and sea ice) between climate models impacts the proximity of their results is quantified precisely, in terms of climatological means and future changes. A clear relationship exists between the number of components shared by climate models and the proximity of their results. Even the impact of a single shared component is generally visible. These conclusions are true at both the global and regional scales. Given available data, it cannot be robustly concluded that some components are more important than others. Those results provide ways to estimate model interdependencies a priori rather than a posteriori based on their results, in order to define independence weights.

The effect of differentiated curriculum enhancements on the achievement of at-risk and normally achieving students in 5th grade science

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Simpkins, Pamela Mccrea

2007-12-01

At-risk students show consistent patterns of under achievement and social maladjustment in school which leads to their demise in high school (McMillian & Reed, 1994). Similarly, special education students are at increased risk of not completing high school and do not perform as well on national achievement tests than their nondisabled peers (Land & Legters, 2002). It is possible that students at-risk for academic failure will not meet graduation requirements unless interventions are put in place to alleviate this problem. It has been documented that science textbooks contain difficult vocabulary and high reading levels that are challenging for struggling students. Using approaches such as activities oriented instruction, which supports the cooperative learning/peer tutoring model is one approach that has been successful with normally achieving and special education students. This research examined the effect of differentiated curriculum enhancements with peer tutoring on the achievement of at-risk and normally achieving students in science. A crossover design was implemented in three fifth grade inclusive classes, consisting of typically achieving students, students at-risk, and students with learning disabilities. The participants included 16 at-risk students, three special education students and 44 normally achieving students. The science review activities were implemented during two consecutive science units. One unit covered Earth and Space science. The other unit covered Light and Sound. Each curriculum enhancement had identification and production level activities. The identification level provided prompts; the production level did not provide prompts. Pretest and posttest were administered. Overall findings of the study revealed a significant interaction between experimental condition and treatment order, suggesting an advantage for students using differentiated curriculum enhancements. Main effects analysis suggested that students performed better on one

Individuals Achieve More Accurate Results with Meters That Are Codeless and Employ Dynamic Electrochemistry

PubMed Central

Rao, Anoop; Wiley, Meg; Iyengar, Sridhar; Nadeau, Dan; Carnevale, Julie

2010-01-01

Background Studies have shown that controlling blood glucose can reduce the onset and progression of the long-term microvascular and neuropathic complications associated with the chronic course of diabetes mellitus. Improved glycemic control can be achieved by frequent testing combined with changes in medication, exercise, and diet. Technological advancements have enabled improvements in analytical accuracy of meters, and this paper explores two such parameters to which that accuracy can be attributed. Methods Four blood glucose monitoring systems (with or without dynamic electrochemistry algorithms, codeless or requiring coding prior to testing) were evaluated and compared with respect to their accuracy. Results Altogether, 108 blood glucose values were obtained for each system from 54 study participants and compared with the reference values. The analysis depicted in the International Organization for Standardization table format indicates that the devices with dynamic electrochemistry and the codeless feature had the highest proportion of acceptable results overall (System A, 101/103). Results were significant when compared at the 10% bias level with meters that were codeless and utilized static electrochemistry (p = .017) or systems that had static electrochemistry but needed coding (p = .008). Conclusions Analytical performance of these blood glucose meters differed significantly depending on their technologic features. Meters that utilized dynamic electrochemistry and did not require coding were more accurate than meters that used static electrochemistry or required coding. PMID:20167178

Three-dimensional object recognition using similar triangles and decision trees

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Spirkovska, Lilly

1993-01-01

A system, TRIDEC, that is capable of distinguishing between a set of objects despite changes in the objects' positions in the input field, their size, or their rotational orientation in 3D space is described. TRIDEC combines very simple yet effective features with the classification capabilities of inductive decision tree methods. The feature vector is a list of all similar triangles defined by connecting all combinations of three pixels in a coarse coded 127 x 127 pixel input field. The classification is accomplished by building a decision tree using the information provided from a limited number of translated, scaled, and rotated samples. Simulation results are presented which show that TRIDEC achieves 94 percent recognition accuracy in the 2D invariant object recognition domain and 98 percent recognition accuracy in the 3D invariant object recognition domain after training on only a small sample of transformed views of the objects.

Explaining Student and Home Variance of Chinese Reading Achievement of the PIRLS 2011 Hong Kong

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cheung, Wai Ming; Lam, Joseph W. I.; Au, Doreen W. H.; So, Wendy W. Y.; Huang, Yanli; Tsang, Hector W. H.

2017-01-01

Hong Kong attained the top place in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2011, an international study of reading achievement, which arouses keen interest in understanding the reasons behind this remarkable achievement. Although factors associated with reading achievement in English have been widely studied, similar studies…

Discrimination and Measurements of Three Flavonols with Similar Structure Using Terahertz Spectroscopy and Chemometrics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yan, Ling; Liu, Changhong; Qu, Hao; Liu, Wei; Zhang, Yan; Yang, Jianbo; Zheng, Lei

2018-03-01

Terahertz (THz) technique, a recently developed spectral method, has been researched and used for the rapid discrimination and measurements of food compositions due to its low-energy and non-ionizing characteristics. In this study, THz spectroscopy combined with chemometrics has been utilized for qualitative and quantitative analysis of myricetin, quercetin, and kaempferol with concentrations of 0.025, 0.05, and 0.1 mg/mL. The qualitative discrimination was achieved by KNN, ELM, and RF models with the spectra pre-treatments. An excellent discrimination (100% CCR in the prediction set) could be achieved using the RF model. Furthermore, the quantitative analyses were performed by partial least square regression (PLSR) and least squares support vector machine (LS-SVM). Comparing to the PLSR models, the LS-SVM yielded better results with low RMSEP (0.0044, 0.0039, and 0.0048), higher Rp (0.9601, 0.9688, and 0.9359), and higher RPD (8.6272, 9.6333, and 7.9083) for myricetin, quercetin, and kaempferol, respectively. Our results demonstrate that THz spectroscopy technique is a powerful tool for identification of three flavonols with similar chemical structures and quantitative determination of their concentrations.

When is Chemical Similarity Significant? The Statistical Distribution of Chemical Similarity Scores and Its Extreme Values

PubMed Central

Baldi, Pierre

2010-01-01

As repositories of chemical molecules continue to expand and become more open, it becomes increasingly important to develop tools to search them efficiently and assess the statistical significance of chemical similarity scores. Here we develop a general framework for understanding, modeling, predicting, and approximating the distribution of chemical similarity scores and its extreme values in large databases. The framework can be applied to different chemical representations and similarity measures but is demonstrated here using the most common binary fingerprints with the Tanimoto similarity measure. After introducing several probabilistic models of fingerprints, including the Conditional Gaussian Uniform model, we show that the distribution of Tanimoto scores can be approximated by the distribution of the ratio of two correlated Normal random variables associated with the corresponding unions and intersections. This remains true also when the distribution of similarity scores is conditioned on the size of the query molecules in order to derive more fine-grained results and improve chemical retrieval. The corresponding extreme value distributions for the maximum scores are approximated by Weibull distributions. From these various distributions and their analytical forms, Z-scores, E-values, and p-values are derived to assess the significance of similarity scores. In addition, the framework allows one to predict also the value of standard chemical retrieval metrics, such as Sensitivity and Specificity at fixed thresholds, or ROC (Receiver Operating Characteristic) curves at multiple thresholds, and to detect outliers in the form of atypical molecules. Numerous and diverse experiments carried in part with large sets of molecules from the ChemDB show remarkable agreement between theory and empirical results. PMID:20540577

Application of Shape Similarity in Pose Selection and Virtual Screening in CSARdock2014 Exercise.

PubMed

Kumar, Ashutosh; Zhang, Kam Y J

2016-06-27

To evaluate the applicability of shape similarity in docking-based pose selection and virtual screening, we participated in the CSARdock2014 benchmark exercise for identifying the correct docking pose of inhibitors targeting factor XA, spleen tyrosine kinase, and tRNA methyltransferase. This exercise provides a valuable opportunity for researchers to test their docking programs, methods, and protocols in a blind testing environment. In the CSARdock2014 benchmark exercise, we have implemented an approach that uses ligand 3D shape similarity to facilitate docking-based pose selection and virtual screening. We showed here that ligand 3D shape similarity between bound poses could be used to identify the native-like pose from an ensemble of docking-generated poses. Our method correctly identified the native pose as the top-ranking pose for 73% of test cases in a blind testing environment. Moreover, the pose selection results also revealed an excellent correlation between ligand 3D shape similarity scores and RMSD to X-ray crystal structure ligand. In the virtual screening exercise, the average RMSD for our pose prediction was found to be 1.02 Å, and it was one of the top performances achieved in CSARdock2014 benchmark exercise. Furthermore, the inclusion of shape similarity improved virtual screening performance of docking-based scoring and ranking. The coefficient of determination (r(2)) between experimental activities and docking scores for 276 spleen tyrosine kinase inhibitors was found to be 0.365 but reached 0.614 when the ligand 3D shape similarity was included.

School Climate, Peer Victimization, and Academic Achievement: Results from a Multi-Informant Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Weijun; Vaillancourt, Tracy; Brittain, Heather L.; McDougall, Patricia; Krygsman, Amanda; Smith, David; Cunningham, Charles E.; Haltigan, J. D.; Hymel, Shelley

2014-01-01

School-level school climate was examined in relation to self-reported peer victimization and teacher-rated academic achievement (grade point average; GPA). Participants included a sample of 1,023 fifth-grade children nested within 50 schools. Associations between peer victimization, school climate, and GPA were examined using multilevel modeling,…

Robust hashing with local models for approximate similarity search.

PubMed

Song, Jingkuan; Yang, Yi; Li, Xuelong; Huang, Zi; Yang, Yang

2014-07-01

Similarity search plays an important role in many applications involving high-dimensional data. Due to the known dimensionality curse, the performance of most existing indexing structures degrades quickly as the feature dimensionality increases. Hashing methods, such as locality sensitive hashing (LSH) and its variants, have been widely used to achieve fast approximate similarity search by trading search quality for efficiency. However, most existing hashing methods make use of randomized algorithms to generate hash codes without considering the specific structural information in the data. In this paper, we propose a novel hashing method, namely, robust hashing with local models (RHLM), which learns a set of robust hash functions to map the high-dimensional data points into binary hash codes by effectively utilizing local structural information. In RHLM, for each individual data point in the training dataset, a local hashing model is learned and used to predict the hash codes of its neighboring data points. The local models from all the data points are globally aligned so that an optimal hash code can be assigned to each data point. After obtaining the hash codes of all the training data points, we design a robust method by employing l2,1 -norm minimization on the loss function to learn effective hash functions, which are then used to map each database point into its hash code. Given a query data point, the search process first maps it into the query hash code by the hash functions and then explores the buckets, which have similar hash codes to the query hash code. Extensive experimental results conducted on real-life datasets show that the proposed RHLM outperforms the state-of-the-art methods in terms of search quality and efficiency.

Meta-Analysis of Interactive Video Instruction: A 10 Year Review of Achievement Effects.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McNeil, Barbara J.; Nelson, Karyn R.

Sixty-three studies which investigated cognitive achievement effects following interactive video (IV) instruction were integrated through a meta-analysis technique. Overall, mean achievement effect for IV was .530 (corrected for outliers), indicating that IV is an effective form of instruction. The effect is similar to that of computer-assisted…

Stability of similarity measurements for bipartite networks

PubMed Central

Liu, Jian-Guo; Hou, Lei; Pan, Xue; Guo, Qiang; Zhou, Tao

2016-01-01

Similarity is a fundamental measure in network analyses and machine learning algorithms, with wide applications ranging from personalized recommendation to socio-economic dynamics. We argue that an effective similarity measurement should guarantee the stability even under some information loss. With six bipartite networks, we investigate the stabilities of fifteen similarity measurements by comparing the similarity matrixes of two data samples which are randomly divided from original data sets. Results show that, the fifteen measurements can be well classified into three clusters according to their stabilities, and measurements in the same cluster have similar mathematical definitions. In addition, we develop a top-n-stability method for personalized recommendation, and find that the unstable similarities would recommend false information to users, and the performance of recommendation would be largely improved by using stable similarity measurements. This work provides a novel dimension to analyze and evaluate similarity measurements, which can further find applications in link prediction, personalized recommendation, clustering algorithms, community detection and so on. PMID:26725688

Stability of similarity measurements for bipartite networks.

PubMed

Liu, Jian-Guo; Hou, Lei; Pan, Xue; Guo, Qiang; Zhou, Tao

2016-01-04

Similarity is a fundamental measure in network analyses and machine learning algorithms, with wide applications ranging from personalized recommendation to socio-economic dynamics. We argue that an effective similarity measurement should guarantee the stability even under some information loss. With six bipartite networks, we investigate the stabilities of fifteen similarity measurements by comparing the similarity matrixes of two data samples which are randomly divided from original data sets. Results show that, the fifteen measurements can be well classified into three clusters according to their stabilities, and measurements in the same cluster have similar mathematical definitions. In addition, we develop a top-n-stability method for personalized recommendation, and find that the unstable similarities would recommend false information to users, and the performance of recommendation would be largely improved by using stable similarity measurements. This work provides a novel dimension to analyze and evaluate similarity measurements, which can further find applications in link prediction, personalized recommendation, clustering algorithms, community detection and so on.

Self-Similar Compressible Free Vortices

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

vonEllenrieder, Karl

1998-01-01

Lie group methods are used to find both exact and numerical similarity solutions for compressible perturbations to all incompressible, two-dimensional, axisymmetric vortex reference flow. The reference flow vorticity satisfies an eigenvalue problem for which the solutions are a set of two-dimensional, self-similar, incompressible vortices. These solutions are augmented by deriving a conserved quantity for each eigenvalue, and identifying a Lie group which leaves the reference flow equations invariant. The partial differential equations governing the compressible perturbations to these reference flows are also invariant under the action of the same group. The similarity variables found with this group are used to determine the decay rates of the velocities and thermodynamic variables in the self-similar flows, and to reduce the governing partial differential equations to a set of ordinary differential equations. The ODE's are solved analytically and numerically for a Taylor vortex reference flow, and numerically for an Oseen vortex reference flow. The solutions are used to examine the dependencies of the temperature, density, entropy, dissipation and radial velocity on the Prandtl number. Also, experimental data on compressible free vortex flow are compared to the analytical results, the evolution of vortices from initial states which are not self-similar is discussed, and the energy transfer in a slightly-compressible vortex is considered.

EPA Science to Achieve Results (STAR) Centers for Water Research on National Priorities Related to a Systems View of Nutrient Management

EPA Science Inventory

This poster describes the missions and objectives of four newly-awarded Science to Achieve Results (STAR) Centers. There is also a description of how the projects fit together to meet solicitation research questions.

Molecular similarity measures.

PubMed

Maggiora, Gerald M; Shanmugasundaram, Veerabahu

2011-01-01

Molecular similarity is a pervasive concept in chemistry. It is essential to many aspects of chemical reasoning and analysis and is perhaps the fundamental assumption underlying medicinal chemistry. Dissimilarity, the complement of similarity, also plays a major role in a growing number of applications of molecular diversity in combinatorial chemistry, high-throughput screening, and related fields. How molecular information is represented, called the representation problem, is important to the type of molecular similarity analysis (MSA) that can be carried out in any given situation. In this work, four types of mathematical structure are used to represent molecular information: sets, graphs, vectors, and functions. Molecular similarity is a pairwise relationship that induces structure into sets of molecules, giving rise to the concept of chemical space. Although all three concepts - molecular similarity, molecular representation, and chemical space - are treated in this chapter, the emphasis is on molecular similarity measures. Similarity measures, also called similarity coefficients or indices, are functions that map pairs of compatible molecular representations that are of the same mathematical form into real numbers usually, but not always, lying on the unit interval. This chapter presents a somewhat pedagogical discussion of many types of molecular similarity measures, their strengths and limitations, and their relationship to one another. An expanded account of the material on chemical spaces presented in the first edition of this book is also provided. It includes a discussion of the topography of activity landscapes and the role that activity cliffs in these landscapes play in structure-activity studies.

Science Achievement of Elementary and Secondary School Students in Japan: The Results of the IEA Study. NIER Occasional Paper 01/89.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Miyake, Misao

This document reports the state of science achievement of Japanese students based on the Second International Science study conducted in 1983-84. Results are compared to the first study conducted in 1970. The target populations, samples, and structure of the second study are described. Test results including score distribution and high and low…

Monetary incentives in support of academic achievement: results of a randomized field trial involving high-achieving, low-resource, ethnically diverse urban adolescents.

PubMed

Spencer, Margaret Beale; Noll, Elizabeth; Cassidy, Elaine

2005-06-01

Significant resources have been directed at understanding and alleviating the achievement gap in education. Most programs focused on this aim rely on a top-down approach, including funding for infrastructure improvement, curriculum development, class size, and teacher salaries. This article presents findings from a randomized field trial that evaluates a bottom-up approach in which high-achieving students of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds from poor families are given monetary incentives to maintain their academic standing. The evaluation was designed to explore the role of monetary incentives as a mechanism for promoting resiliency in the face of poverty-related challenge. Discussion of what motivates students to learn is framed as a function of normal cognitive and socioemotional development in challenging environments. Evaluation findings indicate that monetary incentives are effective in promoting academic success to different degrees and for different reasons depending on students' perception of the meaning of the incentive in relation to their emergent identity.

The effect of a disease management algorithm and dedicated postacute coronary syndrome clinic on achievement of guideline compliance: results from the parkland acute coronary event treatment study.

PubMed

Yorio, Jeff; Viswanathan, Sundeep; See, Raphael; Uchal, Linda; McWhorter, Jo Ann; Spencer, Nali; Murphy, Sabina; Khera, Amit; de Lemos, James A; McGuire, Darren K

2008-01-01

The application of disease management algorithms by physician extenders has been shown to improve therapeutic adherence in selected populations. It is unknown whether this strategy would improve adherence to secondary prevention goals after acute coronary syndromes (ACSs) in a largely indigent county hospital setting. Patients admitted for ACS were randomized at the time of discharge to usual follow-up care versus the same care with the addition of a physician extender visit. Physician extender visits were conducted according to a treatment algorithm based on contemporary practice guidelines. Groups were compared using the primary end point of achievement of low-density lipoprotein treatment goals at 3 months after discharge and achievement of additional evidence-based practice goals. One hundred forty consecutive patients were randomized. A similar proportion of patients returned for study follow-up in both groups at 3 months (54 [79%]/68 in the usual care group vs 57 [79%]/72 in the intervention group; P = 0.97). Among those completing the 3-month visit, a low-density lipoprotein cholesterol level less than 100 mg/dL was achieved in 37 (69%) of the usual care patients compared with 35 (57%) of those in the intervention group (P = 0.43). There was no statistical difference in implementation of therapeutic lifestyle changes (smoking cessation, cardiac rehabilitation, or exercise) between groups. Prescription rates of evidence-based therapeutics at 3 months were similar in both groups. The implementation of a post-ACS clinic run by a physician extender applying a disease management algorithm did not measurably improve adherence to evidence-based secondary prevention treatment goals. Despite initially high rates of evidence-based treatment at discharge, adherence with follow-up appointments and sustained implementation of evidence-based therapies remains a significant challenge in this high-risk cohort.

Scaling Relations and Self-Similarity of 3-Dimensional Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes Equations.

PubMed

Ercan, Ali; Kavvas, M Levent

2017-07-25

Scaling conditions to achieve self-similar solutions of 3-Dimensional (3D) Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes Equations, as an initial and boundary value problem, are obtained by utilizing Lie Group of Point Scaling Transformations. By means of an open-source Navier-Stokes solver and the derived self-similarity conditions, we demonstrated self-similarity within the time variation of flow dynamics for a rigid-lid cavity problem under both up-scaled and down-scaled domains. The strength of the proposed approach lies in its ability to consider the underlying flow dynamics through not only from the governing equations under consideration but also from the initial and boundary conditions, hence allowing to obtain perfect self-similarity in different time and space scales. The proposed methodology can be a valuable tool in obtaining self-similar flow dynamics under preferred level of detail, which can be represented by initial and boundary value problems under specific assumptions.

Use abstracted patient-specific features to assist an information-theoretic measurement to assess similarity between medical cases

PubMed Central

Cao, Hui; Melton, Genevieve B.; Markatou, Marianthi; Hripcsak, George

2008-01-01

Inter-case similarity metrics can potentially help find similar cases from a case base for evidence-based practice. While several methods to measure similarity between cases have been proposed, developing an effective means for measuring patient case similarity remains a challenging problem. We were interested in examining how abstracting could potentially assist computing case similarity. In this study, abstracted patient-specific features from medical records were used to improve an existing information-theoretic measurement. The developed metric, using a combination of abstracted disease, finding, procedure and medication features, achieved a correlation between 0.6012 and 0.6940 to experts. PMID:18487093

Simple and fast polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) patterning using a cutting plotter and vinyl adhesives to achieve etching results.

PubMed

Hyun Kim; Sun-Young Yoo; Ji Sung Kim; Zihuan Wang; Woon Hee Lee; Kyo-In Koo; Jong-Mo Seo; Dong-Il Cho

2017-07-01

Inhibition of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) polymerization could be observed when spin-coated over vinyl substrates. The degree of polymerization, partially curing or fully curing, depended on the PDMS thickness coated over the vinyl substrate. This characteristic was exploited to achieve simple and fast PDMS patterning method using a vinyl adhesive layer patterned through a cutting plotter. The proposed patterning method showed results resembling PDMS etching. Therefore, patterning PDMS over PDMS, glass, silicon, and gold substrates were tested to compare the results with conventional etching methods. Vinyl stencils with widths ranging from 200μm to 1500μm were used for the procedure. To evaluate the accuracy of the cutting plotter, stencil designed on the AutoCAD software and the actual stencil widths were compared. Furthermore, this method's accuracy was also evaluated by comparing the widths of the actual stencils and etched PDMS results.

Student Achievement in Edison Schools: Mixed Results in an Ongoing Enterprise. Research Report.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

American Federation of Teachers, Washington, DC.

A study examined student achievement in selected Edison schools through an analysis of test-score data. To qualify for the study, each school had to be in operation for more than 1 year and had to have solid student testing data from a solid evaluation design. Eight schools were selected, and their reading data were compared with those of…

Finding an appropriate equation to measure similarity between binary vectors: case studies on Indonesian and Japanese herbal medicines.

PubMed

Wijaya, Sony Hartono; Afendi, Farit Mochamad; Batubara, Irmanida; Darusman, Latifah K; Altaf-Ul-Amin, Md; Kanaya, Shigehiko

2016-12-07

The binary similarity and dissimilarity measures have critical roles in the processing of data consisting of binary vectors in various fields including bioinformatics and chemometrics. These metrics express the similarity and dissimilarity values between two binary vectors in terms of the positive matches, absence mismatches or negative matches. To our knowledge, there is no published work presenting a systematic way of finding an appropriate equation to measure binary similarity that performs well for certain data type or application. A proper method to select a suitable binary similarity or dissimilarity measure is needed to obtain better classification results. In this study, we proposed a novel approach to select binary similarity and dissimilarity measures. We collected 79 binary similarity and dissimilarity equations by extensive literature search and implemented those equations as an R package called bmeasures. We applied these metrics to quantify the similarity and dissimilarity between herbal medicine formulas belonging to the Indonesian Jamu and Japanese Kampo separately. We assessed the capability of binary equations to classify herbal medicine pairs into match and mismatch efficacies based on their similarity or dissimilarity coefficients using the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve analysis. According to the area under the ROC curve results, we found Indonesian Jamu and Japanese Kampo datasets obtained different ranking of binary similarity and dissimilarity measures. Out of all the equations, the Forbes-2 similarity and the Variant of Correlation similarity measures are recommended for studying the relationship between Jamu formulas and Kampo formulas, respectively. The selection of binary similarity and dissimilarity measures for multivariate analysis is data dependent. The proposed method can be used to find the most suitable binary similarity and dissimilarity equation wisely for a particular data. Our finding suggests that all four

Cost Effectiveness Ratio: Evaluation Tool for Comparing the Effectiveness of Similar Extension Programs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jayaratne, K. S. U.

2015-01-01

Extension educators have been challenged to be cost effective in their educational programming. The cost effectiveness ratio is a versatile evaluation indicator for Extension educators to compare the cost of achieving a unit of outcomes or educating a client in similar educational programs. This article describes the cost effectiveness ratio and…

Semantic similarity measures in the biomedical domain by leveraging a web search engine.

PubMed

Hsieh, Sheau-Ling; Chang, Wen-Yung; Chen, Chi-Huang; Weng, Yung-Ching

2013-07-01

Various researches in web related semantic similarity measures have been deployed. However, measuring semantic similarity between two terms remains a challenging task. The traditional ontology-based methodologies have a limitation that both concepts must be resided in the same ontology tree(s). Unfortunately, in practice, the assumption is not always applicable. On the other hand, if the corpus is sufficiently adequate, the corpus-based methodologies can overcome the limitation. Now, the web is a continuous and enormous growth corpus. Therefore, a method of estimating semantic similarity is proposed via exploiting the page counts of two biomedical concepts returned by Google AJAX web search engine. The features are extracted as the co-occurrence patterns of two given terms P and Q, by querying P, Q, as well as P AND Q, and the web search hit counts of the defined lexico-syntactic patterns. These similarity scores of different patterns are evaluated, by adapting support vector machines for classification, to leverage the robustness of semantic similarity measures. Experimental results validating against two datasets: dataset 1 provided by A. Hliaoutakis; dataset 2 provided by T. Pedersen, are presented and discussed. In dataset 1, the proposed approach achieves the best correlation coefficient (0.802) under SNOMED-CT. In dataset 2, the proposed method obtains the best correlation coefficient (SNOMED-CT: 0.705; MeSH: 0.723) with physician scores comparing with measures of other methods. However, the correlation coefficients (SNOMED-CT: 0.496; MeSH: 0.539) with coder scores received opposite outcomes. In conclusion, the semantic similarity findings of the proposed method are close to those of physicians' ratings. Furthermore, the study provides a cornerstone investigation for extracting fully relevant information from digitizing, free-text medical records in the National Taiwan University Hospital database.

Affective Teacher-Student Relationships and Students' Engagement and Achievement: A Meta-Analytic Update and Test of the Mediating Role of Engagement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Roorda, Debora L.; Jak, Suzanne; Zee, Marjolein; Oort, Frans J.; Koomen, Helma M. Y.

2017-01-01

The present study took a meta-analytic approach to investigate whether students' engagement acts as a mediator in the association between affective teacher-student relationships and students' achievement. Furthermore, we examined whether results differed for primary and secondary school and whether similar results were found in a longitudinal…

Achievement Goals and Achievement Emotions: A Meta-Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Huang, Chiungjung

2011-01-01

This meta-analysis synthesized 93 independent samples (N = 30,003) in 77 studies that reported in 78 articles examining correlations between achievement goals and achievement emotions. Achievement goals were meaningfully associated with different achievement emotions. The correlations of mastery and mastery approach goals with positive achievement…

An intensely sympathetic awareness: Experiential similarity and cultural norms as means for gaining older African Americans’ trust of scientific research

PubMed Central

Sabir, Myra G.; Pillemer, Karl A.

2014-01-01

Well-known trust-building methods are routinely used to recruit and retain older African Americans into scientific research studies, yet the quandary over how to overcome this group’s hesitance to participate in research remains. We present two innovative and testable methods for resolving the dilemma around increasing older African Americans’ participation in scientific research studies. Certain specific and meaningful experiential similarities between the primary researcher and the participants, as well as clear recognition of the elders’ worth and dignity, improved older African Americans’ willingness to adhere to a rigorous research design. Steps taken in an intervention study produced a potentially replicable strategy for achieving strong results in recruitment, retention and engagement of this population over three waves of assessment. Sixty-two (n = 62) older African Americans were randomized to treatment and control conditions of a reminiscence intervention. Sensitivity to an African-American cultural form of respect for elders (recognition of worth and dignity), and intersections between the lived experience of the researcher and participants helped dispel this population’s well-documented distrust of scientific research. Results suggest that intentional efforts to honor the worth and dignity of elders through high level hospitality and highlighting meaningful experiential similarities between the researcher and the participants can improve recruitment and retention results. Experiential similarities, in particular, may prove more useful to recruitment and retention than structural similarities such as age, race, or gender, which may not in themselves result in the trust experiential similarities elicit. PMID:24655682

Examining Instruction, Achievement, and Equity with NAEP Mathematics Data

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lubienski, Sarah Theule

2006-01-01

The purpose of this article is two-fold. First, it reports on a study of the distribution of reform-oriented instructional practices among Black, White and Hispanic students, and the relationship between those practices and student achievement. The study identified many similarities in instruction across student groups, but there were some…

Engaging narratives evoke similar neural activity and lead to similar time perception.

PubMed

Cohen, Samantha S; Henin, Simon; Parra, Lucas C

2017-07-04

It is said that we lose track of time - that "time flies" - when we are engrossed in a story. How does engagement with the story cause this distorted perception of time, and what are its neural correlates? People commit both time and attentional resources to an engaging stimulus. For narrative videos, attentional engagement can be represented as the level of similarity between the electroencephalographic responses of different viewers. Here we show that this measure of neural engagement predicted the duration of time that viewers were willing to commit to narrative videos. Contrary to popular wisdom, engagement did not distort the average perception of time duration. Rather, more similar brain responses resulted in a more uniform perception of time across viewers. These findings suggest that by capturing the attention of an audience, narrative videos bring both neural processing and the subjective perception of time into synchrony.

Achieving Benchmark Results for Neonatal Palliation of Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome and Related Anomalies in an Emerging Program.

PubMed

Dodge-Khatami, Ali; Chancellor, William Z; Gupta, Bhawna; Seals, Samantha R; Ebeid, Makram R; Batlivala, Sarosh P; Taylor, Mary B; Salazar, Jorge D

2015-07-01

Results of surgical management of hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS) and related anomalies are often compared to published benchmark data which reflect the use of a variety of surgical and hybrid protocols. We report encouraging results achieved in an emerging program, despite a learning curve at all care levels. Rather than relying on a single preferred protocol, surgical management was based on matching surgical strategy to individual patient factors. From 2010 to 2014, a total of 47 consecutive patients with HLHS or related anomalies with ductal-dependent systemic circulation underwent initial surgical palliation, including 30 Norwood stage I, 8 hybrid stage I, and 9 salvage-to-Norwood procedures. True hybrid procedures entailed bilateral pulmonary artery banding and ductal stenting. In the salvage-to-Norwood strategy, ductal stenting was withheld in favor of continued prostaglandin infusion in anticipation of a deferred Norwood procedure. Cardiac comorbidities (obstructed pulmonary venous return, poor ventricular function, and atrioventricular valve regurgitation) and noncardiac comorbidities influenced the choice of treatment strategies and were analyzed as potential risk factors for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) support or in-hospital mortality. Overall hospital survival was 81% (Norwood 83.3%, hybrid 88%, "salvage" 67%; P = .4942). Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation support was used for eight (17%) patients with two survivors. For cases with obstructed pulmonary venous return (n = 10, 21%), management choices favored a hybrid or salvage strategy (P = .0026). Aortic atresia (n = 22, 47%) was treated by a Norwood or salvage-to-Norwood. No cardiac, noncardiac, or genetic comorbidities were identified as independent risk factors for ECMO or discharge mortality in a multivariable analysis. Our emerging program achieved outcomes that compare favorably to published benchmark data with respect to hospital survival. These results reflect rigorous

Learning deep similarity in fundus photography

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chudzik, Piotr; Al-Diri, Bashir; Caliva, Francesco; Ometto, Giovanni; Hunter, Andrew

2017-02-01

Similarity learning is one of the most fundamental tasks in image analysis. The ability to extract similar images in the medical domain as part of content-based image retrieval (CBIR) systems has been researched for many years. The vast majority of methods used in CBIR systems are based on hand-crafted feature descriptors. The approximation of a similarity mapping for medical images is difficult due to the big variety of pixel-level structures of interest. In fundus photography (FP) analysis, a subtle difference in e.g. lesions and vessels shape and size can result in a different diagnosis. In this work, we demonstrated how to learn a similarity function for image patches derived directly from FP image data without the need of manually designed feature descriptors. We used a convolutional neural network (CNN) with a novel architecture adapted for similarity learning to accomplish this task. Furthermore, we explored and studied multiple CNN architectures. We show that our method can approximate the similarity between FP patches more efficiently and accurately than the state-of- the-art feature descriptors, including SIFT and SURF using a publicly available dataset. Finally, we observe that our approach, which is purely data-driven, learns that features such as vessels calibre and orientation are important discriminative factors, which resembles the way how humans reason about similarity. To the best of authors knowledge, this is the first attempt to approximate a visual similarity mapping in FP.

The Gender Confidence Gap in Fractions Knowledge: Gender Differences in Student Belief-Achievement Relationships

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ross, John A.; Scott, Garth; Bruce, Catherine D.

2012-01-01

Recent research demonstrates that in many countries gender differences in mathematics achievement have virtually disappeared. Expectancy-value theory and social cognition theory both predict that if gender differences in achievement have declined there should be a similar decline in gender differences in self-beliefs. Extant literature is…

Noncontiguous atom matching structural similarity function.

PubMed

Teixeira, Ana L; Falcao, Andre O

2013-10-28

Measuring similarity between molecules is a fundamental problem in cheminformatics. Given that similar molecules tend to have similar physical, chemical, and biological properties, the notion of molecular similarity plays an important role in the exploration of molecular data sets, query-retrieval in molecular databases, and in structure-property/activity modeling. Various methods to define structural similarity between molecules are available in the literature, but so far none has been used with consistent and reliable results for all situations. We propose a new similarity method based on atom alignment for the analysis of structural similarity between molecules. This method is based on the comparison of the bonding profiles of atoms on comparable molecules, including features that are seldom found in other structural or graph matching approaches like chirality or double bond stereoisomerism. The similarity measure is then defined on the annotated molecular graph, based on an iterative directed graph similarity procedure and optimal atom alignment between atoms using a pairwise matching algorithm. With the proposed approach the similarities detected are more intuitively understood because similar atoms in the molecules are explicitly shown. This noncontiguous atom matching structural similarity method (NAMS) was tested and compared with one of the most widely used similarity methods (fingerprint-based similarity) using three difficult data sets with different characteristics. Despite having a higher computational cost, the method performed well being able to distinguish either different or very similar hydrocarbons that were indistinguishable using a fingerprint-based approach. NAMS also verified the similarity principle using a data set of structurally similar steroids with differences in the binding affinity to the corticosteroid binding globulin receptor by showing that pairs of steroids with a high degree of similarity (>80%) tend to have smaller differences

Nebraska STARS: Achieving Results

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Roschewski, Pat; Isernhagen, Jody; Dappen, Leon

2006-01-01

In 2000, the state of Nebraska passed legislation requiring the assessment of student performance on content standards, but its requirements were very different from those of any other state. Nebraska created what has come to be known as STARS (School-based Teacher-led Assessment and Reporting System). Under STARS, each of Nebraska's nearly 500…

Robust recognition of degraded machine-printed characters using complementary similarity measure and error-correction learning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hagita, Norihiro; Sawaki, Minako

1995-03-01

Most conventional methods in character recognition extract geometrical features such as stroke direction, connectivity of strokes, etc., and compare them with reference patterns in a stored dictionary. Unfortunately, geometrical features are easily degraded by blurs, stains and the graphical background designs used in Japanese newspaper headlines. This noise must be removed before recognition commences, but no preprocessing method is completely accurate. This paper proposes a method for recognizing degraded characters and characters printed on graphical background designs. This method is based on the binary image feature method and uses binary images as features. A new similarity measure, called the complementary similarity measure, is used as a discriminant function. It compares the similarity and dissimilarity of binary patterns with reference dictionary patterns. Experiments are conducted using the standard character database ETL-2 which consists of machine-printed Kanji, Hiragana, Katakana, alphanumeric, an special characters. The results show that this method is much more robust against noise than the conventional geometrical feature method. It also achieves high recognition rates of over 92% for characters with textured foregrounds, over 98% for characters with textured backgrounds, over 98% for outline fonts, and over 99% for reverse contrast characters.

Parental Involvement and Academic Achievement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Goodwin, Sarah Christine

2015-01-01

This research study examined the correlation between student achievement and parent's perceptions of their involvement in their child's schooling. Parent participants completed the Parent Involvement Project Parent Questionnaire. Results slightly indicated parents of students with higher level of achievement perceived less demand or invitations…

The effects of chronic achievement motivation and achievement primes on the activation of achievement and fun goals.

PubMed

Hart, William; Albarracín, Dolores

2009-12-01

This research examined the hypothesis that situational achievement cues can elicit achievement or fun goals depending on chronic differences in achievement motivation. In 4 studies, chronic differences in achievement motivation were measured, and achievement-denoting words were used to influence behavior. The effects of these variables were assessed on self-report inventories, task performance, task resumption following an interruption, and the pursuit of means relevant to achieving or having fun. Findings indicated that achievement priming (vs. control priming) activated a goal to achieve and inhibited a goal to have fun in individuals with chronically high-achievement motivation but activated a goal to have fun and inhibited a goal to achieve in individuals with chronically low-achievement motivation.

The Effects of Chronic Achievement Motivation and Achievement Primes on the Activation of Achievement and Fun Goals

PubMed Central

Hart, William; Albarracín, Dolores

2013-01-01

This research examined the hypothesis that situational achievement cues can elicit achievement or fun goals depending on chronic differences in achievement motivation. In 4 studies, chronic differences in achievement motivation were measured, and achievement-denoting words were used to influence behavior. The effects of these variables were assessed on self-report inventories, task performance, task resumption following an interruption, and the pursuit of means relevant to achieving or having fun. Findings indicated that achievement priming (vs. control priming) activated a goal to achieve and inhibited a goal to have fun in individuals with chronically high-achievement motivation but activated a goal to have fun and inhibited a goal to achieve in individuals with chronically low-achievement motivation. PMID:19968423

Mathematics beliefs and achievement of elementary school students in Japan and the United States: results from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study.

PubMed

House, J Daniel

2006-03-01

Student self-beliefs are significantly related to several types of academic achievement. In addition, results from international assessments have indicated that students in Japan have typically scored above international averages (D. L. Kelly, I. V. S. Mullis, & M. O. Martin, 2000). In this study, the author examined relationships between mathematics beliefs and achievement of elementary school-aged students in the United States and Japan. The students had participated in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS; A. E. Beaton et al., 1996). The author examined several self-beliefs and used variance estimation techniques for complex sampling designs. The author identified a number of significant relationships between self-beliefs and mathematics achievement. Students who attributed success in mathematics to controllable factors (e.g., hard work, studying at home) showed higher test scores whereas students who attributed success in mathematics at school to external factors (e.g., good luck) tended to earn lower mathematics test scores. These results extend the findings of previous research results because the author examined large national samples of students in cross-cultural settings as part of a comprehensive international assessment.

Students’ Achievement Goals, Learning-Related Emotions and Academic Achievement

PubMed Central

Lüftenegger, Marko; Klug, Julia; Harrer, Katharina; Langer, Marie; Spiel, Christiane; Schober, Barbara

2016-01-01

In the present research, the recently proposed 3 × 2 model of achievement goals is tested and associations with achievement emotions and their joint influence on academic achievement are investigated. The study was conducted with 388 students using the 3 × 2 Achievement Goal Questionnaire including the six proposed goal constructs (task-approach, task-avoidance, self-approach, self-avoidance, other-approach, other-avoidance) and the enjoyment and boredom scales from the Achievement Emotion Questionnaire. Exam grades were used as an indicator of academic achievement. Findings from CFAs provided strong support for the proposed structure of the 3 × 2 achievement goal model. Self-based goals, other-based goals and task-approach goals predicted enjoyment. Task-approach goals negatively predicted boredom. Task-approach and other-approach predicted achievement. The indirect effects of achievement goals through emotion variables on achievement were assessed using bias-corrected bootstrapping. No mediation effects were found. Implications for educational practice are discussed. PMID:27199836

Human action recognition based on kinematic similarity in real time

PubMed Central

Chen, Longting; Luo, Ailing; Zhang, Sicong

2017-01-01

Human action recognition using 3D pose data has gained a growing interest in the field of computer robotic interfaces and pattern recognition since the availability of hardware to capture human pose. In this paper, we propose a fast, simple, and powerful method of human action recognition based on human kinematic similarity. The key to this method is that the action descriptor consists of joints position, angular velocity and angular acceleration, which can meet the different individual sizes and eliminate the complex normalization. The angular parameters of joints within a short sliding time window (approximately 5 frames) around the current frame are used to express each pose frame of human action sequence. Moreover, three modified KNN (k-nearest-neighbors algorithm) classifiers are employed in our method: one for achieving the confidence of every frame in the training step, one for estimating the frame label of each descriptor, and one for classifying actions. Additional estimating of the frame’s time label makes it possible to address single input frames. This approach can be used on difficult, unsegmented sequences. The proposed method is efficient and can be run in real time. The research shows that many public datasets are irregularly segmented, and a simple method is provided to regularize the datasets. The approach is tested on some challenging datasets such as MSR-Action3D, MSRDailyActivity3D, and UTD-MHAD. The results indicate our method achieves a higher accuracy. PMID:29073131

Quality assessment of protein model-structures based on structural and functional similarities

PubMed Central

2012-01-01

Background Experimental determination of protein 3D structures is expensive, time consuming and sometimes impossible. A gap between number of protein structures deposited in the World Wide Protein Data Bank and the number of sequenced proteins constantly broadens. Computational modeling is deemed to be one of the ways to deal with the problem. Although protein 3D structure prediction is a difficult task, many tools are available. These tools can model it from a sequence or partial structural information, e.g. contact maps. Consequently, biologists have the ability to generate automatically a putative 3D structure model of any protein. However, the main issue becomes evaluation of the model quality, which is one of the most important challenges of structural biology. Results GOBA - Gene Ontology-Based Assessment is a novel Protein Model Quality Assessment Program. It estimates the compatibility between a model-structure and its expected function. GOBA is based on the assumption that a high quality model is expected to be structurally similar to proteins functionally similar to the prediction target. Whereas DALI is used to measure structure similarity, protein functional similarity is quantified using standardized and hierarchical description of proteins provided by Gene Ontology combined with Wang's algorithm for calculating semantic similarity. Two approaches are proposed to express the quality of protein model-structures. One is a single model quality assessment method, the other is its modification, which provides a relative measure of model quality. Exhaustive evaluation is performed on data sets of model-structures submitted to the CASP8 and CASP9 contests. Conclusions The validation shows that the method is able to discriminate between good and bad model-structures. The best of tested GOBA scores achieved 0.74 and 0.8 as a mean Pearson correlation to the observed quality of models in our CASP8 and CASP9-based validation sets. GOBA also obtained the best

Phonological similarity and orthographic similarity affect probed serial recall of Chinese characters.

PubMed

Lin, Yi-Chen; Chen, Hsiang-Yu; Lai, Yvonne C; Wu, Denise H

2015-04-01

The previous literature on working memory (WM) has indicated that verbal materials are dominantly retained in phonological representations, whereas other linguistic information (e.g., orthography, semantics) only contributes to verbal WM minimally, if not negligibly. Although accumulating evidence has suggested that multiple linguistic components jointly support verbal WM, the visual/orthographic contribution has rarely been addressed in alphabetic languages, possibly due to the difficulty of dissociating the effects of word forms from the effects of their pronunciations in relatively shallow orthography. In the present study, we examined whether the orthographic representations of Chinese characters support the retention of verbal materials in this language of deep orthography. In Experiments 1a and 2, we independently manipulated the phonological and orthographic similarity of horizontal and vertical characters, respectively, and found that participants' accuracy of probed serial recall was reduced by both similar pronunciations and shared phonetic radicals in the to-be-remembered stimuli. Moreover, Experiment 1b showed that only the effect of phonological, but not that of orthographic, similarity was affected by concurrent articulatory suppression. Taken together, the present results indicate the indispensable contribution of orthographic representations to verbal WM of Chinese characters, and suggest that the linguistic characteristics of a specific language not only determine long-term linguistic-processing mechanisms, but also delineate the organization of verbal WM for that language.

Individuals achieve more accurate results with meters that are codeless and employ dynamic electrochemistry.

PubMed

Rao, Anoop; Wiley, Meg; Iyengar, Sridhar; Nadeau, Dan; Carnevale, Julie

2010-01-01

Studies have shown that controlling blood glucose can reduce the onset and progression of the long-term microvascular and neuropathic complications associated with the chronic course of diabetes mellitus. Improved glycemic control can be achieved by frequent testing combined with changes in medication, exercise, and diet. Technological advancements have enabled improvements in analytical accuracy of meters, and this paper explores two such parameters to which that accuracy can be attributed. Four blood glucose monitoring systems (with or without dynamic electrochemistry algorithms, codeless or requiring coding prior to testing) were evaluated and compared with respect to their accuracy. Altogether, 108 blood glucose values were obtained for each system from 54 study participants and compared with the reference values. The analysis depicted in the International Organization for Standardization table format indicates that the devices with dynamic electrochemistry and the codeless feature had the highest proportion of acceptable results overall (System A, 101/103). Results were significant when compared at the 10% bias level with meters that were codeless and utilized static electrochemistry (p = .017) or systems that had static electrochemistry but needed coding (p = .008). Analytical performance of these blood glucose meters differed significantly depending on their technologic features. Meters that utilized dynamic electrochemistry and did not require coding were more accurate than meters that used static electrochemistry or required coding. 2010 Diabetes Technology Society.

Prioritization of candidate disease genes by topological similarity between disease and protein diffusion profiles.

PubMed

Zhu, Jie; Qin, Yufang; Liu, Taigang; Wang, Jun; Zheng, Xiaoqi

2013-01-01

Identification of gene-phenotype relationships is a fundamental challenge in human health clinic. Based on the observation that genes causing the same or similar phenotypes tend to correlate with each other in the protein-protein interaction network, a lot of network-based approaches were proposed based on different underlying models. A recent comparative study showed that diffusion-based methods achieve the state-of-the-art predictive performance. In this paper, a new diffusion-based method was proposed to prioritize candidate disease genes. Diffusion profile of a disease was defined as the stationary distribution of candidate genes given a random walk with restart where similarities between phenotypes are incorporated. Then, candidate disease genes are prioritized by comparing their diffusion profiles with that of the disease. Finally, the effectiveness of our method was demonstrated through the leave-one-out cross-validation against control genes from artificial linkage intervals and randomly chosen genes. Comparative study showed that our method achieves improved performance compared to some classical diffusion-based methods. To further illustrate our method, we used our algorithm to predict new causing genes of 16 multifactorial diseases including Prostate cancer and Alzheimer's disease, and the top predictions were in good consistent with literature reports. Our study indicates that integration of multiple information sources, especially the phenotype similarity profile data, and introduction of global similarity measure between disease and gene diffusion profiles are helpful for prioritizing candidate disease genes. Programs and data are available upon request.

5 a day Achievement Badge for African-American Boy Scouts: pilot outcome results.

PubMed

Baranowski, Tom; Baranowski, Janice; Cullen, Karen W; deMoor, Carl; Rittenberry, LaTroy; Hebert, David; Jones, Lovell

2002-03-01

Boy Scouts are an important channel to complement school-based programs to enable boys to eat more fruit, 100% juice, and vegetables (FJV) for chronic disease prevention. The "5 a Day Achievement Badge" program was presented on a pilot study basis to African-American Boy Scout troops in Houston. Troops were the unit of recruitment and random assignment to treatment and control groups. The badge program was presented in Fall 1997 by trained dietitians and included activities to increase availability and accessibility of fruit and vegetables at scouts' homes, increase preferences for vegetables, and train in the preparation of FaSST (fast, simple, safe, and tasty) recipes. Weekly comic books demonstrated and reinforced what scouts were expected to do at home. A weekly newsletter with recipes was sent to parents. The program was revised and presented to the control group in Winter 1998. Two 24-h recalls were the primary assessment tools. Telephone interviews were conducted with parents. The intervention resulted in a 0.8 FJV serving difference (post values of treatment versus control groups with pre value covaried). The changes obtained suggest that the intervention was effective in promoting dietary change. (C)2002 American Health Foundation and Elsevier Science (USA).

The Effects of Homework Activities and Teaching Strategies for New Mathematics Topics on Achievement of Adolescent Students in Japan: Results from the TIMSS 1999 Assessment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

House, J. Daniel

2004-01-01

The importance of homework activities for student achievement has been extensively discussed. Research has indicated that, in general, students who spend more time on homework tend to show higher levels of academic achievement. For instance, results from the Third International Mathematics Study (TIMSS) indicated that adolescent students in Japan…

Mining Diagnostic Assessment Data for Concept Similarity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Madhyastha, Tara; Hunt, Earl

2009-01-01

This paper introduces a method for mining multiple-choice assessment data for similarity of the concepts represented by the multiple choice responses. The resulting similarity matrix can be used to visualize the distance between concepts in a lower-dimensional space. This gives an instructor a visualization of the relative difficulty of concepts…

Quality of courses evaluated by 'predictions' rather than opinions: Fewer respondents needed for similar results.

PubMed

Cohen-Schotanus, Janke; Schönrock-Adema, Johanna; Schmidt, Henk G

2010-01-01

A well-known problem with student surveys is a too low response rate. Experiences with predicting electoral outcomes, which required much smaller sample sizes, inspired us to adopt a similar approach to course evaluation. We expected that having respondents estimate the average opinions of their peers required fewer respondents for comparable outcomes than giving own opinions. Two course evaluation studies were performed among successive first-year medical students (N = 380 and 450, respectively). Study 1: Half the cohort gave opinions on nine questions, while the other half predicted the average outcomes. A prize was offered for the three best predictions (motivational remedy). Study 2: Half the cohort gave opinions, a quarter made predictions without a prize and a quarter made predictions with previous year's results as prior knowledge (cognitive remedy). The numbers of respondents required for stable outcomes were determined following an iterative process. Differences between numbers of respondents required and between average scores were analysed with ANOVA. In both studies, the prediction conditions required significantly fewer respondents (p < 0.001) for comparable outcomes. The informed prediction condition required the fewest respondents (N < 20). Problems with response rates can be reduced by asking respondents to predict evaluation outcomes rather than giving opinions.

The similarity law for hypersonic flow and requirements for dynamic similarity of related bodies in free flight

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Hamaker, Frank M; Neice, Stanford E; Wong, Thomas J

1953-01-01

The similarity law for nonsteady, inviscid, hypersonic flow about slender three-dimensional shapes is derived. Conclusions drawn are shown to be valid for rotational flow. Requirements for dynamic similarity of related shapes in free flight are obtained. The law is examined for steady flow about related three-dimensional shapes. Results of an experimental investigation of the pressures acting on two inclined cones are found to check the law as it applies to bodies of revolution.

Understanding how animal groups achieve coordinated movement

PubMed Central

Herbert-Read, J. E.

2016-01-01

ABSTRACT Moving animal groups display remarkable feats of coordination. This coordination is largely achieved when individuals adjust their movement in response to their neighbours' movements and positions. Recent advancements in automated tracking technologies, including computer vision and GPS, now allow researchers to gather large amounts of data on the movements and positions of individuals in groups. Furthermore, analytical techniques from fields such as statistical physics now allow us to identify the precise interaction rules used by animals on the move. These interaction rules differ not only between species, but also between individuals in the same group. These differences have wide-ranging implications, affecting how groups make collective decisions and driving the evolution of collective motion. Here, I describe how trajectory data can be used to infer how animals interact in moving groups. I give examples of the similarities and differences in the spatial and directional organisations of animal groups between species, and discuss the rules that animals use to achieve this organisation. I then explore how groups of the same species can exhibit different structures, and ask whether this results from individuals adapting their interaction rules. I then examine how the interaction rules between individuals in the same groups can also differ, and discuss how this can affect ecological and evolutionary processes. Finally, I suggest areas of future research. PMID:27707862

Understanding how animal groups achieve coordinated movement.

PubMed

Herbert-Read, J E

2016-10-01

Moving animal groups display remarkable feats of coordination. This coordination is largely achieved when individuals adjust their movement in response to their neighbours' movements and positions. Recent advancements in automated tracking technologies, including computer vision and GPS, now allow researchers to gather large amounts of data on the movements and positions of individuals in groups. Furthermore, analytical techniques from fields such as statistical physics now allow us to identify the precise interaction rules used by animals on the move. These interaction rules differ not only between species, but also between individuals in the same group. These differences have wide-ranging implications, affecting how groups make collective decisions and driving the evolution of collective motion. Here, I describe how trajectory data can be used to infer how animals interact in moving groups. I give examples of the similarities and differences in the spatial and directional organisations of animal groups between species, and discuss the rules that animals use to achieve this organisation. I then explore how groups of the same species can exhibit different structures, and ask whether this results from individuals adapting their interaction rules. I then examine how the interaction rules between individuals in the same groups can also differ, and discuss how this can affect ecological and evolutionary processes. Finally, I suggest areas of future research. © 2016. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd.

Similar herpes zoster incidence across Europe: results from a systematic literature review

PubMed Central

2013-01-01

Background Herpes zoster (HZ) is caused by reactivation of the varicella-zoster virus (VZV) and mainly affects individuals aged ≥50 years. The forthcoming European launch of a vaccine against HZ (Zostavax®) prompts the need for a better understanding of the epidemiology of HZ in Europe. Therefore the aim of this systematic review was to summarize the available data on HZ incidence in Europe and to describe age-specific incidence. Methods The Medline database of the National Library of Medicine was used to conduct a comprehensive literature search of population-based studies of HZ incidence published between 1960 and 2010 carried out in the 27 member countries of the European Union, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland. The identified articles were reviewed and scored according to a reading grid including various quality criteria, and HZ incidence data were extracted and presented by country. Results The search identified 21 studies, and revealed a similar annual HZ incidence throughout Europe, varying by country from 2.0 to 4.6/1 000 person-years with no clearly observed geographic trend. Despite the fact that age groups differed from one study to another, age-specific HZ incidence rates seemed to hold steady during the review period, at around 1/1 000 children <10 years, around 2/1 000 adults aged <40 years, and around 1–4/1 000 adults aged 40–50 years. They then increased rapidly after age 50 years to around 7–8/1 000, up to 10/1 000 after 80 years of age. Our review confirms that in Europe HZ incidence increases with age, and quite drastically after 50 years of age. In all of the 21 studies included in the present review, incidence rates were higher among women than men, and this difference increased with age. This review also highlights the need to identify standardized surveillance methods to improve the comparability of data within European Union Member States and to monitor the impact of VZV immunization on the epidemiology of HZ. Conclusions

The Effects of Learning Strategy Instruction on Achievement, Attitude, and Achievement Motivation in a Physics Course

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sezgin Selçuk, Gamze; Sahin, Mehmet; Açıkgöz, Kamile Ün

2011-01-01

This article reports on the influence of learning strategy instruction on student teachers' physics achievement, attitude towards physics, and achievement motivation. A pre-test/post-test quasi-experimental design with matching control group was used in the study. Two groups of student teachers ( n = 75) who were enrolled in an introductory physics course participated in the study. In the experimental group, questioning, summarizing, and graphic organizers were taught. The control group did not receive any presentation on strategy learning. Data were collected via the pre- and post-administration of the Physics Course Achievement Test, the Scale of Attitudes towards Physics, and the Achievement Motivation Scale. Univariate and multivariate analyses of variance on the data revealed no significant differences in the attitude and achievement motivation between the strategy and control groups. However, the strategy group students were observed to have a tendency of more positive attitude and motivation than the control group students. Results also showed that explicit learning strategy instruction was more effective than traditional instruction in improving physics achievement of the participating students. The implications of these results for physics education are discussed.

Associations between adolescent siblings' relationship quality and similarity and differences in values.

PubMed

Kretschmer, Tina; Pike, Alison

2010-08-01

Theoretically framed by a self-determination perspective on value acquisition and taking into account research into sibling similarity and differences, the current study examined links between sibling relationship quality and adolescents' intrinsic values (benevolence and universalism) and extrinsic values (power, achievement, and materialism). Positive sibling experiences were expected to be positively linked to intrinsic values and negatively linked to extrinsic values, and negative experiences were hypothesized to fuel extrinsic values and thwart intrinsic values. Using a sample of 205 adolescent sibling pairs (older children M = 17.61 years, younger children M = 14.63 years) and multilevel modeling, we assessed within- and between-dyads differences to identify whether the sibling relationship functions as a correlate of values in a similar or different way for 2 siblings. Although siblings were not very similar in their values, sibling competition predicted sibling similarity in higher levels of extrinsic values and lower levels of intrinsic values. Implications for value acquisition research that so far has focused almost solely on parents and failed to acknowledge other processes within families are discussed.

Similarity based false-positive reduction for breast cancer using radiographic and pathologic imaging features

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pai, Akshay; Samala, Ravi K.; Zhang, Jianying; Qian, Wei

2010-03-01

Mammography reading by radiologists and breast tissue image interpretation by pathologists often leads to high False Positive (FP) Rates. Similarly, current Computer Aided Diagnosis (CADx) methods tend to concentrate more on sensitivity, thus increasing the FP rates. A novel method is introduced here which employs similarity based method to decrease the FP rate in the diagnosis of microcalcifications. This method employs the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and the similarity metrics in order to achieve the proposed goal. The training and testing set is divided into generalized (Normal and Abnormal) and more specific (Abnormal, Normal, Benign) classes. The performance of this method as a standalone classification system is evaluated in both the cases (general and specific). In another approach the probability of each case belonging to a particular class is calculated. If the probabilities are too close to classify, the augmented CADx system can be instructed to have a detailed analysis of such cases. In case of normal cases with high probability, no further processing is necessary, thus reducing the computation time. Hence, this novel method can be employed in cascade with CADx to reduce the FP rate and also avoid unnecessary computational time. Using this methodology, a false positive rate of 8% and 11% is achieved for mammography and cellular images respectively.

Rapid discovery of peptide capture candidates with demonstrated specificity for structurally similar toxins

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sarkes, Deborah A.; Hurley, Margaret M.; Coppock, Matthew B.; Farrell, Mikella E.; Pellegrino, Paul M.; Stratis-Cullum, Dimitra N.

2016-05-01

Peptides have emerged as viable alternatives to antibodies for molecular-based sensing due to their similarity in recognition ability despite their relative structural simplicity. Various methods for peptide capture reagent discovery exist, including phage display, yeast display, and bacterial display. One of the primary advantages of peptide discovery by bacterial display technology is the speed to candidate peptide capture agent, due to both rapid growth of bacteria and direct utilization of the sorted cells displaying each individual peptide for the subsequent round of biopanning. We have previously isolated peptide affinity reagents towards protective antigen of Bacillus anthracis using a commercially available automated magnetic sorting platform with improved enrichment as compared to manual magnetic sorting. In this work, we focus on adapting our automated biopanning method to a more challenging sort, to demonstrate the specificity possible with peptide capture agents. This was achieved using non-toxic, recombinant variants of ricin and abrin, RiVax and abrax, respectively, which are structurally similar Type II ribosomal inactivating proteins with significant sequence homology. After only two rounds of biopanning, enrichment of peptide capture candidates binding abrax but not RiVax was achieved as demonstrated by Fluorescence Activated Cell Sorting (FACS) studies. Further sorting optimization included negative sorting against RiVax, proper selection of autoMACS programs for specific sorting rounds, and using freshly made buffer and freshly thawed protein target for each round of biopanning for continued enrichment over all four rounds. Most of the resulting candidates from biopanning for abrax binding peptides were able to bind abrax but not RiVax, demonstrating that short peptide sequences can be highly specific even at this early discovery stage.

The Variation in Student Achievement and Behavior within a Portfolio Management Model: Early Results from New Orleans

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McEachin, Andrew J.; Welsh, Richard Osbourne; Brewer, Dominic James

2016-01-01

A growing number of states experimented with alternative governance structures in response to pressure to raise student achievement. Post-Katrina experimentation in New Orleans was widely regarded as a model example of new governance reforms and provided a unique opportunity to learn about the variation in student achievement and behavior within…

Vascular legacy: HOPE ADVANCEs to EMPA-REG and LEADER: A Surprising similarity.

PubMed

Kalra, Sanjay; Sahay, Rakesh

2017-01-01

Recently reported cardiovascular outcome studies on empagliflozin (EMPA-REG) and liraglutide (LEADER) have spurred interest in this field of diabetology. This commentary compares and contrasts these studies with two equally important outcome trials conducted using blood pressure lowering agents. A comparison with MICROHOPE (using ramipril) and ADVANCE (using perindopril + indapamide) blood pressure arms throws up interesting facts. The degree of blood pressure lowering, dissociation between cardiovascular and cerebrovascular benefits, and discordance between renal and retinal outcomes are surprisingly similar in these trials, conducted using disparate molecules. The time taken to achieve such benefits is similar for all drugs except empagliflozin. Such discussion helps inform rational and evidence-based choice of therapy and forms the framework for future research.

Chest Press Exercises With Different Stability Requirements Result in Similar Muscle Damage Recovery in Resistance-Trained Men.

PubMed

Ferreira, Diogo V; Ferreira-Júnior, João B; Soares, Saulo R S; Cadore, Eduardo L; Izquierdo, Mikel; Brown, Lee E; Bottaro, Martim

2017-01-01

Ferreira, DV, Ferreira-Júnior, JB, Soares, SRS, Cadore, EL, Izquierdo, M, Brown, LE, and Bottaro, M. Chest press exercises with different stability requirements result in similar muscle damage recovery in resistance trained men. J Strength Cond Res 31(1): 71-79, 2017-This study investigated the time course of 96 hours of muscle recovery after 3 different chest press exercises with different stability requirements in resistance-trained men. Twenty-seven men (23.5 ± 3.8 years) were randomly assigned to one of the 3 groups: (a) Smith machine bench press; (b) barbell bench press; or (c) dumbbell bench press. Participants performed 8 sets of 10 repetition maximum with 2 minutes rest between sets. Muscle thickness, peak torque (PT), and soreness were measured pre, post, 24, 48, 72, and 96 hours after exercise. There were no differences in the time course of PT or muscle thickness values of the pectoralis major (p = 0.98 and p = 0.91, respectively) or elbow extensors (p = 0.07 and p = 0.86, respectively) between groups. Muscle soreness of the pectoralis major was also not different between groups (p > 0.05). However, the Smith machine and barbell groups recovered from triceps brachii muscle soreness by 72 hours after exercise (p > 0.05), whereas the dumbbell group did not present any triceps brachii muscle soreness after exercise (p > 0.05). In conclusion, resistance-trained men experience similar muscle damage recovery after Smith machine, barbell, and dumbbell chest press exercise. However, muscle soreness of the elbow extensors takes a longer time to recover after using a barbell chest press exercise.

[Similarity system theory to evaluate similarity of chromatographic fingerprints of traditional Chinese medicine].

PubMed

Liu, Yongsuo; Meng, Qinghua; Jiang, Shumin; Hu, Yuzhu

2005-03-01

The similarity evaluation of the fingerprints is one of the most important problems in the quality control of the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Similarity measures used to evaluate the similarity of the common peaks in the chromatogram of TCM have been discussed. Comparative studies were carried out among correlation coefficient, cosine of the angle and an improved extent similarity method using simulated data and experimental data. Correlation coefficient and cosine of the angle are not sensitive to the differences of the data set. They are still not sensitive to the differences of the data even after normalization. According to the similarity system theory, an improved extent similarity method was proposed. The improved extent similarity is more sensitive to the differences of the data sets than correlation coefficient and cosine of the angle. And the character of the data sets needs not to be changed compared with log-transformation. The improved extent similarity can be used to evaluate the similarity of the chromatographic fingerprints of TCM.

Similarity-Dissimilarity Competition in Disjunctive Classification Tasks

PubMed Central

Mathy, Fabien; Haladjian, Harry H.; Laurent, Eric; Goldstone, Robert L.

2013-01-01

Typical disjunctive artificial classification tasks require participants to sort stimuli according to rules such as “x likes cars only when black and coupe OR white and SUV.” For categories like this, increasing the salience of the diagnostic dimensions has two simultaneous effects: increasing the distance between members of the same category and increasing the distance between members of opposite categories. Potentially, these two effects respectively hinder and facilitate classification learning, leading to competing predictions for learning. Increasing saliency may lead to members of the same category to be considered less similar, while the members of separate categories might be considered more dissimilar. This implies a similarity-dissimilarity competition between two basic classification processes. When focusing on sub-category similarity, one would expect more difficult classification when members of the same category become less similar (disregarding the increase of between-category dissimilarity); however, the between-category dissimilarity increase predicts a less difficult classification. Our categorization study suggests that participants rely more on using dissimilarities between opposite categories than finding similarities between sub-categories. We connect our results to rule- and exemplar-based classification models. The pattern of influences of within- and between-category similarities are challenging for simple single-process categorization systems based on rules or exemplars. Instead, our results suggest that either these processes should be integrated in a hybrid model, or that category learning operates by forming clusters within each category. PMID:23403979

Accurate segmenting of cervical tumors in PET imaging based on similarity between adjacent slices.

PubMed

Chen, Liyuan; Shen, Chenyang; Zhou, Zhiguo; Maquilan, Genevieve; Thomas, Kimberly; Folkert, Michael R; Albuquerque, Kevin; Wang, Jing

2018-06-01

Because in PET imaging cervical tumors are close to the bladder with high capacity for the secreted 18 FDG tracer, conventional intensity-based segmentation methods often misclassify the bladder as a tumor. Based on the observation that tumor position and area do not change dramatically from slice to slice, we propose a two-stage scheme that facilitates segmentation. In the first stage, we used a graph-cut based algorithm to obtain initial contouring of the tumor based on local similarity information between voxels; this was achieved through manual contouring of the cervical tumor on one slice. In the second stage, initial tumor contours were fine-tuned to more accurate segmentation by incorporating similarity information on tumor shape and position among adjacent slices, according to an intensity-spatial-distance map. Experimental results illustrate that the proposed two-stage algorithm provides a more effective approach to segmenting cervical tumors in 3D 18 FDG PET images than the benchmarks used for comparison. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Rice- or pork-based diets with similar calorie and content result in different rat gut microbiota.

PubMed

Qi, Xiaozhe; Xu, Wentao; Guo, Mingzhang; Chen, Siyuan; Liu, Yifei; He, Xiaoyun; Huang, Kunlun

2017-11-01

Rice is the most important food crop, and pork is the most widely eaten meat in the world. In this study, we compared the gut microbiota of the rats fed with rice or pork mixed diets, which have similar caloric contents. The physiological indices (body weights, hematology, serum chemistry, organ weights and histopathology) of two groups were all within the normal range. Two diets did not induce difference in the diversity of gut bacteria. However, Firmicutes were significantly higher in rice diet group, while Bacteroidetes were enriched in pork diet group. Butyrate and the bacteria enzymes β-glucuronidase, β-glucosidase and nitroreductase in the feces were all drastically higher in pork diet group. This study indicates that different diets with similar calorie and nutritional composition could change the community structure but not the diversity of rat fecal microbiota.

Surface similarity-based molecular query-retrieval

PubMed Central

Singh, Rahul

2007-01-01

Background Discerning the similarity between molecules is a challenging problem in drug discovery as well as in molecular biology. The importance of this problem is due to the fact that the biochemical characteristics of a molecule are closely related to its structure. Therefore molecular similarity is a key notion in investigations targeting exploration of molecular structural space, query-retrieval in molecular databases, and structure-activity modelling. Determining molecular similarity is related to the choice of molecular representation. Currently, representations with high descriptive power and physical relevance like 3D surface-based descriptors are available. Information from such representations is both surface-based and volumetric. However, most techniques for determining molecular similarity tend to focus on idealized 2D graph-based descriptors due to the complexity that accompanies reasoning with more elaborate representations. Results This paper addresses the problem of determining similarity when molecules are described using complex surface-based representations. It proposes an intrinsic, spherical representation that systematically maps points on a molecular surface to points on a standard coordinate system (a sphere). Molecular surface properties such as shape, field strengths, and effects due to field super-positioningcan then be captured as distributions on the surface of the sphere. Surface-based molecular similarity is subsequently determined by computing the similarity of the surface-property distributions using a novel formulation of histogram-intersection. The similarity formulation is not only sensitive to the 3D distribution of the surface properties, but is also highly efficient to compute. Conclusion The proposed method obviates the computationally expensive step of molecular pose-optimisation, can incorporate conformational variations, and facilitates highly efficient determination of similarity by directly comparing molecular surfaces

The Achievement Ideology and Whiteness: "Achieving Whiteness" or "Achieving Middle Class?"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Allen, Ricky Lee

Over the past few decades, social reproduction theorists have criticized achievement ideology as a dominant and dominating myth that hides the true nature of class immobility. Social reproductionists' primary criticism of achievement ideology is that it blinds the working class, regardless of race or gender, to the possibilities of collective…

Achieving Zero Stress in Iridium, Chromium, and Nickel Thin Films

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Broadway, David M.; Weimer, Jeffrey; Gurgew, Danielle; Lis, Tomasz; Ramsey, Brian D.; O'Dell, Stephen L.; Ames, A.; Bruni, R.

2015-01-01

We examine a method for achieving zero intrinsic stress in thin films of iridium, chromium, and nickel deposited by magnetron sputter deposition. The examination of the stress in these materials is motivated by efforts to advance the optical performance of light-weight x-ray space telescopes into the regime of sub-arc second resolution that rely on control of the film stress to values within 10-100 MPa. A characteristic feature of the intrinsic stress behavior in chromium and nickel is their sensitivity to the magnitude and sign of the intrinsic stress with argon gas pressure, including the existence of a critical pressure that results in zero film stress. This critical pressure scales linearly with the film's density. While the effect of stress reversal with argon pressure has been previously reported by Hoffman and others for nickel and chromium, we have discovered a similar behavior for iridium. Additionally, we have identified zero stress in iridium shortly after island coalescence. This feature of film growth is used for achieving a total internal stress of -2.89 MPa for a 15.8 nm thick iridium film. The surface roughness of this low-stress film was examined using scanning probe microscopy (SPM) and x-ray reflectivity (XRR) at CuKa and these results presented and discussed.

A novel approach to molecular similarity

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cooper, David L.; Allan, Neil L.

1989-09-01

We review briefly the general problem of assessing the similarity between one molecule and another. We propose a novel approach to the quantitative estimation of the similarity of two electron distributions. The procedure is based on momentum space concepts, and avoids many of the difficulties associated with the usual position space definitions. Results are presented for the model systems CH3CH2CH3, CH3OCH3, CH3SCH3, H2O and H2S.

Quantitative Guidance for Stove Usage and Performance to Achieve Health and Environmental Targets

PubMed Central

Chiang, Ranyee A.

2015-01-01

Background Displacing the use of polluting and inefficient cookstoves in developing countries is necessary to achieve the potential health and environmental benefits sought through clean cooking solutions. Yet little quantitative context has been provided on how much displacement of traditional technologies is needed to achieve targets for household air pollutant concentrations or fuel savings. Objectives This paper provides instructive guidance on the usage of cooking technologies required to achieve health and environmental improvements. Methods We evaluated different scenarios of displacement of traditional stoves with use of higher performing technologies. The air quality and fuel consumption impacts were estimated for these scenarios using a single-zone box model of indoor air quality and ratios of thermal efficiency. Results Stove performance and usage should be considered together, as lower performing stoves can result in similar or greater benefits than a higher performing stove if the lower performing stove has considerably higher displacement of the baseline stove. Based on the indoor air quality model, there are multiple performance–usage scenarios for achieving modest indoor air quality improvements. To meet World Health Organization guidance levels, however, three-stone fire and basic charcoal stove usage must be nearly eliminated to achieve the particulate matter target (< 1–3 hr/week), and substantially limited to meet the carbon monoxide guideline (< 7–9 hr/week). Conclusions Moderate health gains may be achieved with various performance–usage scenarios. The greatest benefits are estimated to be achieved by near-complete displacement of traditional stoves with clean technologies, emphasizing the need to shift in the long term to near exclusive use of clean fuels and stoves. The performance–usage scenarios are also provided as a tool to guide technology selection and prioritize behavior change opportunities to maximize impact. Citation

Benefits from living together? Clades whose species use similar habitats may persist as a result of eco-evolutionary feedbacks.

PubMed

Prinzing, Andreas; Ozinga, Wim A; Brändle, Martin; Courty, Pierre-Emmanuel; Hennion, Françoise; Labandeira, Conrad; Parisod, Christian; Pihain, Mickael; Bartish, Igor V

2017-01-01

Contents 66 I. 67 II. 68 III. 69 IV. 70 V. 73 VI. 75 VII. 77 78 References 78 SUMMARY: Recent decades have seen declines of entire plant clades while other clades persist despite changing environments. We suggest that one reason why some clades persist is that species within these clades use similar habitats, because such similarity may increase the degree of co-occurrence of species within clades. Traditionally, co-occurrence among clade members has been suggested to be disadvantageous because of increased competition and enemy pressure. Here, we hypothesize that increased co-occurrence among clade members promotes mutualist exchange, niche expansion or hybridization, thereby helping species avoid population decline from environmental change. We review the literature and analyse published data for hundreds of plant clades (genera) within a well-studied region and find major differences in the degree to which species within clades occupy similar habitats. We tentatively show that, in clades for which species occupy similar habitats, species tend to exhibit increased co-occurrence, mutualism, niche expansion, and hybridization - and rarely decline. Consistently, throughout the geological past, clades whose species occupied similar habitats often persisted through long time-spans. Overall, for many plant species, the occupation of similar habitats among fellow clade members apparently reduced their vulnerability to environmental change. Future research should identify when and how this previously unrecognized eco-evolutionary feedback operates. © 2016 The Authors. New Phytologist © 2016 New Phytologist Trust.

Mathematics anxiety and mathematics achievement

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sherman, Brian F.; Wither (Post.), David P.

2003-09-01

This paper is a distillation of the major result from the 1998 Ph.D. thesis of the late David Wither. It details a longitudinal study over five years of the relationship between mathematics anxiety and mathematics achievement. It starts from the already well documented negative correlation between the two, and seeks to establish one of the three hypotheses—that mathematics anxiety causes an impairment of mathematics achievement; that lack of mathematics achievement causes mathematics anxiety; or that there is a third underlying cause of the two.

An intensely sympathetic awareness: experiential similarity and cultural norms as means for gaining older African Americans' trust of scientific research.

PubMed

Sabir, Myra G; Pillemer, Karl A

2014-04-01

Well-known trust-building methods are routinely used to recruit and retain older African Americans into scientific research studies, yet the quandary over how to overcome this group's hesitance to participate in research remains. We present two innovative and testable methods for resolving the dilemma around increasing older African Americans' participation in scientific research studies. Certain specific and meaningful experiential similarities between the primary researcher and the participants, as well as clear recognition of the elders' worth and dignity, improved older African Americans' willingness to adhere to a rigorous research design. Steps taken in an intervention study produced a potentially replicable strategy for achieving strong results in recruitment, retention and engagement of this population over three waves of assessment. Sixty-two (n=62) older African Americans were randomized to treatment and control conditions of a reminiscence intervention. Sensitivity to an African American cultural form of respect for elders (recognition of worth and dignity), and intersections between the lived experience of the researcher and participants helped dispel this population's well-documented distrust of scientific research. Results suggest that intentional efforts to honor the worth and dignity of elders through high level hospitality and highlighting meaningful experiential similarities between the researcher and the participants can improve recruitment and retention results. Experiential similarities, in particular, may prove more useful to recruitment and retention than structural similarities such as age, race, or gender, which may not in themselves result in the trust experiential similarities elicit. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Danish and Finnish PISA Results in a Comparative, Qualitative Perspective: How Can the Stable and Distinct Differences between the Danish and Finnish PISA Results Be Explained?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Andersen, Frans Orsted

2010-01-01

The research project presented in this article was designed to provide a better understanding of the stable and significant differences in the PISA results between two otherwise very similar Nordic welfare states, Denmark and Finland. In the PISA studies, Finnish students repeatedly achieve the highest Nordic (and partly worldwide) scores in e.g.…

Sea Ice Detection Based on an Improved Similarity Measurement Method Using Hyperspectral Data.

PubMed

Han, Yanling; Li, Jue; Zhang, Yun; Hong, Zhonghua; Wang, Jing

2017-05-15

Hyperspectral remote sensing technology can acquire nearly continuous spectrum information and rich sea ice image information, thus providing an important means of sea ice detection. However, the correlation and redundancy among hyperspectral bands reduce the accuracy of traditional sea ice detection methods. Based on the spectral characteristics of sea ice, this study presents an improved similarity measurement method based on linear prediction (ISMLP) to detect sea ice. First, the first original band with a large amount of information is determined based on mutual information theory. Subsequently, a second original band with the least similarity is chosen by the spectral correlation measuring method. Finally, subsequent bands are selected through the linear prediction method, and a support vector machine classifier model is applied to classify sea ice. In experiments performed on images of Baffin Bay and Bohai Bay, comparative analyses were conducted to compare the proposed method and traditional sea ice detection methods. Our proposed ISMLP method achieved the highest classification accuracies (91.18% and 94.22%) in both experiments. From these results the ISMLP method exhibits better performance overall than other methods and can be effectively applied to hyperspectral sea ice detection.

Sea Ice Detection Based on an Improved Similarity Measurement Method Using Hyperspectral Data

PubMed Central

Han, Yanling; Li, Jue; Zhang, Yun; Hong, Zhonghua; Wang, Jing

2017-01-01

Hyperspectral remote sensing technology can acquire nearly continuous spectrum information and rich sea ice image information, thus providing an important means of sea ice detection. However, the correlation and redundancy among hyperspectral bands reduce the accuracy of traditional sea ice detection methods. Based on the spectral characteristics of sea ice, this study presents an improved similarity measurement method based on linear prediction (ISMLP) to detect sea ice. First, the first original band with a large amount of information is determined based on mutual information theory. Subsequently, a second original band with the least similarity is chosen by the spectral correlation measuring method. Finally, subsequent bands are selected through the linear prediction method, and a support vector machine classifier model is applied to classify sea ice. In experiments performed on images of Baffin Bay and Bohai Bay, comparative analyses were conducted to compare the proposed method and traditional sea ice detection methods. Our proposed ISMLP method achieved the highest classification accuracies (91.18% and 94.22%) in both experiments. From these results the ISMLP method exhibits better performance overall than other methods and can be effectively applied to hyperspectral sea ice detection. PMID:28505135

The baryonic self similarity of dark matter

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Alard, C., E-mail: alard@iap.fr

2014-06-20

The cosmological simulations indicates that dark matter halos have specific self-similar properties. However, the halo similarity is affected by the baryonic feedback. By using momentum-driven winds as a model to represent the baryon feedback, an equilibrium condition is derived which directly implies the emergence of a new type of similarity. The new self-similar solution has constant acceleration at a reference radius for both dark matter and baryons. This model receives strong support from the observations of galaxies. The new self-similar properties imply that the total acceleration at larger distances is scale-free, the transition between the dark matter and baryons dominatedmore » regime occurs at a constant acceleration, and the maximum amplitude of the velocity curve at larger distances is proportional to M {sup 1/4}. These results demonstrate that this self-similar model is consistent with the basics of modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND) phenomenology. In agreement with the observations, the coincidence between the self-similar model and MOND breaks at the scale of clusters of galaxies. Some numerical experiments show that the behavior of the density near the origin is closely approximated by a Einasto profile.« less

Achievement goal profiles and developments in effort and achievement in upper elementary school.

PubMed

Hornstra, Lisette; Majoor, Marieke; Peetsma, Thea

2017-12-01

The multiple goal perspective posits that certain combinations of achievement goals are more favourable than others in terms of educational outcomes. This study aimed to examine longitudinally whether students' achievement goal profiles and transitions between profiles are associated with developments in self-reported and teacher-rated effort and academic achievement in upper elementary school. Participants were 722 fifth-grade students and their teachers in fifth and sixth grade (N = 68). Students reported on their achievement goals and effort in language and mathematics three times in grade 5 to grade 6. Teachers rated students' general school effort. Achievement scores were obtained from school records. Goal profiles were derived with latent profile and transition analyses. Longitudinal multilevel analyses were conducted. Theoretically favourable goal profiles (high mastery and performance-approach goals, low on performance-avoidance goals), as well as transitions from less to more theoretically favourable goal profiles, were associated with higher levels and more growth in effort for language and mathematics and with stronger language achievement gains. Overall, these results provide support for the multiple goal perspective and show the sustained benefits of favourable goal profiles beyond effects of cognitive ability and background characteristics. © 2017 The Authors. British Journal of Education Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Psychological Society.

Young Children Selectively Expect Failure Disclosure to High-Achieving Peers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hicks, Catherine M.; Liu, David

2017-01-01

Children make many decisions about whether and how to disclose their performance to peers, teachers, parents and others. Previous research has found that children's disclosure declines with age and that older children and teenagers preferentially choose a peer audience for performance disclosure based on similar achievement. This research examines…

Context-dependent similarity effects in letter recognition.

PubMed

Kinoshita, Sachiko; Robidoux, Serje; Guilbert, Daniel; Norris, Dennis

2015-10-01

In visual word recognition tasks, digit primes that are visually similar to letter string targets (e.g., 4/A, 8/B) are known to facilitate letter identification relative to visually dissimilar digits (e.g., 6/A, 7/B); in contrast, with letter primes, visual similarity effects have been elusive. In the present study we show that the visual similarity effect with letter primes can be made to come and go, depending on whether it is necessary to discriminate between visually similar letters. The results support a Bayesian view which regards letter recognition not as a passive activation process driven by the fixed stimulus properties, but as a dynamic evidence accumulation process for a decision that is guided by the task context.

Achievement as Resistance: The Development of a Critical Race Achievement Ideology among Black Achievers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Carter, Dorinda J.

2008-01-01

In this article, Dorinda Carter examines the embodiment of a critical race achievement ideology in high-achieving black students. She conducted a yearlong qualitative investigation of the adaptive behaviors that nine high-achieving black students developed and employed to navigate the process of schooling at an upper-class, predominantly white,…

FunSimMat: a comprehensive functional similarity database

PubMed Central

Schlicker, Andreas; Albrecht, Mario

2008-01-01

Functional similarity based on Gene Ontology (GO) annotation is used in diverse applications like gene clustering, gene expression data analysis, protein interaction prediction and evaluation. However, there exists no comprehensive resource of functional similarity values although such a database would facilitate the use of functional similarity measures in different applications. Here, we describe FunSimMat (Functional Similarity Matrix, http://funsimmat.bioinf.mpi-inf.mpg.de/), a large new database that provides several different semantic similarity measures for GO terms. It offers various precomputed functional similarity values for proteins contained in UniProtKB and for protein families in Pfam and SMART. The web interface allows users to efficiently perform both semantic similarity searches with GO terms and functional similarity searches with proteins or protein families. All results can be downloaded in tab-delimited files for use with other tools. An additional XML–RPC interface gives automatic online access to FunSimMat for programs and remote services. PMID:17932054

An Examination of Teachers' Effects on High, Middle, and Low Aptitude Students' Performance on a Standardized Achievement Test

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Good, Thomas L.; Beckerman, Terrill M.

1978-01-01

Teacher effectiveness was defined by students' mathematics score on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills while achievement was measured by the Cognitive Abilities Test. Relatively effective teachers generally produced achievement gains from all aptitude levels. Similarly, relatively ineffective teachers did not disproportionately depress achievement for…

New similarity of triangular fuzzy number and its application.

PubMed

Zhang, Xixiang; Ma, Weimin; Chen, Liping

2014-01-01

The similarity of triangular fuzzy numbers is an important metric for application of it. There exist several approaches to measure similarity of triangular fuzzy numbers. However, some of them are opt to be large. To make the similarity well distributed, a new method SIAM (Shape's Indifferent Area and Midpoint) to measure triangular fuzzy number is put forward, which takes the shape's indifferent area and midpoint of two triangular fuzzy numbers into consideration. Comparison with other similarity measurements shows the effectiveness of the proposed method. Then, it is applied to collaborative filtering recommendation to measure users' similarity. A collaborative filtering case is used to illustrate users' similarity based on cloud model and triangular fuzzy number; the result indicates that users' similarity based on triangular fuzzy number can obtain better discrimination. Finally, a simulated collaborative filtering recommendation system is developed which uses cloud model and triangular fuzzy number to express users' comprehensive evaluation on items, and result shows that the accuracy of collaborative filtering recommendation based on triangular fuzzy number is higher.

EEG Sleep Stages Classification Based on Time Domain Features and Structural Graph Similarity.

PubMed

Diykh, Mohammed; Li, Yan; Wen, Peng

2016-11-01

The electroencephalogram (EEG) signals are commonly used in diagnosing and treating sleep disorders. Many existing methods for sleep stages classification mainly depend on the analysis of EEG signals in time or frequency domain to obtain a high classification accuracy. In this paper, the statistical features in time domain, the structural graph similarity and the K-means (SGSKM) are combined to identify six sleep stages using single channel EEG signals. Firstly, each EEG segment is partitioned into sub-segments. The size of a sub-segment is determined empirically. Secondly, statistical features are extracted, sorted into different sets of features and forwarded to the SGSKM to classify EEG sleep stages. We have also investigated the relationships between sleep stages and the time domain features of the EEG data used in this paper. The experimental results show that the proposed method yields better classification results than other four existing methods and the support vector machine (SVM) classifier. A 95.93% average classification accuracy is achieved by using the proposed method.

Effective Identification of Similar Patients Through Sequential Matching over ICD Code Embedding.

PubMed

Nguyen, Dang; Luo, Wei; Venkatesh, Svetha; Phung, Dinh

2018-04-11

Evidence-based medicine often involves the identification of patients with similar conditions, which are often captured in ICD (International Classification of Diseases (World Health Organization 2013)) code sequences. With no satisfying prior solutions for matching ICD-10 code sequences, this paper presents a method which effectively captures the clinical similarity among routine patients who have multiple comorbidities and complex care needs. Our method leverages the recent progress in representation learning of individual ICD-10 codes, and it explicitly uses the sequential order of codes for matching. Empirical evaluation on a state-wide cancer data collection shows that our proposed method achieves significantly higher matching performance compared with state-of-the-art methods ignoring the sequential order. Our method better identifies similar patients in a number of clinical outcomes including readmission and mortality outlook. Although this paper focuses on ICD-10 diagnosis code sequences, our method can be adapted to work with other codified sequence data.

Semantic similarity between ontologies at different scales

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Zhang, Qingpeng; Haglin, David J.

In the past decade, existing and new knowledge and datasets has been encoded in different ontologies for semantic web and biomedical research. The size of ontologies is often very large in terms of number of concepts and relationships, which makes the analysis of ontologies and the represented knowledge graph computational and time consuming. As the ontologies of various semantic web and biomedical applications usually show explicit hierarchical structures, it is interesting to explore the trade-offs between ontological scales and preservation/precision of results when we analyze ontologies. This paper presents the first effort of examining the capability of this idea viamore » studying the relationship between scaling biomedical ontologies at different levels and the semantic similarity values. We evaluate the semantic similarity between three Gene Ontology slims (Plant, Yeast, and Candida, among which the latter two belong to the same kingdom—Fungi) using four popular measures commonly applied to biomedical ontologies (Resnik, Lin, Jiang-Conrath, and SimRel). The results of this study demonstrate that with proper selection of scaling levels and similarity measures, we can significantly reduce the size of ontologies without losing substantial detail. In particular, the performance of Jiang-Conrath and Lin are more reliable and stable than that of the other two in this experiment, as proven by (a) consistently showing that Yeast and Candida are more similar (as compared to Plant) at different scales, and (b) small deviations of the similarity values after excluding a majority of nodes from several lower scales. This study provides a deeper understanding of the application of semantic similarity to biomedical ontologies, and shed light on how to choose appropriate semantic similarity measures for biomedical engineering.« less

Similar fecal immunochemical test results in screening and referral colorectal cancer

PubMed Central

van Turenhout, Sietze T; van Rossum, Leo GM; Oort, Frank A; Laheij, Robert JF; van Rijn, Anne F; Terhaar sive Droste, Jochim S; Fockens, Paul; van der Hulst, René WM; Bouman, Anneke A; Jansen, Jan BMJ; Meijer, Gerrit A; Dekker, Evelien; Mulder, Chris JJ

2012-01-01

AIM: To improve the interpretation of fecal immunochemical test (FIT) results in colorectal cancer (CRC) cases from screening and referral cohorts. METHODS: In this comparative observational study, two prospective cohorts of CRC cases were compared. The first cohort was obtained from 10 322 average risk subjects invited for CRC screening with FIT, of which, only subjects with a positive FIT were referred for colonoscopy. The second cohort was obtained from 3637 subjects scheduled for elective colonoscopy with a positive FIT result. The same FIT and positivity threshold (OC sensor; ≥ 50 ng/mL) was used in both cohorts. Colonoscopy was performed in all referral subjects and in FIT positive screening subjects. All CRC cases were selected from both cohorts. Outcome measurements were mean FIT results and FIT scores per tissue tumor stage (T stage). RESULTS: One hundred and eighteen patients with CRC were included in the present study: 28 cases obtained from the screening cohort (64% male; mean age 65 years, SD 6.5) and 90 cases obtained from the referral cohort (58% male; mean age 69 years, SD 9.8). The mean FIT results found were higher in the referral cohort (829 ± 302 ng/mL vs 613 ± 368 ng/mL, P = 0.02). Tissue tumor stage (T stage) distribution was different between both populations [screening population: 13 (46%) T1, eight (29%) T2, six (21%) T3, one (4%) T4 carcinoma; referral population: 12 (13%) T1, 22 (24%) T2, 52 (58%) T3, four (4%) T4 carcinoma], and higher T stage was significantly associated with higher FIT results (P < 0.001). Per tumor stage, no significant difference in mean FIT results was observed (screening vs referral: T1 498 ± 382 ng/mL vs 725 ± 374 ng/mL, P = 0.22; T2 787 ± 303 ng/mL vs 794 ± 341 ng/mL, P = 0.79; T3 563 ± 368 ng/mL vs 870 ± 258 ng/mL, P = 0.13; T4 not available). After correction for T stage in logistic regression analysis, no significant differences in mean FIT results were observed between both types of cohorts (P = 0

Integrating user profile in medical CBIR systems to answer perceptual similarity queries

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bugatti, Pedro H.; Kaster, Daniel S.; Ponciano-Silva, Marcelo; Traina, Agma J. M.; Traina, Caetano, Jr.

2011-03-01

Techniques for Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) have been intensively explored due to the increase in the amount of captured images and the need of fast retrieval of them. The medical field is a specific example that generates a large flow of information, especially digital images employed for diagnosing. One issue that still remains unsolved deals with how to reach the perceptual similarity. That is, to achieve an effective retrieval, one must characterize and quantify the perceptual similarity regarding the specialist in the field. Therefore, the present paper was conceived to fill in this gap creating a consistent support to perform similarity queries over medical images, maintaining the semantics of a given query desired by the user. CBIR systems relying in relevance feedback techniques usually request the users to label relevant images. In this paper, we present a simple but highly effective strategy to survey user profiles, taking advantage of such labeling to implicitly gather the user perceptual similarity. The user profiles maintain the settings desired for each user, allowing tuning the similarity assessment, which encompasses dynamically changing the distance function employed through an interactive process. Experiments using computed tomography lung images show that the proposed approach is effective in capturing the users' perception.

Understanding the positive role of neighborhood socioeconomic advantage in achievement: the contribution of the home, child care, and school environments.

PubMed

Dupere, Veronique; Leventhal, Tama; Crosnoe, Robert; Dion, Eric

2010-09-01

The goal of this study was to examine the mechanisms underlying associations between neighborhood socioeconomic advantage and children's achievement trajectories between ages 54 months and 15 years. Results of hierarchical linear growth models based on a diverse sample of 1,364 children indicate that neighborhood socioeconomic advantage was nonlinearly associated with youths' initial vocabulary and reading scores, such that the presence of educated, affluent professionals in the neighborhood had a favorable association with children's achievement among those in less advantaged neighborhoods until it leveled off at moderate levels of advantage. A similar tendency was observed for math achievement. The quality of the home and child care environments as well as school advantage partially explained these associations. The findings suggest that multiple environments need to be considered simultaneously for understanding neighborhood-achievement links.

Early Intervention and Student Achievement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hormes, Mridula T.

2009-01-01

The United States Department of Education has been rigorous in holding all states accountable with regard to student achievement. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 clearly laid out federal mandates for all schools to follow. K-12 leaders of public schools are very aware of the fact that results in terms of student achievement need to improve…

Conventional physical therapy and physical therapy based on reflex stimulation showed similar results in children with myelomeningocele.

PubMed

Aizawa, Carolina Y P; Morales, Mariana P; Lundberg, Carolina; Moura, Maria Clara D Soares de; Pinto, Fernando C G; Voos, Mariana C; Hasue, Renata H

2017-03-01

We aimed to investigate whether infants with myelomeningocele would improve their motor ability and functional independence after ten sessions of physical therapy and compare the outcomes of conventional physical therapy (CPT) to a physical therapy program based on reflex stimulation (RPT). Twelve children were allocated to CPT (n = 6, age 18.3 months) or RPT (n = 6, age 18.2 months). The RPT involved proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation. Children were assessed with the Gross Motor Function Measure and the Pediatric Evaluation of Disability Inventory before and after treatment. Mann-Whitney tests compared the improvement on the two scales of CPT versus RPT and the Wilcoxon test compared CPT to RPT (before vs. after treatment). Possible correlations between the two scales were tested with Spearman correlation coefficients. Both groups showed improvement on self-care and mobility domains of both scales. There were no differences between the groups, before, or after intervention. The CPT and RPT showed similar results after ten weeks of treatment.

Breast mass detection in tomosynthesis projection images using information-theoretic similarity measures

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Singh, Swatee; Tourassi, Georgia D.; Lo, Joseph Y.

2007-03-01

The purpose of this project is to study Computer Aided Detection (CADe) of breast masses for digital tomosynthesis. It is believed that tomosynthesis will show improvement over conventional mammography in detection and characterization of breast masses by removing overlapping dense fibroglandular tissue. This study used the 60 human subject cases collected as part of on-going clinical trials at Duke University. Raw projections images were used to identify suspicious regions in the algorithm's high-sensitivity, low-specificity stage using a Difference of Gaussian (DoG) filter. The filtered images were thresholded to yield initial CADe hits that were then shifted and added to yield a 3D distribution of suspicious regions. These were further summed in the depth direction to yield a flattened probability map of suspicious hits for ease of scoring. To reduce false positives, we developed an algorithm based on information theory where similarity metrics were calculated using knowledge databases consisting of tomosynthesis regions of interest (ROIs) obtained from projection images. We evaluated 5 similarity metrics to test the false positive reduction performance of our algorithm, specifically joint entropy, mutual information, Jensen difference divergence, symmetric Kullback-Liebler divergence, and conditional entropy. The best performance was achieved using the joint entropy similarity metric, resulting in ROC A z of 0.87 +/- 0.01. As a whole, the CADe system can detect breast masses in this data set with 79% sensitivity and 6.8 false positives per scan. In comparison, the original radiologists performed with only 65% sensitivity when using mammography alone, and 91% sensitivity when using tomosynthesis alone.

Similarity Based Semantic Web Service Match

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Peng, Hui; Niu, Wenjia; Huang, Ronghuai

Semantic web service discovery aims at returning the most matching advertised services to the service requester by comparing the semantic of the request service with an advertised service. The semantic of a web service are described in terms of inputs, outputs, preconditions and results in Ontology Web Language for Service (OWL-S) which formalized by W3C. In this paper we proposed an algorithm to calculate the semantic similarity of two services by weighted averaging their inputs and outputs similarities. Case study and applications show the effectiveness of our algorithm in service match.

Reading Self-Perceived Ability, Enjoyment and Achievement: A Genetically Informative Study of Their Reciprocal Links Over Time

PubMed Central

2017-01-01

Extant literature has established a consistent association between aspects of reading motivation, such as enjoyment and self-perceived ability, and reading achievement, in that more motivated readers are generally more skilled readers. However, the developmental etiology of this relation is yet to be investigated. The present study explores the development of the motivation–achievement association and its genetic and environmental underpinnings. Applying cross-lagged design in a sample of 13,825 twins, we examined the relative contribution of genetic and environmental factors to the association between reading enjoyment and self-perceived ability and reading achievement. Children completed a reading comprehension task and self-reported their reading enjoyment and perceived ability twice in middle childhood: when they were 9–10 and 12 years old. Results showed a modest reciprocal association over time between reading motivation (enjoyment and perceived ability) and reading achievement. Reading motivation at age 9–10 statistically predicted the development of later achievement, and similarly, reading achievement at age 9–10 predicted the development of later motivation. This reciprocal association was observed beyond the stability of the variables and their contemporaneous correlation and was largely explained by genetic factors. PMID:28333527

Age at Childbearing over Two Generations and Grandchildren’s Cognitive Achievement

PubMed Central

Krueger, Patrick M.; Wagner, Nicole M.

2014-01-01

We examine whether grandparents’ and parents’ ages at birth are associated with grandchildren’s early cognitive achievement, and whether grandparents’ or parents’ socioeconomic status, health, and marital status mediate those associations. Our analysis is based on data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and its Child Development Supplement. A grandparent’s age at the birth of their own children is robustly and positively associated with grandchildren’s verbal achievement, but not with grandchildren’s applied mathematics achievement, after controlling for parents’ age at the grandchild’s birth. The associations are similar in magnitude for grandmothers and grandfathers. A variety of indicators of social class in the grandparent and parent generations did not mediate this age effect. However, many of those indicators of grandparents’ social class were directly or indirectly related to grandchildren’s achievement. PMID:25767330

Counterstereotypic Identity among High-Achieving Black Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Harpalani, Vinay

2017-01-01

This article examines how racial stereotypes affect achievement and identity formation among low income, urban Black adolescents. Specifically, the major question addressed is: how do high-achieving Black students succeed academically despite negative stereotypes of their intellectual abilities? Results indicate that high-achieving Black youth,…

Neighborhood Influences on the Academic Achievement of Extremely Low Birth Weight Children

PubMed Central

Borawski, Elaine; Schluchter, Mark; Taylor, H.Gerry; Klein, Nancy; Hack, Maureen

2010-01-01

Objective To examine neighborhood effects on academic achievement of children with extremely low birth weight (ELBW <1000 g) and normal birth weight (NBW) controls. Methods The study included 183 8-year-old children with ELBW born during 1992–1995 and 176 sociodemographically similar NBW controls. Academic achievement was measured via The Woodcock–Johnson III Academic Skills Cluster. Results Children with ELBW had significantly lower achievement scores (89 ± 16 vs. 97 ± 13). A multilevel estimation of predictors of academic achievement revealed that neighborhood poverty was significantly associated with lower achievement (β = −.17; 95% CI −.3, −.05; p < .01). Additional correlates included birth weight status, male sex, and parent ratings of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder symptoms. Family characteristics included maternal education and parent protection. Conclusions Neighborhood characteristics affect academic achievement of both children with ELBW and NBW controls, over and above individual and family influences. Interventions designed to address family and neighborhood factors may potentially improve these outcomes. PMID:19584171

Perceptual similarity of regional dialects of American English

PubMed Central

Clopper, Cynthia G.; Levi, Susannah V.; Pisoni, David B.

2012-01-01

Previous research on the perception of dialect variation has measured the perceptual similarity of talkers based on regional dialect using only indirect methods. In the present study, a paired comparison similarity ratings task was used to obtain direct measures of perceptual similarity. Naive listeners were asked to make explicit judgments about the similarity of a set of talkers based on regional dialect. The talkers represented four regional varieties of American English and both genders. Results revealed an additive effect of gender and dialect on mean similarity ratings and two primary dimensions of perceptual dialect similarity: geography (northern versus southern varieties) and dialect markedness (many versus few characteristic properties). The present findings are consistent with earlier research on the perception of dialect variation, as well as recent speech perception studies which demonstrate the integral role of talker gender in speech perception. PMID:16454310

Achievement goals, self-handicapping, and performance: a 2 x 2 achievement goal perspective.

PubMed

Ntoumanis, Nikos; Thøgersen-Ntoumani, Cecilie; Smith, Alison L

2009-11-01

Elliot and colleagues (2006) examined the effects of experimentally induced achievement goals, proposed by the trichotomous model, on self-handicapping and performance in physical education. Our study replicated and extended the work of Elliot et al. by experimentally promoting all four goals proposed by the 2 x 2 model (Elliot & McGregor, 2001), measuring the participants' own situational achievement goals, using a relatively novel task, and testing the participants in a group setting. We used a randomized experimental design with four conditions that aimed to induce one of the four goals advanced by the 2 x 2 model. The participants (n = 138) were undergraduates who engaged in a dart-throwing task. The results pertaining to self-handicapping partly replicated Elliot and colleagues' findings by showing that experimentally promoted performance-avoidance goals resulted in less practice. In contrast, the promotion of mastery-avoidance goals did not result in less practice compared with either of the approach goals. Dart-throwing performance did not differ among the four goal conditions. Personal achievement goals did not moderate the effects of experimentally induced goals on self-handicapping and performance. The extent to which mastery-avoidance goals are maladaptive is discussed, as well as the interplay between personal and experimentally induced goals.

Natural texture retrieval based on perceptual similarity measurement

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gao, Ying; Dong, Junyu; Lou, Jianwen; Qi, Lin; Liu, Jun

2018-04-01

A typical texture retrieval system performs feature comparison and might not be able to make human-like judgments of image similarity. Meanwhile, it is commonly known that perceptual texture similarity is difficult to be described by traditional image features. In this paper, we propose a new texture retrieval scheme based on texture perceptual similarity. The key of the proposed scheme is that prediction of perceptual similarity is performed by learning a non-linear mapping from image features space to perceptual texture space by using Random Forest. We test the method on natural texture dataset and apply it on a new wallpapers dataset. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed texture retrieval scheme with perceptual similarity improves the retrieval performance over traditional image features.

Phoneme Similarity and Confusability

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bailey, T.M.; Hahn, U.

2005-01-01

Similarity between component speech sounds influences language processing in numerous ways. Explanation and detailed prediction of linguistic performance consequently requires an understanding of these basic similarities. The research reported in this paper contrasts two broad classes of approach to the issue of phoneme similarity-theoretically…

Classroom Instruction and Science Achievement in Japan, Hong Kong, and Chinese Taipei: Results from the TIMSS 1999 Assessment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

House, J. Daniel

2005-01-01

The Third International Mathematics and Science Study represents the most comprehensive international assessment of educational contexts and student achievement yet conducted. As part of the examination of the effects of contextual factors on student achievement, a model was constructed that considered the effects of variables such as…

Limiting similarity of competitive species and demographic stochasticity

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zheng, Xiu-Deng; Deng, Ling-Ling; Qiang, Wei-Ya; Cressman, Ross; Tao, Yi

2017-04-01

The limiting similarity of competitive species and its relationship with the competitive exclusion principle is still one of the most important concepts in ecology. In the 1970s, May [R. M. May, Stability and Complexity in Model Ecosystems (Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 1973)] developed a concise theoretical framework to investigate the limiting similarity of competitive species. His theoretical results show that no limiting similarity threshold of competitive species can be identified in the deterministic model system whereby species more similar than this threshold never coexist. Theoretically, for competitive species coexisting in an unvarying environment, deterministic interspecific interactions and demographic stochasticity can be considered two sides of a coin. To investigate how the "tension" between these two forces affects the coexistence of competing species, a simple two-species competitive system based only on May's model system is transformed into an equivalent replicator equation. The effect of demographic stochasticity on the system stability is measured by the expected drift of the Lyapunov function. Our main results show that the limiting similarity of competitive species should not be considered to be an absolute measure. Specifically, very similar competitive species should be able to coexist in an environment with a high productivity level but big differences between competitive species should be necessary in an ecosystem with a low productivity level.

Achieving ultrahigh vacuum in an unbaked chamber with glow discharge conditioning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Khan, Ziauddin; Semwal, Pratibha; Dhanani, Kalpesh R.; Raval, Dilip C.; Pradhan, Subrata

2017-01-01

Glow discharge conditioning (GDC) has long been accepted as one of the basic wall conditioning techniques for achieving ultrahigh vacuum in an unbaked chamber. As a part of this fundamental experimental study, a test chamber has been fabricated from stainless steel 304 L with its inner surface electropolished on which a detailed investigation has been carried out. Both helium and hydrogen gases have been employed as discharge cleaning medium. The discharge cleaning was carried out at 0.1 A / m 2 current density with working pressure maintained at 1.0 × 10 -2 mbar. It was experimentally observed that the pump-down time to attain the base pressure 10 -8 mbar was reduced by 62% compared to the unbaked chamber being pumped to this ultimate vacuum. The results were similar irrespective of whether the discharge cleaning medium is either hydrogen or helium. It was also experimentally established that a better ultimate vacuum could be achieved as compared to theoretically calculated ultimate vacuum with the help of discharge cleaning.

Contrasting Ecosystem-Effects of Morphologically Similar Copepods

PubMed Central

Matthews, Blake; Hausch, Stephen; Winter, Christian; Suttle, Curtis A.; Shurin, Jonathan B.

2011-01-01

Organisms alter the biotic and abiotic conditions of ecosystems. They can modulate the availability of resources to other species (ecosystem engineering) and shape selection pressures on other organisms (niche construction). Very little is known about how the engineering effects of organisms vary among and within species, and, as a result, the ecosystem consequences of species diversification and phenotypic evolution are poorly understood. Here, using a common gardening experiment, we test whether morphologically similar species and populations of Diaptomidae copepods (Leptodiaptomus ashlandi, Hesperodiaptomus franciscanus, Skistodiaptomus oregonensis) have similar or different effects on the structure and function of freshwater ecosystems. We found that copepod species had contrasting effects on algal biomass, ammonium concentrations, and sedimentation rates, and that copepod populations had contrasting effects on prokaryote abundance, sedimentation rates, and gross primary productivity. The average size of ecosystem-effect contrasts between species was similar to those between populations, and was comparable to those between fish species and populations measured in previous common gardening experiments. Our results suggest that subtle morphological variation among and within species can cause multifarious and divergent ecosystem-effects. We conclude that using morphological trait variation to assess the functional similarity of organisms may underestimate the importance of species and population diversity for ecosystem functioning. PMID:22140432

The effect of homework choices on achievement and intrinsic motivation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Christensen, Emily Fast

The purpose of this research was to test an intervention of choices in homework on the achievement and intrinsic motivation of seventh-grade science students at a middle school. The intervention was based on concepts from the cognitive evaluation theory of Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan (1985). The subjects were sixteen heterogeneous classes of seventh-grade students, who were divided among four teachers. Two randomly chosen classes from each teacher received choices in their homework and the remaining two classes of each teacher received similar homework assignments without choices. Two hypotheses were developed for this study: (1) Seventh-grade science students given choices in their homework would show an increase in intrinsic motivation as measured on a motivation orientation measure, compared to students not given choices in their homework, and (2) Seventh-grade science students given choices in their homework would show an increase in achievement on an achievement measure, compared to students not given choices in their homework. Having choices in homework did not increase intrinsic motivation or achievement. However, students who did their homework did significantly better on the posttest, and students who were more intrinsically motivated did significantly better on the posttest. Just doing the homework was important for achievement, and intrinsic motivation was linked to achievement.

Children's Self-Regulation and School Achievement in Cultural Contexts: The Role of Maternal Restrictive Control

PubMed Central

Weis, Mirjam; Trommsdorff, Gisela; Muñoz, Lorena

2016-01-01

Self-regulation can be developed through parent-child interactions and has been related to developmental outcomes, e.g., such as educational achievement. This study examined cross-cultural differences and similarities in maternal restrictive control, self-regulation (i.e., behavior and emotion regulation) and school achievement and relations among these variables in Germany and Chile. Seventy-six German and 167 Chilean fourth graders, their mothers, and their teachers participated. Mothers and teachers rated children's behavior regulation with a subscale of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Children reported their use of emotion regulation strategies on the Questionnaire for the Measurement of Stress and Coping. Mothers rated maternal restrictive control by answering the Parenting Practice Questionnaire. School achievement was assessed by grades for language and mathematics. Results showed higher behavior regulation of German children in comparison to Chilean children and a higher preference of restrictive parental control in Chilean mothers than in German mothers. Regression analyses revealed positive relations between children's behavior regulation and school achievement in Germany and in Chile. Further, in both cultural contexts, maternal restrictive control was related negatively to behavior regulation and positively to anger-oriented emotion regulation. In sum, the study showed the central function of behavior regulation for school achievement underlining negative relations of maternal restrictive control with children's self-regulation and school achievement in diverse cultural contexts. Culturally adapted interventions related to parenting practices to promote children's behavior regulation may assist in also promoting children's school achievement. PMID:27303318

Similarity and Congruence.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Herman, Daniel L.

This instructional unit is an introduction to the common properties of similarity and congruence. Manipulation of objects leads to a recognition of these properties. The ASA, SAS, and SSS theorems are not mentioned. Limited use is made in the application of the properties of size and shape preserved by similarity or congruence. A teacher's guide…

A Multigrade, Multiyear Statewide Examination of Reading Achievement: Examination of Reading Achievement Examining Variability between Districts, Schools, and Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Adelson, Jill L.; Dickinson, Emily R.; Cunningham, Brittany C.

2016-01-01

This brief examined the patterns of reading achievement using statewide data from all students (Grades 3-10) in multiple years to examine gaps based on student, school, and district characteristics. Results indicate reading achievement varied most between students within schools and that students' prior achievement was the strongest predictor of…

The School Climate-Student Achievement Connection: If We Want Achievement Gains, We Need to Begin by Improving the Climate

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shindler, John; Jones, Albert; Williams, A. Dee; Taylor, Clint; Cardenas, Hermenia

2016-01-01

This study examined the relationship between school climate and student achievement ratings in urban school districts in five states (N = 230). Many educators view school climate and student achievement as separate considerations. However the results of this study suggest that climate and student achievement were highly related. In fact, the…

Similarity, not complexity, determines visual working memory performance.

PubMed

Jackson, Margaret C; Linden, David E J; Roberts, Mark V; Kriegeskorte, Nikolaus; Haenschel, Corinna

2015-11-01

A number of studies have shown that visual working memory (WM) is poorer for complex versus simple items, traditionally accounted for by higher information load placing greater demands on encoding and storage capacity limits. Other research suggests that it may not be complexity that determines WM performance per se, but rather increased perceptual similarity between complex items as a result of a large amount of overlapping information. Increased similarity is thought to lead to greater comparison errors between items encoded into WM and the test item(s) presented at retrieval. However, previous studies have used different object categories to manipulate complexity and similarity, raising questions as to whether these effects are simply due to cross-category differences. For the first time, here the relationship between complexity and similarity in WM using the same stimulus category (abstract polygons) are investigated. The authors used a delayed discrimination task to measure WM for 1-4 complex versus simple simultaneously presented items and manipulated the similarity between the single test item at retrieval and the sample items at encoding. WM was poorer for complex than simple items only when the test item was similar to 1 of the encoding items, and not when it was dissimilar or identical. The results provide clear support for reinterpretation of the complexity effect in WM as a similarity effect and highlight the importance of the retrieval stage in governing WM performance. The authors discuss how these findings can be reconciled with current models of WM capacity limits. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Computer-Based Training in Math and Working Memory Improves Cognitive Skills and Academic Achievement in Primary School Children: Behavioral Results

PubMed Central

Sánchez-Pérez, Noelia; Castillo, Alejandro; López-López, José A.; Pina, Violeta; Puga, Jorge L.; Campoy, Guillermo; González-Salinas, Carmen; Fuentes, Luis J.

2018-01-01

Student academic achievement has been positively related to further development outcomes, such as the attainment of higher educational, employment, and socioeconomic aspirations. Among all the academic competences, mathematics has been identified as an essential skill in the field of international leadership as well as for those seeking positions in disciplines related to science, technology, and engineering. Given its positive consequences, studies have designed trainings to enhance children's mathematical skills. Additionally, the ability to regulate and control actions and cognitions, i.e., executive functions (EF), has been associated with school success, which has resulted in a strong effort to develop EF training programs to improve students' EF and academic achievement. The present study examined the efficacy of a school computer-based training composed of two components, namely, working memory and mathematics tasks. Among the advantages of using a computer-based training program is the ease with which it can be implemented in school settings and the ease by which the difficulty of the tasks can be adapted to fit the child's ability level. To test the effects of the training, children's cognitive skills (EF and IQ) and their school achievement (math and language grades and abilities) were evaluated. The results revealed a significant improvement in cognitive skills, such as non-verbal IQ and inhibition, and better school performance in math and reading among the children who participated in the training compared to those children who did not. Most of the improvements were related to training on WM tasks. These findings confirmed the efficacy of a computer-based training that combined WM and mathematics activities as part of the school routines based on the training's impact on children's academic competences and cognitive skills. PMID:29375442

Computer-Based Training in Math and Working Memory Improves Cognitive Skills and Academic Achievement in Primary School Children: Behavioral Results.

PubMed

Sánchez-Pérez, Noelia; Castillo, Alejandro; López-López, José A; Pina, Violeta; Puga, Jorge L; Campoy, Guillermo; González-Salinas, Carmen; Fuentes, Luis J

2017-01-01

Student academic achievement has been positively related to further development outcomes, such as the attainment of higher educational, employment, and socioeconomic aspirations. Among all the academic competences, mathematics has been identified as an essential skill in the field of international leadership as well as for those seeking positions in disciplines related to science, technology, and engineering. Given its positive consequences, studies have designed trainings to enhance children's mathematical skills. Additionally, the ability to regulate and control actions and cognitions, i.e., executive functions (EF), has been associated with school success, which has resulted in a strong effort to develop EF training programs to improve students' EF and academic achievement. The present study examined the efficacy of a school computer-based training composed of two components, namely, working memory and mathematics tasks. Among the advantages of using a computer-based training program is the ease with which it can be implemented in school settings and the ease by which the difficulty of the tasks can be adapted to fit the child's ability level. To test the effects of the training, children's cognitive skills (EF and IQ) and their school achievement (math and language grades and abilities) were evaluated. The results revealed a significant improvement in cognitive skills, such as non-verbal IQ and inhibition, and better school performance in math and reading among the children who participated in the training compared to those children who did not. Most of the improvements were related to training on WM tasks. These findings confirmed the efficacy of a computer-based training that combined WM and mathematics activities as part of the school routines based on the training's impact on children's academic competences and cognitive skills.

Understanding the Positive Role of Neighborhood Socioeconomic Advantage in Achievement: The Contribution of the Home, Child Care and School Environments

PubMed Central

Dupéré, Véronique; Leventhal, Tama; Crosnoe, Robert; Dion, Éric

2011-01-01

The goal of this study was to examine the mechanisms underlying associations between neighborhood socioeconomic advantage and children’s achievement trajectories between 54 months and 15 years old. Results of hierarchical linear growth models based on a diverse sample of 1,364 children indicate that neighborhood socioeconomic advantage was non-linearly associated with youths’ initial vocabulary and reading scores, such that the presence of educated, affluent professionals in the neighborhood had a favorable association with children’s achievement among those in less advantaged neighborhoods until it leveled off at moderate levels of advantage. A similar tendency was observed for math achievement. The quality of the home and child care environments as well as school advantage partially explained these associations. The findings suggest that multiple environments need to be considered simultaneously for understanding neighborhood-achievement links. PMID:20822235

Similarity indices of meteo-climatic gauging stations: definition and comparison.

PubMed

Barca, Emanuele; Bruno, Delia Evelina; Passarella, Giuseppe

2016-07-01

Space-time dependencies among monitoring network stations have been investigated to detect and quantify similarity relationships among gauging stations. In this work, besides the well-known rank correlation index, two new similarity indices have been defined and applied to compute the similarity matrix related to the Apulian meteo-climatic monitoring network. The similarity matrices can be applied to address reliably the issue of missing data in space-time series. In order to establish the effectiveness of the similarity indices, a simulation test was then designed and performed with the aim of estimating missing monthly rainfall rates in a suitably selected gauging station. The results of the simulation allowed us to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed similarity indices. Finally, the multiple imputation by chained equations method was used as a benchmark to have an absolute yardstick for comparing the outcomes of the test. In conclusion, the new proposed multiplicative similarity index resulted at least as reliable as the selected benchmark.

SCPRED: Accurate prediction of protein structural class for sequences of twilight-zone similarity with predicting sequences

PubMed Central

Kurgan, Lukasz; Cios, Krzysztof; Chen, Ke

2008-01-01

Background Protein structure prediction methods provide accurate results when a homologous protein is predicted, while poorer predictions are obtained in the absence of homologous templates. However, some protein chains that share twilight-zone pairwise identity can form similar folds and thus determining structural similarity without the sequence similarity would be desirable for the structure prediction. The folding type of a protein or its domain is defined as the structural class. Current structural class prediction methods that predict the four structural classes defined in SCOP provide up to 63% accuracy for the datasets in which sequence identity of any pair of sequences belongs to the twilight-zone. We propose SCPRED method that improves prediction accuracy for sequences that share twilight-zone pairwise similarity with sequences used for the prediction. Results SCPRED uses a support vector machine classifier that takes several custom-designed features as its input to predict the structural classes. Based on extensive design that considers over 2300 index-, composition- and physicochemical properties-based features along with features based on the predicted secondary structure and content, the classifier's input includes 8 features based on information extracted from the secondary structure predicted with PSI-PRED and one feature computed from the sequence. Tests performed with datasets of 1673 protein chains, in which any pair of sequences shares twilight-zone similarity, show that SCPRED obtains 80.3% accuracy when predicting the four SCOP-defined structural classes, which is superior when compared with over a dozen recent competing methods that are based on support vector machine, logistic regression, and ensemble of classifiers predictors. Conclusion The SCPRED can accurately find similar structures for sequences that share low identity with sequence used for the prediction. The high predictive accuracy achieved by SCPRED is attributed to the design of

Representational Similarity of Body Parts in Human Occipitotemporal Cortex.

PubMed

Bracci, Stefania; Caramazza, Alfonso; Peelen, Marius V

2015-09-23

Regions in human lateral and ventral occipitotemporal cortices (OTC) respond selectively to pictures of the human body and its parts. What are the organizational principles underlying body part responses in these regions? Here we used representational similarity analysis (RSA) of fMRI data to test multiple possible organizational principles: shape similarity, physical proximity, cortical homunculus proximity, and semantic similarity. Participants viewed pictures of whole persons, chairs, and eight body parts (hands, arms, legs, feet, chests, waists, upper faces, and lower faces). The similarity of multivoxel activity patterns for all body part pairs was established in whole person-selective OTC regions. The resulting neural similarity matrices were then compared with similarity matrices capturing the hypothesized organizational principles. Results showed that the semantic similarity model best captured the neural similarity of body parts in lateral and ventral OTC, which followed an organization in three clusters: (1) body parts used as action effectors (hands, feet, arms, and legs), (2) noneffector body parts (chests and waists), and (3) face parts (upper and lower faces). Whole-brain RSA revealed, in addition to OTC, regions in parietal and frontal cortex in which neural similarity was related to semantic similarity. In contrast, neural similarity in occipital cortex was best predicted by shape similarity models. We suggest that the semantic organization of body parts in high-level visual cortex relates to the different functions associated with the three body part clusters, reflecting the unique processing and connectivity demands associated with the different types of information (e.g., action, social) different body parts (e.g., limbs, faces) convey. Significance statement: While the organization of body part representations in motor and somatosensory cortices has been well characterized, the principles underlying body part representations in visual cortex

Neighborhood Structural Similarity Mapping for the Classification of Masses in Mammograms.

PubMed

Rabidas, Rinku; Midya, Abhishek; Chakraborty, Jayasree

2018-05-01

In this paper, two novel feature extraction methods, using neighborhood structural similarity (NSS), are proposed for the characterization of mammographic masses as benign or malignant. Since gray-level distribution of pixels is different in benign and malignant masses, more regular and homogeneous patterns are visible in benign masses compared to malignant masses; the proposed method exploits the similarity between neighboring regions of masses by designing two new features, namely, NSS-I and NSS-II, which capture global similarity at different scales. Complementary to these global features, uniform local binary patterns are computed to enhance the classification efficiency by combining with the proposed features. The performance of the features are evaluated using the images from the mini-mammographic image analysis society (mini-MIAS) and digital database for screening mammography (DDSM) databases, where a tenfold cross-validation technique is incorporated with Fisher linear discriminant analysis, after selecting the optimal set of features using stepwise logistic regression method. The best area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.98 with an accuracy of is achieved with the mini-MIAS database, while the same for the DDSM database is 0.93 with accuracy .

Life insurance and genetic test results: a mutation carrier's fight to achieve full cover.

PubMed

Keogh, Louise A; Otlowski, Margaret F A

2013-09-02

Currently, there is debate about life insurance companies' use of genetic information for assessing applicants. In his early 20s, James (pseudonym) was denied full life insurance cover because he revealed that he had discussed genetic testing with a genetic counsellor. He was later tested and found to carry a mutation in the MSH6 gene; after disclosing this, he was denied cover for cancer by two other life insurance companies. Unsatisfied with the insurance companies' risk assessments, and based on his understanding that regular colonoscopy significantly reduced his risk of cancer, James made a complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission. After informing the third insurance company that he had done so, he was offered full coverage, which suggests that the company did not have actuarial data to justify its decision. This case provides evidence of the high level of initiative and proactivity required for a consumer to achieve a fair result. Few Australians would be in a position to pursue the level of research and advocacy undertaken by James (a professional with scientific training). We call on a collaborative approach between industry, government and researchers to address the issues that James's case raises about genetic testing and life insurance.

Scale-Similar Models for Large-Eddy Simulations

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Sarghini, F.

1999-01-01

Scale-similar models employ multiple filtering operations to identify the smallest resolved scales, which have been shown to be the most active in the interaction with the unresolved subgrid scales. They do not assume that the principal axes of the strain-rate tensor are aligned with those of the subgrid-scale stress (SGS) tensor, and allow the explicit calculation of the SGS energy. They can provide backscatter in a numerically stable and physically realistic manner, and predict SGS stresses in regions that are well correlated with the locations where large Reynolds stress occurs. In this paper, eddy viscosity and mixed models, which include an eddy-viscosity part as well as a scale-similar contribution, are applied to the simulation of two flows, a high Reynolds number plane channel flow, and a three-dimensional, nonequilibrium flow. The results show that simulations without models or with the Smagorinsky model are unable to predict nonequilibrium effects. Dynamic models provide an improvement of the results: the adjustment of the coefficient results in more accurate prediction of the perturbation from equilibrium. The Lagrangian-ensemble approach [Meneveau et al., J. Fluid Mech. 319, 353 (1996)] is found to be very beneficial. Models that included a scale-similar term and a dissipative one, as well as the Lagrangian ensemble averaging, gave results in the best agreement with the direct simulation and experimental data.

Ice Shaping Properties, Similar to That of Antifreeze Proteins, of a Zirconium Acetate Complex

PubMed Central

Deville, Sylvain; Viazzi, Céline; Leloup, Jérôme; Lasalle, Audrey; Guizard, Christian; Maire, Eric; Adrien, Jérôme; Gremillard, Laurent

2011-01-01

The control of the growth morphologies of ice crystals is a critical issue in fields as diverse as biomineralization, medicine, biology, civil or food engineering. Such control can be achieved through the ice-shaping properties of specific compounds. The development of synthetic ice-shaping compounds is inspired by the natural occurrence of such properties exhibited by antifreeze proteins. We reveal how a particular zirconium acetate complex is exhibiting ice-shaping properties very similar to that of antifreeze proteins, albeit being a radically different compound. We use these properties as a bioinspired approach to template unique faceted pores in cellular materials. These results suggest that ice-structuring properties are not exclusive to long organic molecules and should broaden the field of investigations and applications of such substances. PMID:22028886

What factors determine academic achievement in high achieving undergraduate medical students? A qualitative study.

PubMed

Abdulghani, Hamza M; Al-Drees, Abdulmajeed A; Khalil, Mahmood S; Ahmad, Farah; Ponnamperuma, Gominda G; Amin, Zubair

2014-04-01

Medical students' academic achievement is affected by many factors such as motivational beliefs and emotions. Although students with high intellectual capacity are selected to study medicine, their academic performance varies widely. The aim of this study is to explore the high achieving students' perceptions of factors contributing to academic achievement. Focus group discussions (FGD) were carried out with 10 male and 9 female high achieving (scores more than 85% in all tests) students, from the second, third, fourth and fifth academic years. During the FGDs, the students were encouraged to reflect on their learning strategies and activities. The discussion was audio-recorded, transcribed and analysed qualitatively. Factors influencing high academic achievement include: attendance to lectures, early revision, prioritization of learning needs, deep learning, learning in small groups, mind mapping, learning in skills lab, learning with patients, learning from mistakes, time management, and family support. Internal motivation and expected examination results are important drivers of high academic performance. Management of non-academic issues like sleep deprivation, homesickness, language barriers, and stress is also important for academic success. Addressing these factors, which might be unique for a given student community, in a systematic manner would be helpful to improve students' performance.

Similarity analysis between quantum images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhou, Ri-Gui; Liu, XingAo; Zhu, Changming; Wei, Lai; Zhang, Xiafen; Ian, Hou

2018-06-01

Similarity analyses between quantum images are so essential in quantum image processing that it provides fundamental research for the other fields, such as quantum image matching, quantum pattern recognition. In this paper, a quantum scheme based on a novel quantum image representation and quantum amplitude amplification algorithm is proposed. At the end of the paper, three examples and simulation experiments show that the measurement result must be 0 when two images are same, and the measurement result has high probability of being 1 when two images are different.

Two Measurement Methods of Leaf Dry Matter Content Produce Similar Results in a Broad Range of Species

PubMed Central

Vaieretti, María Victoria; Díaz, Sandra; Vile, Denis; Garnier, Eric

2007-01-01

Background and Aims Leaf dry matter content (LDMC) is widely used as an indicator of plant resource use in plant functional trait databases. Two main methods have been proposed to measure LDMC, which basically differ in the rehydration procedure to which leaves are subjected after harvesting. These are the ‘complete rehydration’ protocol of Garnier et al. (2001, Functional Ecology 15: 688–695) and the ‘partial rehydration’ protocol of Vendramini et al. (2002, New Phytologist 154: 147–157). Methods To test differences in LDMC due to the use of different methods, LDMC was measured on 51 native and cultivated species representing a wide range of plant families and growth forms from central-western Argentina, following the complete rehydration and partial rehydration protocols. Key Results and Conclusions The LDMC values obtained by both methods were strongly and positively correlated, clearly showing that LDMC is highly conserved between the two procedures. These trends were not altered by the exclusion of plants with non-laminar leaves. Although the complete rehydration method is the safest to measure LDMC, the partial rehydration procedure produces similar results and is faster. It therefore appears as an acceptable option for those situations in which the complete rehydration method cannot be applied. Two notes of caution are given for cases in which different datasets are compared or combined: (1) the discrepancy between the two rehydration protocols is greatest in the case of high-LDMC (succulent or tender) leaves; (2) the results suggest that, when comparing many studies across unrelated datasets, differences in the measurement protocol may be less important than differences among seasons, years and the quality of local habitats. PMID:17353207

Explosion Source Similarity Analysis via SVD

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yedlin, Matthew; Ben Horin, Yochai; Margrave, Gary

2016-04-01

An important seismological ingredient for establishing a regional seismic nuclear discriminant is the similarity analysis of a sequence of explosion sources. To investigate source similarity, we are fortunate to have access to a sequence of 1805 three-component recordings of quarry blasts, shot from March 2002 to January 2015. The centroid of these blasts has an estimated location 36.3E and 29.9N. All blasts were detonated by JPMC (Jordan Phosphate Mines Co.) All data were recorded at the Israeli NDC, HFRI, located at 30.03N and 35.03E. Data were first winnowed based on the distribution of maximum amplitudes in the neighborhood of the P-wave arrival. The winnowed data were then detrended using the algorithm of Cleveland et al (1990). The detrended data were bandpass filtered between .1 to 12 Hz using an eighth order Butterworth filter. Finally, data were sorted based on maximum trace amplitude. Two similarity analysis approaches were used. First, for each component, the entire suite of traces was decomposed into its eigenvector representation, by employing singular-valued decomposition (SVD). The data were then reconstructed using 10 percent of the singular values, with the resulting enhancement of the S-wave and surface wave arrivals. The results of this first method are then compared to the second analysis method based on the eigenface decomposition analysis of Turk and Pentland (1991). While both methods yield similar results in enhancement of data arrivals and reduction of data redundancy, more analysis is required to calibrate the recorded data to charge size, a quantity that was not available for the current study. References Cleveland, R. B., Cleveland, W. S., McRae, J. E., and Terpenning, I., Stl: A seasonal-trend decomposition procedure based on loess, Journal of Official Statistics, 6, No. 1, 3-73, 1990. Turk, M. and Pentland, A., Eigenfaces for recognition. Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 3(1), 71-86, 1991.

Can biosimilars help achieve the goals of US health care reform?

PubMed

Boccia, Ralph; Jacobs, Ira; Popovian, Robert; de Lima Lopes, Gilberto

2017-01-01

The US Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) aims to expand health care coverage, contain costs, and improve health care quality. Accessibility and affordability of innovative biopharmaceuticals are important to the success of the ACA. As it is substantially more difficult to manufacture them compared with small-molecule drugs, many of which have generic alternatives, biologics may increase drug costs. However, biologics offer demonstrated improvements in patient care that can reduce expensive interventions, thus lowering net health care costs. Biosimilars, which are highly similar to their reference biologics, cost less than the originators, potentially increasing access through reduced prescription drug costs while providing equivalent therapeutic results. This review evaluates 1) the progress made toward enacting health care reform since the passage of the ACA and 2) the role of biosimilars, including the potential impact of expanded biosimilar use on access, health care costs, patient management, and outcomes. Barriers to biosimilar adoption in the USA are noted, including low awareness and financial disincentives relating to reimbursement. The evaluated evidence suggests that the ACA has partly achieved some of its aims; however, the opportunity remains to transform health care to fully achieve reform. Although the future is uncertain, increased use of biosimilars in the US health care system could help achieve expanded access, control costs, and improve the quality of care.

Prediction of Protein Structural Classes for Low-Similarity Sequences Based on Consensus Sequence and Segmented PSSM.

PubMed

Liang, Yunyun; Liu, Sanyang; Zhang, Shengli

2015-01-01

Prediction of protein structural classes for low-similarity sequences is useful for understanding fold patterns, regulation, functions, and interactions of proteins. It is well known that feature extraction is significant to prediction of protein structural class and it mainly uses protein primary sequence, predicted secondary structure sequence, and position-specific scoring matrix (PSSM). Currently, prediction solely based on the PSSM has played a key role in improving the prediction accuracy. In this paper, we propose a novel method called CSP-SegPseP-SegACP by fusing consensus sequence (CS), segmented PsePSSM, and segmented autocovariance transformation (ACT) based on PSSM. Three widely used low-similarity datasets (1189, 25PDB, and 640) are adopted in this paper. Then a 700-dimensional (700D) feature vector is constructed and the dimension is decreased to 224D by using principal component analysis (PCA). To verify the performance of our method, rigorous jackknife cross-validation tests are performed on 1189, 25PDB, and 640 datasets. Comparison of our results with the existing PSSM-based methods demonstrates that our method achieves the favorable and competitive performance. This will offer an important complementary to other PSSM-based methods for prediction of protein structural classes for low-similarity sequences.

Inference-Based Similarity Search in Randomized Montgomery Domains for Privacy-Preserving Biometric Identification.

PubMed

Wang, Yi; Wan, Jianwu; Guo, Jun; Cheung, Yiu-Ming; Yuen, Pong C; Yi Wang; Jianwu Wan; Jun Guo; Yiu-Ming Cheung; Yuen, Pong C; Cheung, Yiu-Ming; Guo, Jun; Yuen, Pong C; Wan, Jianwu; Wang, Yi

2018-07-01

Similarity search is essential to many important applications and often involves searching at scale on high-dimensional data based on their similarity to a query. In biometric applications, recent vulnerability studies have shown that adversarial machine learning can compromise biometric recognition systems by exploiting the biometric similarity information. Existing methods for biometric privacy protection are in general based on pairwise matching of secured biometric templates and have inherent limitations in search efficiency and scalability. In this paper, we propose an inference-based framework for privacy-preserving similarity search in Hamming space. Our approach builds on an obfuscated distance measure that can conceal Hamming distance in a dynamic interval. Such a mechanism enables us to systematically design statistically reliable methods for retrieving most likely candidates without knowing the exact distance values. We further propose to apply Montgomery multiplication for generating search indexes that can withstand adversarial similarity analysis, and show that information leakage in randomized Montgomery domains can be made negligibly small. Our experiments on public biometric datasets demonstrate that the inference-based approach can achieve a search accuracy close to the best performance possible with secure computation methods, but the associated cost is reduced by orders of magnitude compared to cryptographic primitives.

Image processing operations achievable with the Microchannel Spatial Light Modulator

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Warde, C.; Fisher, A. D.; Thackara, J. I.; Weiss, A. M.

1980-01-01

The Microchannel Spatial Light Modulator (MSLM) is a versatile, optically-addressed, highly-sensitive device that is well suited for low-light-level, real-time, optical information processing. It consists of a photocathode, a microchannel plate (MCP), a planar acceleration grid, and an electro-optic plate in proximity focus. A framing rate of 20 Hz with full modulation depth, and 100 Hz with 20% modulation depth has been achieved in a vacuum-demountable LiTaO3 device. A halfwave exposure sensitivity of 2.2 mJ/sq cm and an optical information storage time of more than 2 months have been achieved in a similar gridless LiTaO3 device employing a visible photocathode. Image processing operations such as analog and digital thresholding, real-time image hard clipping, contrast reversal, contrast enhancement, image addition and subtraction, and binary-level logic operations such as AND, OR, XOR, and NOR can be achieved with this device. This collection of achievable image processing characteristics makes the MSLM potentially useful for a number of smart sensor applications.

The Achiever. Volume 6, Number 7

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ashby, Nicole, Ed.

2007-01-01

"The Achiever" is a monthly publication for parents and community leaders from the Office of Communications and Outreach, U.S. Department of Education. This issue contains the following articles: (1) President Seeks to Build on Law's Results; (2) Bridging the Gap: Ohio Charter School Surmounts Age, Achievement Barriers; (3) Spellings'…

Differential Use of Study Approaches by Students of Different Achievement Levels

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bunce, Diane M.; Komperda, Regis; Schroeder, Maria J.; Dillner, Debra K.; Lin, Shirley; Teichert, Melonie A.; Hartman, JudithAnn R.

2017-01-01

This study examined similarities and differences in study approaches reported by general chemistry students performing at different achievement levels. The study population consisted of freshmen enrolled in a required year-long general chemistry course at the U.S. Naval Academy. Students in the first and second semesters of the course were…

Scalable gastroscopic video summarization via similar-inhibition dictionary selection.

PubMed

Wang, Shuai; Cong, Yang; Cao, Jun; Yang, Yunsheng; Tang, Yandong; Zhao, Huaici; Yu, Haibin

2016-01-01

This paper aims at developing an automated gastroscopic video summarization algorithm to assist clinicians to more effectively go through the abnormal contents of the video. To select the most representative frames from the original video sequence, we formulate the problem of gastroscopic video summarization as a dictionary selection issue. Different from the traditional dictionary selection methods, which take into account only the number and reconstruction ability of selected key frames, our model introduces the similar-inhibition constraint to reinforce the diversity of selected key frames. We calculate the attention cost by merging both gaze and content change into a prior cue to help select the frames with more high-level semantic information. Moreover, we adopt an image quality evaluation process to eliminate the interference of the poor quality images and a segmentation process to reduce the computational complexity. For experiments, we build a new gastroscopic video dataset captured from 30 volunteers with more than 400k images and compare our method with the state-of-the-arts using the content consistency, index consistency and content-index consistency with the ground truth. Compared with all competitors, our method obtains the best results in 23 of 30 videos evaluated based on content consistency, 24 of 30 videos evaluated based on index consistency and all videos evaluated based on content-index consistency. For gastroscopic video summarization, we propose an automated annotation method via similar-inhibition dictionary selection. Our model can achieve better performance compared with other state-of-the-art models and supplies more suitable key frames for diagnosis. The developed algorithm can be automatically adapted to various real applications, such as the training of young clinicians, computer-aided diagnosis or medical report generation. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A literature-driven method to calculate similarities among diseases.

PubMed

Kim, Hyunjin; Yoon, Youngmi; Ahn, Jaegyoon; Park, Sanghyun

2015-11-01

"Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results". It is Herman Melville's famous quote describing connections among human lives. To paraphrase the Melville's quote, diseases are connected by many functional threads and along these sympathetic fibers, diseases run as causes and return as results. The Melville's quote explains the reason for researching disease-disease similarity and disease network. Measuring similarities between diseases and constructing disease network can play an important role in disease function research and in disease treatment. To estimate disease-disease similarities, we proposed a novel literature-based method. The proposed method extracted disease-gene relations and disease-drug relations from literature and used the frequencies of occurrence of the relations as features to calculate similarities among diseases. We also constructed disease network with top-ranking disease pairs from our method. The proposed method discovered a larger number of answer disease pairs than other comparable methods and showed the lowest p-value. We presume that our method showed good results because of using literature data, using all possible gene symbols and drug names for features of a disease, and determining feature values of diseases with the frequencies of co-occurrence of two entities. The disease-disease similarities from the proposed method can be used in computational biology researches which use similarities among diseases. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Online High School Achievement versus Traditional High School Achievement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Blohm, Katherine E.

2017-01-01

The following study examined the question of student achievement in online charter schools and how the achievement scores of students at online charter schools compare to achievement scores of students at traditional schools. Arizona has seen explosive growth in charter schools and online charter schools. A study comparing how these two types of…

Why I Believe I Achieve Determines Whether I Achieve

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Siegle, Del; McCoach, D. Betsy; Roberts, Anne

2017-01-01

The beliefs and values students hold toward themselves, given tasks, and achievement itself can influence what tasks students seek, and whether they are able to obtain them. On the basis of previous research on underachievement and motivation, we developed the Achievement Orientation Model (AOM) to explore the issue of student achievement. The…

Alphabetic letter identification: Effects of perceivability, similarity, and bias☆

PubMed Central

Mueller, Shane T.; Weidemann, Christoph T.

2012-01-01

The legibility of the letters in the Latin alphabet has been measured numerous times since the beginning of experimental psychology. To identify the theoretical mechanisms attributed to letter identification, we report a comprehensive review of literature, spanning more than a century. This review revealed that identification accuracy has frequently been attributed to a subset of three common sources: perceivability, bias, and similarity. However, simultaneous estimates of these values have rarely (if ever) been performed. We present the results of two new experiments which allow for the simultaneous estimation of these factors, and examine how the shape of a visual mask impacts each of them, as inferred through a new statistical model. Results showed that the shape and identity of the mask impacted the inferred perceivability, bias, and similarity space of a letter set, but that there were aspects of similarity that were robust to the choice of mask. The results illustrate how the psychological concepts of perceivability, bias, and similarity can be estimated simultaneously, and how each make powerful contributions to visual letter identification. PMID:22036587

Personality similarity in negotiations: Testing the dyadic effects of similarity in interpersonal traits and the use of emotional displays on negotiation outcomes.

PubMed

Wilson, Kelly Schwind; DeRue, D Scott; Matta, Fadel K; Howe, Michael; Conlon, Donald E

2016-10-01

We build on the small but growing literature documenting personality influences on negotiation by examining how the joint disposition of both negotiators with respect to the interpersonal traits of agreeableness and extraversion influences important negotiation processes and outcomes. Building on similarity-attraction theory, we articulate and demonstrate how being similarly high or similarly low on agreeableness and extraversion leads dyad members to express more positive emotional displays during negotiation. Moreover, because of increased positive emotional displays, we show that dyads with such compositions also tend to reach agreements faster, perceive less relationship conflict, and have more positive impressions of their negotiation partner. Interestingly, these results hold regardless of whether negotiating dyads are similar in normatively positive (i.e., similarly agreeable and similarly extraverted) or normatively negative (i.e., similarly disagreeable and similarly introverted) ways. Overall, these findings demonstrate the importance of considering the dyad's personality configuration when attempting to understand the affective experience as well as the downstream outcomes of a negotiation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Quantitative Guidance for Stove Usage and Performance to Achieve Health and Environmental Targets.

PubMed

Johnson, Michael A; Chiang, Ranyee A

2015-08-01

Displacing the use of polluting and inefficient cookstoves in developing countries is necessary to achieve the potential health and environmental benefits sought through clean cooking solutions. Yet little quantitative context has been provided on how much displacement of traditional technologies is needed to achieve targets for household air pollutant concentrations or fuel savings. This paper provides instructive guidance on the usage of cooking technologies required to achieve health and environmental improvements. We evaluated different scenarios of displacement of traditional stoves with use of higher performing technologies. The air quality and fuel consumption impacts were estimated for these scenarios using a single-zone box model of indoor air quality and ratios of thermal efficiency. Stove performance and usage should be considered together, as lower performing stoves can result in similar or greater benefits than a higher performing stove if the lower performing stove has considerably higher displacement of the baseline stove. Based on the indoor air quality model, there are multiple performance-usage scenarios for achieving modest indoor air quality improvements. To meet World Health Organization guidance levels, however, three-stone fire and basic charcoal stove usage must be nearly eliminated to achieve the particulate matter target (< 1-3 hr/week), and substantially limited to meet the carbon monoxide guideline (< 7-9 hr/week). Moderate health gains may be achieved with various performance-usage scenarios. The greatest benefits are estimated to be achieved by near-complete displacement of traditional stoves with clean technologies, emphasizing the need to shift in the long term to near exclusive use of clean fuels and stoves. The performance-usage scenarios are also provided as a tool to guide technology selection and prioritize behavior change opportunities to maximize impact.

simDEF: definition-based semantic similarity measure of gene ontology terms for functional similarity analysis of genes.

PubMed

Pesaranghader, Ahmad; Matwin, Stan; Sokolova, Marina; Beiko, Robert G

2016-05-01

Measures of protein functional similarity are essential tools for function prediction, evaluation of protein-protein interactions (PPIs) and other applications. Several existing methods perform comparisons between proteins based on the semantic similarity of their GO terms; however, these measures are highly sensitive to modifications in the topological structure of GO, tend to be focused on specific analytical tasks and concentrate on the GO terms themselves rather than considering their textual definitions. We introduce simDEF, an efficient method for measuring semantic similarity of GO terms using their GO definitions, which is based on the Gloss Vector measure commonly used in natural language processing. The simDEF approach builds optimized definition vectors for all relevant GO terms, and expresses the similarity of a pair of proteins as the cosine of the angle between their definition vectors. Relative to existing similarity measures, when validated on a yeast reference database, simDEF improves correlation with sequence homology by up to 50%, shows a correlation improvement >4% with gene expression in the biological process hierarchy of GO and increases PPI predictability by > 2.5% in F1 score for molecular function hierarchy. Datasets, results and source code are available at http://kiwi.cs.dal.ca/Software/simDEF CONTACT: ahmad.pgh@dal.ca or beiko@cs.dal.ca Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Visual judgment of similarity across shape transformations: evidence for a compositional model of articulated objects.

PubMed

Barenholtz, Elan; Tarr, Michael J

2008-06-01

A single biological object, such as a hand, can assume multiple, very different shapes, due to the articulation of its parts. Yet we are able to recognize all of these shapes as examples of the same object. How is this invariance to pose achieved? Here, we present evidence that the visual system maintains a model of object transformation that is based on rigid, convex parts articulating at extrema of negative curvature, i.e., part boundaries. We compared similarity judgments in a task in which subjects had to decide which of the two transformed versions of a 'base' shape-one a 'biologically valid' articulation and one a geometrically similar but 'biologically invalid' articulation-was more similar to the base shape. Two types of comparisons were made: in the figure/ground-reversal, the invalid articulation consisted of exactly the same contour transformation as the valid one with reversed figural polarity. In the axis-of-rotation reversal, the valid articulation consisted of a part rotated around its concave part boundaries, while the invalid articulation consisted of the same part rotated around the endpoints on the opposite side of the part. In two separate 2AFC similarity experiments-one in which the base and transformed shapes were presented simultaneously and one in which they were presented sequentially-subjects were more likely to match the base shape to a transform when it corresponded to a legitimate articulation. These results suggest that the visual system maintains expectations about the way objects will transform, based on their static geometry.

Epileptic Seizure Prediction Using a New Similarity Index for Chaotic Signals

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Niknazar, Hamid; Nasrabadi, Ali Motie

Epileptic seizures are generated by abnormal activity of neurons. The prediction of epileptic seizures is an important issue in the field of neurology, since it may improve the quality of life of patients suffering from drug resistant epilepsy. In this study a new similarity index based on symbolic dynamic techniques which can be used for extracting behavior of chaotic time series is presented. Using Freiburg EEG dataset, it is found that the method is able to detect the behavioral changes of the neural activity prior to epileptic seizures, so it can be used for prediction of epileptic seizure. A sensitivity of 63.75% with 0.33 false positive rate (FPR) in all 21 patients and sensitivity of 96.66% with 0.33 FPR in eight patients were achieved using the proposed method. Moreover, the method was evaluated by applying on Logistic and Tent map with different parameters to demonstrate its robustness and ability in determining similarity between two time series with the same chaotic characterization.

Achieving Metacognition through Cognitive Strategy Instruction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Apaydin, Marina; Hossary, Mohamad

2017-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present hands-on techniques that could help achieve higher forms of cognitive work of Bloom's learning taxonomy and progress toward self-actualization, the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. These results can be achieved by the combination of Apaydin's 3A approach and integrative learning.…

Windows of achievement for development milestones of Sri Lankan infants and toddlers: estimation through statistical modelling.

PubMed

Thalagala, N

2015-11-01

The normative age ranges during which cohorts of children achieve milestones are called windows of achievement. The patterns of these windows of achievement are known to be both genetically and environmentally dependent. This study aimed to determine the windows of achievement for motor, social emotional, language and cognitive development milestones for infants and toddlers in Sri Lanka. A set of 293 milestones identified through a literature review were subjected to content validation using parent and expert reviews, which resulted in the selection of a revised set of 277 milestones. Thereafter, a sample of 1036 children from 2 months to 30 months was examined to see whether or not they had attained the selected milestones. Percentile ages of attaining milestone were determined using a rearranged closed form equation related to the logistic regression. The parameters required for calculations were derived through the logistic regression of milestone achievement statuses against ages of children. These percentile ages were used to define the respective windows of achievement. A set of 178 robust indicators that represent motor, socio emotional, language and cognitive development skills and their windows of achievement relevant to 2 to 24 months of age were determined. Windows of achievement for six gross motor milestones determined in the study were shown to closely overlap a similar set of windows of achievement published by the World Health Organization indicating the validity of some findings. A methodology combining the content validation based on qualitative techniques and age validation based on regression modelling found to be effective for determining age percentiles for realizing milestones and determining respective windows of achievement. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Achievement, motivation, and educational choices: A longitudinal study of expectancy and value using a multiplicative perspective.

PubMed

Guo, Jiesi; Parker, Philip D; Marsh, Herbert W; Morin, Alexandre J S

2015-08-01

Drawing on the expectancy-value model, the present study explored individual and gender differences in university entry and selection of educational pathway (e.g., science, technology, engineering, and mathematics [STEM] course selection). In particular, we examined the multiplicative effects of expectancy and task values on educational outcomes during the transition into early adulthood. Participants were from a nationally representative longitudinal sample of 15-year-old Australian youths (N = 10,370). The results suggest that (a) both math self-concept and intrinsic value interact in predicting advanced math course selection, matriculation results, entrance into university, and STEM fields of study; (b) prior reading achievement has negative effects on advanced math course selection and STEM fields through math motivational beliefs; and (c) gender differences in educational outcomes are mediated by gender differences in motivational beliefs and prior academic achievement, while the processes underlying choice of educational pathway were similar for males and females. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Quality assessment of protein model-structures based on structural and functional similarities.

PubMed

Konopka, Bogumil M; Nebel, Jean-Christophe; Kotulska, Malgorzata

2012-09-21

Experimental determination of protein 3D structures is expensive, time consuming and sometimes impossible. A gap between number of protein structures deposited in the World Wide Protein Data Bank and the number of sequenced proteins constantly broadens. Computational modeling is deemed to be one of the ways to deal with the problem. Although protein 3D structure prediction is a difficult task, many tools are available. These tools can model it from a sequence or partial structural information, e.g. contact maps. Consequently, biologists have the ability to generate automatically a putative 3D structure model of any protein. However, the main issue becomes evaluation of the model quality, which is one of the most important challenges of structural biology. GOBA--Gene Ontology-Based Assessment is a novel Protein Model Quality Assessment Program. It estimates the compatibility between a model-structure and its expected function. GOBA is based on the assumption that a high quality model is expected to be structurally similar to proteins functionally similar to the prediction target. Whereas DALI is used to measure structure similarity, protein functional similarity is quantified using standardized and hierarchical description of proteins provided by Gene Ontology combined with Wang's algorithm for calculating semantic similarity. Two approaches are proposed to express the quality of protein model-structures. One is a single model quality assessment method, the other is its modification, which provides a relative measure of model quality. Exhaustive evaluation is performed on data sets of model-structures submitted to the CASP8 and CASP9 contests. The validation shows that the method is able to discriminate between good and bad model-structures. The best of tested GOBA scores achieved 0.74 and 0.8 as a mean Pearson correlation to the observed quality of models in our CASP8 and CASP9-based validation sets. GOBA also obtained the best result for two targets of CASP8, and

Distributed Efficient Similarity Search Mechanism in Wireless Sensor Networks

PubMed Central

Ahmed, Khandakar; Gregory, Mark A.

2015-01-01

The Wireless Sensor Network similarity search problem has received considerable research attention due to sensor hardware imprecision and environmental parameter variations. Most of the state-of-the-art distributed data centric storage (DCS) schemes lack optimization for similarity queries of events. In this paper, a DCS scheme with metric based similarity searching (DCSMSS) is proposed. DCSMSS takes motivation from vector distance index, called iDistance, in order to transform the issue of similarity searching into the problem of an interval search in one dimension. In addition, a sector based distance routing algorithm is used to efficiently route messages. Extensive simulation results reveal that DCSMSS is highly efficient and significantly outperforms previous approaches in processing similarity search queries. PMID:25751081

Earthquake Fingerprints: Representing Earthquake Waveforms for Similarity-Based Detection

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bergen, K.; Beroza, G. C.

2016-12-01

New earthquake detection methods, such as Fingerprint and Similarity Thresholding (FAST), use fast approximate similarity search to identify similar waveforms in long-duration data without templates (Yoon et al. 2015). These methods have two key components: fingerprint extraction and an efficient search algorithm. Fingerprint extraction converts waveforms into fingerprints, compact signatures that represent short-duration waveforms for identification and search. Earthquakes are detected using an efficient indexing and search scheme, such as locality-sensitive hashing, that identifies similar waveforms in a fingerprint database. The quality of the search results, and thus the earthquake detection results, is strongly dependent on the fingerprinting scheme. Fingerprint extraction should map similar earthquake waveforms to similar waveform fingerprints to ensure a high detection rate, even under additive noise and small distortions. Additionally, fingerprints corresponding to noise intervals should have mutually dissimilar fingerprints to minimize false detections. In this work, we compare the performance of multiple fingerprint extraction approaches for the earthquake waveform similarity search problem. We apply existing audio fingerprinting (used in content-based audio identification systems) and time series indexing techniques and present modified versions that are specifically adapted for seismic data. We also explore data-driven fingerprinting approaches that can take advantage of labeled or unlabeled waveform data. For each fingerprinting approach we measure its ability to identify similar waveforms in a low signal-to-noise setting, and quantify the trade-off between true and false detection rates in the presence of persistent noise sources. We compare the performance using known event waveforms from eight independent stations in the Northern California Seismic Network.

Statistical self-similarity of hotspot seamount volumes modeled as self-similar criticality

USGS Publications Warehouse

Tebbens, S.F.; Burroughs, S.M.; Barton, C.C.; Naar, D.F.

2001-01-01

The processes responsible for hotspot seamount formation are complex, yet the cumulative frequency-volume distribution of hotspot seamounts in the Easter Island/Salas y Gomez Chain (ESC) is found to be well-described by an upper-truncated power law. We develop a model for hotspot seamount formation where uniform energy input produces events initiated on a self-similar distribution of critical cells. We call this model Self-Similar Criticality (SSC). By allowing the spatial distribution of magma migration to be self-similar, the SSC model recreates the observed ESC seamount volume distribution. The SSC model may have broad applicability to other natural systems.

Parent Involvement and the Impact on Student Achievement in Grades 2-5

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thurber, Yvonne Marie

2013-01-01

This quantitative research study examined the relationship between student achievement in reading and mathematics on the STAR (Standardized Test for the Assessment of Reading and Mathematics) and parent involvement in specific character development activities. The research design was quantitative in nature and conducted in two similar elementary…

Gender similarities and differences.

PubMed

Hyde, Janet Shibley

2014-01-01

Whether men and women are fundamentally different or similar has been debated for more than a century. This review summarizes major theories designed to explain gender differences: evolutionary theories, cognitive social learning theory, sociocultural theory, and expectancy-value theory. The gender similarities hypothesis raises the possibility of theorizing gender similarities. Statistical methods for the analysis of gender differences and similarities are reviewed, including effect sizes, meta-analysis, taxometric analysis, and equivalence testing. Then, relying mainly on evidence from meta-analyses, gender differences are reviewed in cognitive performance (e.g., math performance), personality and social behaviors (e.g., temperament, emotions, aggression, and leadership), and psychological well-being. The evidence on gender differences in variance is summarized. The final sections explore applications of intersectionality and directions for future research.

Improved collaborative filtering recommendation algorithm of similarity measure

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Baofu; Yuan, Baoping

2017-05-01

The Collaborative filtering recommendation algorithm is one of the most widely used recommendation algorithm in personalized recommender systems. The key is to find the nearest neighbor set of the active user by using similarity measure. However, the methods of traditional similarity measure mainly focus on the similarity of user common rating items, but ignore the relationship between the user common rating items and all items the user rates. And because rating matrix is very sparse, traditional collaborative filtering recommendation algorithm is not high efficiency. In order to obtain better accuracy, based on the consideration of common preference between users, the difference of rating scale and score of common items, this paper presents an improved similarity measure method, and based on this method, a collaborative filtering recommendation algorithm based on similarity improvement is proposed. Experimental results show that the algorithm can effectively improve the quality of recommendation, thus alleviate the impact of data sparseness.

Protein structural similarity search by Ramachandran codes

PubMed Central

Lo, Wei-Cheng; Huang, Po-Jung; Chang, Chih-Hung; Lyu, Ping-Chiang

2007-01-01

Background Protein structural data has increased exponentially, such that fast and accurate tools are necessary to access structure similarity search. To improve the search speed, several methods have been designed to reduce three-dimensional protein structures to one-dimensional text strings that are then analyzed by traditional sequence alignment methods; however, the accuracy is usually sacrificed and the speed is still unable to match sequence similarity search tools. Here, we aimed to improve the linear encoding methodology and develop efficient search tools that can rapidly retrieve structural homologs from large protein databases. Results We propose a new linear encoding method, SARST (Structural similarity search Aided by Ramachandran Sequential Transformation). SARST transforms protein structures into text strings through a Ramachandran map organized by nearest-neighbor clustering and uses a regenerative approach to produce substitution matrices. Then, classical sequence similarity search methods can be applied to the structural similarity search. Its accuracy is similar to Combinatorial Extension (CE) and works over 243,000 times faster, searching 34,000 proteins in 0.34 sec with a 3.2-GHz CPU. SARST provides statistically meaningful expectation values to assess the retrieved information. It has been implemented into a web service and a stand-alone Java program that is able to run on many different platforms. Conclusion As a database search method, SARST can rapidly distinguish high from low similarities and efficiently retrieve homologous structures. It demonstrates that the easily accessible linear encoding methodology has the potential to serve as a foundation for efficient protein structural similarity search tools. These search tools are supposed applicable to automated and high-throughput functional annotations or predictions for the ever increasing number of published protein structures in this post-genomic era. PMID:17716377

Exact self-similarity solution of the Navier-Stokes equations for a porous channel with orthogonally moving walls

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dauenhauer, Eric C.; Majdalani, Joseph

2003-06-01

This article describes a self-similarity solution of the Navier-Stokes equations for a laminar, incompressible, and time-dependent flow that develops within a channel possessing permeable, moving walls. The case considered here pertains to a channel that exhibits either injection or suction across two opposing porous walls while undergoing uniform expansion or contraction. Instances of direct application include the modeling of pulsating diaphragms, sweat cooling or heating, isotope separation, filtration, paper manufacturing, irrigation, and the grain regression during solid propellant combustion. To start, the stream function and the vorticity equation are used in concert to yield a partial differential equation that lends itself to a similarity transformation. Following this similarity transformation, the original problem is reduced to solving a fourth-order differential equation in one similarity variable η that combines both space and time dimensions. Since two of the four auxiliary conditions are of the boundary value type, a numerical solution becomes dependent upon two initial guesses. In order to achieve convergence, the governing equation is first transformed into a function of three variables: The two guesses and η. At the outset, a suitable numerical algorithm is applied by solving the resulting set of twelve first-order ordinary differential equations with two unspecified start-up conditions. In seeking the two unknown initial guesses, the rapidly converging inverse Jacobian method is applied in an iterative fashion. Numerical results are later used to ascertain a deeper understanding of the flow character. The numerical scheme enables us to extend the solution range to physical settings not considered in previous studies. Moreover, the numerical approach broadens the scope to cover both suction and injection cases occurring with simultaneous wall motion.

Impact of instructional Approaches to Teaching Elementary Science on Student Achievement

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kensinger, Seth H.

Strengthening our science education in the United States is essential to the future success of our country in the global marketplace. Immersing our elementary students with research-based quality science instruction is a critical component to build a strong foundation and motivate our students to become interested in science. The research for this study pertained to the type of elementary science instruction in correlation to academic achievement and gender. Through this study, the researcher answered the following questions: 1. What is the difference in achievement for elementary students who have been taught using one of the three science instructional approaches analyzed in this study: traditional science instruction, inquiry-based science instruction with little or no professional development and inquiry-based science instruction with high-quality professional development? 2. What is the difference in student achievement between inquiry-based instruction and non-inquiry based (traditional) instruction? 3. What is the difference in student achievement between inquiry with high quality professional development and inquiry with little or no professional development? 4. Do the three instructional approaches have differentiated effects across gender? The student achievement was measured using the 2010 fourth grade Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) in Science. Data was collected from 15 elementary schools forming three main groupings of similar schools based on the results from the 2009 third grade PSSA in Mathematics and student and community demographics. In addition, five sub-group triads were formed to further analyze the data and each sub-group was composed of schools with matching demographic data. Each triad contained a school using a traditional approach to teaching science, a school utilizing an inquiry science approach with little or no professional development, and a school incorporating inquiry science instruction with high quality

Link-Based Similarity Measures Using Reachability Vectors

PubMed Central

Yoon, Seok-Ho; Kim, Ji-Soo; Ryu, Minsoo; Choi, Ho-Jin

2014-01-01

We present a novel approach for computing link-based similarities among objects accurately by utilizing the link information pertaining to the objects involved. We discuss the problems with previous link-based similarity measures and propose a novel approach for computing link based similarities that does not suffer from these problems. In the proposed approach each target object is represented by a vector. Each element of the vector corresponds to all the objects in the given data, and the value of each element denotes the weight for the corresponding object. As for this weight value, we propose to utilize the probability of reaching from the target object to the specific object, computed using the “Random Walk with Restart” strategy. Then, we define the similarity between two objects as the cosine similarity of the two vectors. In this paper, we provide examples to show that our approach does not suffer from the aforementioned problems. We also evaluate the performance of the proposed methods in comparison with existing link-based measures, qualitatively and quantitatively, with respect to two kinds of data sets, scientific papers and Web documents. Our experimental results indicate that the proposed methods significantly outperform the existing measures. PMID:24701188

Distributed Similarity based Clustering and Compressed Forwarding for wireless sensor networks.

PubMed

Arunraja, Muruganantham; Malathi, Veluchamy; Sakthivel, Erulappan

2015-11-01

Wireless sensor networks are engaged in various data gathering applications. The major bottleneck in wireless data gathering systems is the finite energy of sensor nodes. By conserving the on board energy, the life span of wireless sensor network can be well extended. Data communication being the dominant energy consuming activity of wireless sensor network, data reduction can serve better in conserving the nodal energy. Spatial and temporal correlation among the sensor data is exploited to reduce the data communications. Data similar cluster formation is an effective way to exploit spatial correlation among the neighboring sensors. By sending only a subset of data and estimate the rest using this subset is the contemporary way of exploiting temporal correlation. In Distributed Similarity based Clustering and Compressed Forwarding for wireless sensor networks, we construct data similar iso-clusters with minimal communication overhead. The intra-cluster communication is reduced using adaptive-normalized least mean squares based dual prediction framework. The cluster head reduces the inter-cluster data payload using a lossless compressive forwarding technique. The proposed work achieves significant data reduction in both the intra-cluster and the inter-cluster communications, with the optimal data accuracy of collected data. Copyright © 2015 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

One Shot Detection with Laplacian Object and Fast Matrix Cosine Similarity.

PubMed

Biswas, Sujoy Kumar; Milanfar, Peyman

2016-03-01

One shot, generic object detection involves searching for a single query object in a larger target image. Relevant approaches have benefited from features that typically model the local similarity patterns. In this paper, we combine local similarity (encoded by local descriptors) with a global context (i.e., a graph structure) of pairwise affinities among the local descriptors, embedding the query descriptors into a low dimensional but discriminatory subspace. Unlike principal components that preserve global structure of feature space, we actually seek a linear approximation to the Laplacian eigenmap that permits us a locality preserving embedding of high dimensional region descriptors. Our second contribution is an accelerated but exact computation of matrix cosine similarity as the decision rule for detection, obviating the computationally expensive sliding window search. We leverage the power of Fourier transform combined with integral image to achieve superior runtime efficiency that allows us to test multiple hypotheses (for pose estimation) within a reasonably short time. Our approach to one shot detection is training-free, and experiments on the standard data sets confirm the efficacy of our model. Besides, low computation cost of the proposed (codebook-free) object detector facilitates rather straightforward query detection in large data sets including movie videos.

Using SQL Databases for Sequence Similarity Searching and Analysis.

PubMed

Pearson, William R; Mackey, Aaron J

2017-09-13

Relational databases can integrate diverse types of information and manage large sets of similarity search results, greatly simplifying genome-scale analyses. By focusing on taxonomic subsets of sequences, relational databases can reduce the size and redundancy of sequence libraries and improve the statistical significance of homologs. In addition, by loading similarity search results into a relational database, it becomes possible to explore and summarize the relationships between all of the proteins in an organism and those in other biological kingdoms. This unit describes how to use relational databases to improve the efficiency of sequence similarity searching and demonstrates various large-scale genomic analyses of homology-related data. It also describes the installation and use of a simple protein sequence database, seqdb_demo, which is used as a basis for the other protocols. The unit also introduces search_demo, a database that stores sequence similarity search results. The search_demo database is then used to explore the evolutionary relationships between E. coli proteins and proteins in other organisms in a large-scale comparative genomic analysis. © 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Academic Self-Concept, Achievement Goals, and Achievement: Is Their Relation the Same for Academic Achievers and Underachievers?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Preckel, Franzis; Brunner, Martin

2015-01-01

This longitudinal study investigated the contribution of achievement goals and academic self-concept for the prediction of unexpected academic achievement (i.e., achievement that is higher or lower than expected with respect to students' cognitive ability) in general and when comparing groups of extreme over- and underachievers. Our sample…

Low-dose factor VIII infusion in Chinese adult haemophilia A patients: pharmacokinetics evidence that daily infusion results in higher trough level than with every-other-day infusion with similar factor VIII consumption.

PubMed

Hua, B; Lee, A; Fan, L; Li, K; Zhang, Y; Poon, M-C; Zhao, Y

2017-05-01

Pharmacokinetics (PK) modelling suggests improvement of trough levels are achieved by using more frequent infusion strategy. However, no clinical study data exists to confirm or quantify improvement in trough level, particularly for low-dose prophylaxis in patients with haemophilia A. To provide evidence that low dose daily (ED) prophylaxis can increase trough levels without increasing FVIII consumption compared to every-other-day (EOD) infusion. A cross-over study on 5 IU kg -1 FVIII daily vs. 10 IU kg -1 EOD infusions, each for 14 days was conducted at the PUMCH-HTC. On the ED schedule, trough (immediate prior to infusion), and peak FVIII:C levels (30 min after infusion) were measured on days 1-5; and trough levels alone on days 7, 9, 11 and 13. For the EOD schedule, troughs, peaks and 4-h postinfusion were measured on day 1; troughs and peaks on days 3, 5, and 7; troughs alone on days 9, 11 and 13 and 24-h postinfusion on days 2, 4 and 6. FVIII inhibitors were assessed on days 0 and 14 during both infusion schedules. Six patients were enrolled. PK evidence showed that daily prophylaxis achieved higher (~2 times) steady-state FVIII trough levels compared to EOD with the same total factor consumption. The daily prophylaxis had good acceptability among patients and reduced chronic pain in the joints in some patients. Our PK study shows low-dose factor VIII daily infusion results in higher trough level than with EOD infusion with similar factor VIII consumption in Chinese adult haemophilia A patients. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Black Working Class Adolescents' Attitudes Toward Academic Achievement.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mickelson, Roslyn Arlin

This paper examines the discrepancy between black working class students' positive attitudes toward academic achievement and their failure to achieve good grades. The research presented was drawn from a study which altered a high school's reward structure, and then tested its effects on student attitudes toward academic achievement. The results of…

A mediation analysis of achievement motives, goals, learning strategies, and academic achievement.

PubMed

Diseth, Age; Kobbeltvedt, Therese

2010-12-01

Previous research is inconclusive regarding antecedents and consequences of achievement goals, and there is a need for more research in order to examine the joint effects of different types of motives and learning strategies as predictors of academic achievement. To investigate the relationship between achievement motives, achievement goals, learning strategies (deep, surface, and strategic), and academic achievement in a hierarchical model. Participants were 229 undergraduate students (mean age: 21.2 years) of psychology and economics at the University of Bergen, Norway. Variables were measured by means of items from the Achievement Motives Scale (AMS), the Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students, and an achievement goal scale. Correlation analysis showed that academic achievement (examination grade) was positively correlated with performance-approach goal, mastery goal, and strategic learning strategies, and negatively correlated with performance-avoidance goal and surface learning strategy. A path analysis (structural equation model) showed that achievement goals were mediators between achievement motives and learning strategies, and that strategic learning strategies mediated the relationship between achievement goals and academic achievement. This study integrated previous findings from several studies and provided new evidence on the direct and indirect effects of different types of motives and learning strategies as predictors of academic achievement.

One-to-One Computing and Student Achievement in Ohio High Schools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Williams, Nancy L.; Larwin, Karen H.

2016-01-01

This study explores the impact of one-to-one computing on student achievement in Ohio high schools as measured by performance on the Ohio Graduation Test (OGT). The sample included 24 treatment schools that were individually paired with a similar control school. An interrupted time series methodology was deployed to examine OGT data over a period…

Attitude Towards Physics and Additional Mathematics Achievement Towards Physics Achievement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Veloo, Arsaythamby; Nor, Rahimah; Khalid, Rozalina

2015-01-01

The purpose of this research is to identify the difference in students' attitude towards Physics and Additional Mathematics achievement based on gender and relationship between attitudinal variables towards Physics and Additional Mathematics achievement with achievement in Physics. This research focused on six variables, which is attitude towards…

Improved personalized recommendation based on a similarity network

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, Ximeng; Liu, Yun; Xiong, Fei

2016-08-01

A recommender system helps individual users find the preferred items rapidly and has attracted extensive attention in recent years. Many successful recommendation algorithms are designed on bipartite networks, such as network-based inference or heat conduction. However, most of these algorithms define the resource-allocation methods for an average allocation. That is not reasonable because average allocation cannot indicate the user choice preference and the influence between users which leads to a series of non-personalized recommendation results. We propose a personalized recommendation approach that combines the similarity function and bipartite network to generate a similarity network that improves the resource-allocation process. Our model introduces user influence into the recommender system and states that the user influence can make the resource-allocation process more reasonable. We use four different metrics to evaluate our algorithms for three benchmark data sets. Experimental results show that the improved recommendation on a similarity network can obtain better accuracy and diversity than some competing approaches.

Reversing the similarity effect: The effect of presentation format.

PubMed

Cataldo, Andrea M; Cohen, Andrew L

2018-06-01

A context effect is a change in preference that occurs when alternatives are added to a choice set. Models of preferential choice that account for context effects largely assume a within-dimension comparison process. It has been shown, however, that the format in which a choice set is presented can influence comparison strategies. That is, a by-alternative or by-dimension grouping of the dimension values encourage within-alternative or within-dimension comparisons, respectively. For example, one classic context effect, the compromise effect, is strengthened by a by-dimension presentation format. Extrapolation from this result suggests that a second context effect, the similarity effect, will actually reverse when stimuli are presented in a by-dimension format. In the current study, we presented participants with a series of apartment choice sets designed to elicit the similarity effect, with either a by-alternative or by-dimension presentation format. Participants in the by-alternative condition demonstrated a standard similarity effect; however, participants in the by-dimension condition demonstrated a strong reverse similarity effect. The present data can be accounted for by Multialternative Decision Field Theory (MDFT) and the Multiattribute Linear Ballistic Accumulator (MLBA), but not Elimination by Aspects (EBA). Indeed, when some weak assumptions of within-dimension processes are met, MDFT and the MLBA predict the reverse similarity effect. These modeling results suggest that the similarity effect is governed by either forgetting and inhibition (MDFT), or attention to positive or negative differences (MLBA). These results demonstrate that flexibility in the comparison process needs to be incorporated into theories of preferential choice. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Mathematics Beliefs and Achievement of Elementary School Students in Japan and the United States: Results from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

House, J. Daniel

2006-01-01

Student self-beliefs are significantly related to several types of academic achievement. In addition, results from international assessments have indicated that students in Japan have typically scored above international averages (D. L. Kelly, I. V. S. Mullis, & M. O. Martin, 2000). In this study, the author examined relationships between…

Dreaming and waking: similarities and differences revisited.

PubMed

Kahan, Tracey L; LaBerge, Stephen P

2011-09-01

Dreaming is often characterized as lacking high-order cognitive (HOC) skills. In two studies, we test the alternative hypothesis that the dreaming mind is highly similar to the waking mind. Multiple experience samples were obtained from late-night REM sleep and waking, following a systematic protocol described in Kahan (2001). Results indicated that reported dreaming and waking experiences are surprisingly similar in their cognitive and sensory qualities. Concurrently, ratings of dreaming and waking experiences were markedly different on questions of general reality orientation and logical organization (e.g., the bizarreness or typicality of the events, actions, and locations). Consistent with other recent studies (e.g., Bulkeley & Kahan, 2008; Kozmová & Wolman, 2006), experiences sampled from dreaming and waking were more similar with respect to their process features than with respect to their structural features. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Fifteen Years of Collaborative Innovation and Achievement: NASA Nebraska Space Grant Consortium 15-Year Program Performance and Results Report

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Schaaf, Michaela M. (Editor); Bowen, Brent D.; Fink, Mary M.; Nickerson, Jocelyn S.; Avery Shelly; Calamaio, Caprice; Carstenson, Larry; Dugan, James; Farr, Lynne; Farritor, Shane

2003-01-01

This 15-year evaluation serves as a summary document highlighting the numerous and complete successes of the Nebraska Space Grant Program. Innovation has been highlighted through significant new endeavors during this 5-year period, such as placement of students and faculty at NASA Centers and the expansion of NSGC Native American Outreach Programs. While the last national program evaluation resulted in Nebraska s ranking as the top Capability Enhancement Consortium, and 5th best overall, Nebraska felt there was room for significant growth and development. This has been validated through the recent competitive attainment of Designated Grant status and has allowed for the exploration of new initiatives, as well as the expansion of already successful programs. A comprehensive strategic planning effort has involved all Nebraska representative entities and has guided Nebraska Space Grant through the evaluation period, providing a basis for continual advancement. Nebraska rigorously employs evaluation techniques to ensure that stated outcomes and metrics are achieved and that weaknesses are identified and corrected. With this coordinated approach, Nebraska expects that the next 5 years will yield new opportunities for significant achievement. Nebraska Space Grant will embrace new national endeavors, including the integration of Pender Public Schools -Nebraska s NASA Explorer School, geospatial initiatives, and the National Student Satellite Program.

Simultaneous mobile- and fixed-bearing total knee replacement in the same patients. A prospective comparison of mid-term outcomes using a similar design of prosthesis.

PubMed

Kim, Y-H; Kim, D-Y; Kim, J-S

2007-07-01

We conducted a randomised prospective study to evaluate the clinical and radiological results of a mobile- and fixed-bearing total knee replacement of similar design in 174 patients who had bilateral simultaneous knee replacement. The mean follow-up was for 5.6 years (5.2 to 6.1). The total knee score, pain score, functional score and range of movement were not statistically different (p > 0.05) between the two groups. Osteolysis was not seen in any knee in either group. Two knees (1%) in the mobile-bearing group required revision because of infection; none in the fixed-bearing group needed revision. Excellent results can be achieved with both mobile- and fixed-bearing prostheses of similar design at mid-term follow-up. We could demonstrate no significant clinical advantage for a mobile bearing.

Leader Perceptions and Student Achievement: An Examination of Reading and Mathematics International Test Results in Korea and the USA

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shin, Seon-Hi; Slater, Charles L.; Ortiz, Steve

2017-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine what factors affect student achievement in reading and mathematics. The research questions addressed the perceptions of school principals and background characteristics related to student achievement in Korea and the USA with respect to differences among students in low, middle and high quantiles.…

An applet for the Gabor similarity scaling of the differences between complex stimuli.

PubMed

Margalit, Eshed; Biederman, Irving; Herald, Sarah B; Yue, Xiaomin; von der Malsburg, Christoph

2016-11-01

It is widely accepted that after the first cortical visual area, V1, a series of stages achieves a representation of complex shapes, such as faces and objects, so that they can be understood and recognized. A major challenge for the study of complex shape perception has been the lack of a principled basis for scaling of the physical differences between stimuli so that their similarity can be specified, unconfounded by early-stage differences. Without the specification of such similarities, it is difficult to make sound inferences about the contributions of later stages to neural activity or psychophysical performance. A Web-based app is described that is based on the Malsburg Gabor-jet model (Lades et al., 1993), which allows easy specification of the V1 similarity of pairs of stimuli, no matter how intricate. The model predicts the psycho physical discriminability of metrically varying faces and complex blobs almost perfectly (Yue, Biederman, Mangini, von der Malsburg, & Amir, 2012), and serves as the input stage of a large family of contemporary neurocomputational models of vision.

Fear of Success and Achievement Anxiety in Reentry Versus Non-Reentry Women.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sherman, Pamela; And Others

Women who reenter college after years of work or family responsibilities were compared to women with similar backgrounds who do not reenter school on measures of fear of success and achievement anxiety. A questionnaire designed to determine reentry status, age, socioeconomic standing, facilitating and debilitating anxiety, and fear of success was…

Comparing Episodes of Mathematics Teaching for Higher Achievers in England and Germany

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kelly, Peter; Kotthoff, Hans-Georg

2016-01-01

To illustrate similarities and differences in lower secondary level mathematics teaching with higher achievers and thereby explore privileging processes, we contrast a teaching episode in Baden-Württemberg, Germany with one in South West England. These have been selected from a larger study as typical within each region for higher achieving…

Are some gestalt principles deployed more readily than others during early development? The case of lightness versus form similarity.

PubMed

Quinn, Paul C; Bhatt, Ramesh S

2006-10-01

Four experiments investigated how readily infants achieve perceptual organization by lightness and form similarity. Infants were (a) familiarized with elements that could be organized into rows or columns on the basis of lightness or form similarity and tested with vertical versus horizontal bars depicting the familiar versus novel organization or (b) familiarized with bars and tested with elements. For lightness similarity, generalization occurred in both tasks; however, for form similarity, generalization occurred only in the elements --> bars task. The findings indicate that lightness similarity is more readily deployed than form similarity and are discussed in the context of (a) whether the difference reflects speed of application or experience-based learning, (b) evidence from visual agnosic patients and the time course of application of the principles in healthy adults, and (c) development of dorsal and ventral visual processing streams. Copyright 2006 APA.

Achieving definitive results in long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acid supplementation trials of term infants: factors for consideration.

PubMed

Meldrum, Suzanne J; Smith, Michael A; Prescott, Susan L; Hird, Kathryn; Simmer, Karen

2011-04-01

Numerous randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have been undertaken to determine whether supplementation with long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LCPUFAs) in infancy would improve the developmental outcomes of term infants. The results of such trials have been thoroughly reviewed with no definitive conclusion as to the efficacy of LCPUFA supplementation. A number of reasons for the lack of conclusive findings in this area have been proposed. This review examines such factors with the aim of determining whether an optimal method of investigation for RCTs of LCPUFA supplementation in term infants can be ascertained from previous research. While more research is required to completely inform a method that is likely to achieve definitive results, the findings of this literature review indicate future trials should investigate the effects of sex, genetic polymorphisms, the specific effects of LCPUFAs, and the optimal tests for neurodevelopmental assessment. The current literature indicates a docosahexaenoic acid dose of 0.32%, supplementation from birth to 12 months, and a total sample size of at least 286 (143 per group) should be included in the methodology of future trials. © 2011 International Life Sciences Institute.

Visual similarity in short-term recall for where and when.

PubMed

Jalbert, Annie; Saint-Aubin, Jean; Tremblay, Sébastien

2008-03-01

Two experiments examined the effects of visual similarity on short-term recall for where and when in the visual spatial domain. A series of squares of similar or dissimilar colours were serially presented at various locations on the screen. At recall, all coloured squares were simultaneously presented in a random order at the bottom of the screen, and the locations used for presentation were indicated by white squares. Participants were asked to place the colours at their appropriate location in their presentation order. Performance for location (where) and order (when) was assessed separately. Results revealed that similarity severely hinders both memory for what was where and memory for what was when, under quiet and articulatory suppression conditions. These results provide further evidence that similarity has a major impact on processing relational information in memory.

Reasoning Abilities in Primary School: A Pilot Study on Poor Achievers vs. Normal Achievers in Computer Game Tasks

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dagnino, Francesca Maria; Ballauri, Margherita; Benigno, Vincenza; Caponetto, Ilaria; Pesenti, Elia

2013-01-01

This paper presents the results of preliminary research on the assessment of reasoning abilities in primary school poor achievers vs. normal achievers using computer game tasks. Subjects were evaluated by means of cognitive assessment on logical abilities and academic skills. The aim of this study is to better understand the relationship between…

Processes of Similarity Judgment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Larkey, Levi B.; Markman, Arthur B.

2005-01-01

Similarity underlies fundamental cognitive capabilities such as memory, categorization, decision making, problem solving, and reasoning. Although recent approaches to similarity appreciate the structure of mental representations, they differ in the processes posited to operate over these representations. We present an experiment that…

Mathematics beliefs and instructional strategies in achievement of elementary-school students in Japan: results from the TIMSS 2003 assessment.

PubMed

House, J Daniel

2007-04-01

Recent findings concerning mathematics assessment indicate that students in Japan consistently score above international averages. Researchers have examined specific mathematics beliefs and instructional strategies associated with mathematics achievement for students in Japan. This study examined relationships among self-beliefs, classroom instructional strategies, and mathematics achievement for a large national sample of students (N=4,207) from the TIMSS 2003 international sample of fourth graders in Japan. Several significant relationships between mathematics beliefs and test scores were found; a number of classroom teaching strategies were also significantly associated with test scores. However, multiple regression using the complete set of five mathematics beliefs and five instructional strategies explained only 25.1% of the variance in mathematics achievement test scores.

Achievement goals affect metacognitive judgments

PubMed Central

Ikeda, Kenji; Yue, Carole L.; Murayama, Kou; Castel, Alan D.

2017-01-01

The present study examined the effect of achievement goals on metacognitive judgments, such as judgments of learning (JOLs) and metacomprehension judgments, and actual recall performance. We conducted five experiments manipulating the instruction of achievement goals. In each experiment, participants were instructed to adopt mastery-approach goals (i.e., develop their own mental ability through a memory task) or performance-approach goals (i.e., demonstrate their strong memory ability through getting a high score on a memory task). The results of Experiments 1 and 2 showed that JOLs of word pairs in the performance-approach goal condition tended to be higher than those in the mastery-approach goal condition. In contrast, cued recall performance did not differ between the two goal conditions. Experiment 3 also demonstrated that metacomprehension judgments of text passages were higher in the performance-approach goal condition than in the mastery-approach goals condition, whereas test performance did not differ between conditions. These findings suggest that achievement motivation affects metacognitive judgments during learning, even when achievement motivation does not influence actual performance. PMID:28983496

Common neighbour structure and similarity intensity in complex networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hou, Lei; Liu, Kecheng

2017-10-01

Complex systems as networks always exhibit strong regularities, implying underlying mechanisms governing their evolution. In addition to the degree preference, the similarity has been argued to be another driver for networks. Assuming a network is randomly organised without similarity preference, the present paper studies the expected number of common neighbours between vertices. A symmetrical similarity index is accordingly developed by removing such expected number from the observed common neighbours. The developed index can not only describe the similarities between vertices, but also the dissimilarities. We further apply the proposed index to measure of the influence of similarity on the wring patterns of networks. Fifteen empirical networks as well as artificial networks are examined in terms of similarity intensity and degree heterogeneity. Results on real networks indicate that, social networks are strongly governed by the similarity as well as the degree preference, while the biological networks and infrastructure networks show no apparent similarity governance. Particularly, classical network models, such as the Barabási-Albert model, the Erdös-Rényi model and the Ring Lattice, cannot well describe the social networks in terms of the degree heterogeneity and similarity intensity. The findings may shed some light on the modelling and link prediction of different classes of networks.

Differences and similarities in cross-cultural perceptions of boundaries: a comparison of results from two studies.

PubMed

Miller, Patrice Marie; Bener, Abdulbari; Ghuloum, Suhaila; Commons, Michael Lamport; Burgut, F Tuna

2012-01-01

There has been substantial literature on boundary excursions in clinician-patient relationships; however, very little empirical research exists. Even less information exists on how perceptions of this issue might differ across cultures. Prior to this study, empirical data on various kinds of boundary excursions were collected in different cultural contexts. First, clinicians from the U.S. and Brazil were asked to rate 173 boundary excursions for both their perceived harmfulness and their professional unacceptability (Miller et al., 2006). In a second study, colleagues from Qatar administered a slightly modified version to mental health care professional staff of a hospital in Doha, Qatar (Ghuloum et al., 2011). In this paper, the results of these two separate studies are compared. The results showed some similarities and some differences in perceptions of the boundary behaviors. For example, both sets of cultures seem to agree that certain behaviors are seriously harmful and/or professionally unacceptable. These behaviors include some frankly sexual behavior, such as having sexual intercourse with a patient, as well as behavior related to doing business with the patient, and some disclosing behavior. There are also significant cultural differences in perceptions of how harmful some of the behaviors are. Qatari practitioners seemed to rate certain behaviors that within therapy mix disclosing or personal behavior with therapy as more harmful, but behaviors that involved interacting with patients outside of therapy as less serious. A factor analysis suggested that participants in U.S./Brazil saw a much larger number of behaviors as making up a set of Core Boundary Violations, whereas Qatari respondents separated sexual behaviors from others. Finally, a Rasch analysis showed that both cultures perceived a continuum of boundary behaviors, from those that are least harmful or unprofessional to those that are highly harmful or unprofessional. One interpretation is that

Photon caliper to achieve submillimeter positioning accuracy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gallagher, Kyle J.; Wong, Jennifer; Zhang, Junan

2017-09-01

The purpose of this study was to demonstrate the feasibility of using a commercial two-dimensional (2D) detector array with an inherent detector spacing of 5 mm to achieve submillimeter accuracy in localizing the radiation isocenter. This was accomplished by delivering the Vernier ‘dose’ caliper to a 2D detector array where the nominal scale was the 2D detector array and the non-nominal Vernier scale was the radiation dose strips produced by the high-definition (HD) multileaf collimators (MLCs) of the linear accelerator. Because the HD MLC sequence was similar to the picket fence test, we called this procedure the Vernier picket fence (VPF) test. We confirmed the accuracy of the VPF test by offsetting the HD MLC bank by known increments and comparing the known offset with the VPF test result. The VPF test was able to determine the known offset within 0.02 mm. We also cross-validated the accuracy of the VPF test in an evaluation of couch hysteresis. This was done by using both the VPF test and the ExacTrac optical tracking system to evaluate the couch position. We showed that the VPF test was in agreement with the ExacTrac optical tracking system within a root-mean-square value of 0.07 mm for both the lateral and longitudinal directions. In conclusion, we demonstrated the VPF test can determine the offset between a 2D detector array and the radiation isocenter with submillimeter accuracy. Until now, no method to locate the radiation isocenter using a 2D detector array has been able to achieve such accuracy.

Integrating concept ontology and multitask learning to achieve more effective classifier training for multilevel image annotation.

PubMed

Fan, Jianping; Gao, Yuli; Luo, Hangzai

2008-03-01

In this paper, we have developed a new scheme for achieving multilevel annotations of large-scale images automatically. To achieve more sufficient representation of various visual properties of the images, both the global visual features and the local visual features are extracted for image content representation. To tackle the problem of huge intraconcept visual diversity, multiple types of kernels are integrated to characterize the diverse visual similarity relationships between the images more precisely, and a multiple kernel learning algorithm is developed for SVM image classifier training. To address the problem of huge interconcept visual similarity, a novel multitask learning algorithm is developed to learn the correlated classifiers for the sibling image concepts under the same parent concept and enhance their discrimination and adaptation power significantly. To tackle the problem of huge intraconcept visual diversity for the image concepts at the higher levels of the concept ontology, a novel hierarchical boosting algorithm is developed to learn their ensemble classifiers hierarchically. In order to assist users on selecting more effective hypotheses for image classifier training, we have developed a novel hyperbolic framework for large-scale image visualization and interactive hypotheses assessment. Our experiments on large-scale image collections have also obtained very positive results.

Attitudes and Achievement of Bruneian Science Students.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dhindsa, Harkirat S.; Chung, Gilbert

2003-01-01

Evaluates attitudes towards and achievement in science of Form 3 students studying in single-sex and coeducational schools in Brunei. Results demonstrated significant differences in attitudes towards and achievement in science of male and female students in single-sex schools and students in coeducational schools. (Contains 46 references.)…

Beliefs and Achievement in Seventh-Grade Mathematics.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kloosterman, Peter

1991-01-01

This study highlights the correlation between seventh grade students' (n=429) beliefs about how mathematics is learned and their achievement in mathematics. Results from structural relation modeling indicate that, when beliefs are considered as a single construct, the relationship between beliefs and achievement is much stronger than when beliefs…

The Efforts to Improve Mathematics Learning Achievement Results of High School Students as Required by Competency-Based Curriculum and Lesson Level-Based Curriculum

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sidabutar, Ropinus

2016-01-01

The research was aimed to investigate the effect of various, innovated teaching models to improved the student's achievement in various topic in Mathematics. The study was conduct experiment by using innovated teaching with contextual, media and web which are the compared. with conventional teaching method. The result showed the innovation in the…

Social and Musical Objectives or Experiences School Music Teachers Anticipate Their Students Will Achieve as a Result of Attending a Summer Music Camp

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Richards, Eric W.

2011-01-01

The purpose of this study was to investigate specific social and musical objectives or experiences school music teachers anticipate their students will achieve as a result of attending a summer music camp. A survey instrument was developed to collect demographic data and responses to questions regarding 14 specific musical and social variables.…

Path similarity skeleton graph matching.

PubMed

Bai, Xiang; Latecki, Longin Jan

2008-07-01

This paper presents a novel framework to for shape recognition based on object silhouettes. The main idea is to match skeleton graphs by comparing the shortest paths between skeleton endpoints. In contrast to typical tree or graph matching methods, we completely ignore the topological graph structure. Our approach is motivated by the fact that visually similar skeleton graphs may have completely different topological structures. The proposed comparison of shortest paths between endpoints of skeleton graphs yields correct matching results in such cases. The skeletons are pruned by contour partitioning with Discrete Curve Evolution, which implies that the endpoints of skeleton branches correspond to visual parts of the objects. The experimental results demonstrate that our method is able to produce correct results in the presence of articulations, stretching, and occlusion.

Heterogeneous hCG and hMG commercial preparations result in different intracellular signalling but induce a similar long-term progesterone response in vitro.

PubMed

Riccetti, Laura; Klett, Danièle; Ayoub, Mohammed Akli; Boulo, Thomas; Pignatti, Elisa; Tagliavini, Simonetta; Varani, Manuela; Trenti, Tommaso; Nicoli, Alessia; Capodanno, Francesco; La Sala, Giovanni Battista; Reiter, Eric; Simoni, Manuela; Casarini, Livio

2017-10-01

Are four urinary hCG/menotropin (hMG) and one recombinant preparation characterized by different molecular features and do they mediate specific intracellular signaling and steroidogenesis? hCG and hMG preparations have heterogeneous compositions and mediate preparation-specific cell signaling and early steroidogenesis, although similar progesterone plateau levels are achieved in 24 h-treated human primary granulosa cells in vitro. hCG is the pregnancy hormone marketed as a drug for ARTs to induce final oocyte maturation and ovulation, and to support FSH action. Several hCG formulations are commercially available, differing in source, purification methods and biochemical composition. Commercial hCG preparations for ART or research purposes were compared in vitro. The different preparations were quantified by immunoassay with calibration against the hCG standard (Fifth IS; NIBSC 07/364). Immunoreactivity patterns, isoelectric points and oligosaccharide contents of hCGs were evaluated using reducing and non-reducing Western blotting, capillary isoelectric-focusing immunoassay and lectin-ELISA, respectively. Functional studies were performed in order to evaluate intracellular and total cAMP, progesterone production and β-arrestin 2 recruitment by ELISA and BRET, in both human primary granulosa lutein cells (hGLC) and luteinizing hormone (LH)/hCG receptor (LHCGR)-transfected HEK293 cells, stimulated by increasing hormone concentrations. Statistical analysis was performed using two-way ANOVA and Bonferroni post-test or Mann-Whitney's U-test as appropriate. Heterogeneous profiles were found among preparations, revealing specific molecular weight patterns (20-75 KDa range), isoelectric points (4.0-9.0 pI range) and lectin binding (P < 0.05; n = 7-10). These drug-specific compositions were linked to different potencies on cAMP production (EC50 1.0-400.0 ng/ml range) and β-arrestin 2 recruitment (EC50 0.03-2.0 μg/ml) in hGLC and transfected HEK293 cells (P < 0.05; n = 3

Average is Boring: How Similarity Kills a Meme's Success

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Coscia, Michele

2014-09-01

Every day we are exposed to different ideas, or memes, competing with each other for our attention. Previous research explained popularity and persistence heterogeneity of memes by assuming them in competition for limited attention resources, distributed in a heterogeneous social network. Little has been said about what characteristics make a specific meme more likely to be successful. We propose a similarity-based explanation: memes with higher similarity to other memes have a significant disadvantage in their potential popularity. We employ a meme similarity measure based on semantic text analysis and computer vision to prove that a meme is more likely to be successful and to thrive if its characteristics make it unique. Our results show that indeed successful memes are located in the periphery of the meme similarity space and that our similarity measure is a promising predictor of a meme success.

Average is boring: how similarity kills a meme's success.

PubMed

Coscia, Michele

2014-09-26

Every day we are exposed to different ideas, or memes, competing with each other for our attention. Previous research explained popularity and persistence heterogeneity of memes by assuming them in competition for limited attention resources, distributed in a heterogeneous social network. Little has been said about what characteristics make a specific meme more likely to be successful. We propose a similarity-based explanation: memes with higher similarity to other memes have a significant disadvantage in their potential popularity. We employ a meme similarity measure based on semantic text analysis and computer vision to prove that a meme is more likely to be successful and to thrive if its characteristics make it unique. Our results show that indeed successful memes are located in the periphery of the meme similarity space and that our similarity measure is a promising predictor of a meme success.

Classification of wheat: Badhwar profile similarity technique

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Austin, W. W.

1980-01-01

The Badwar profile similarity classification technique used successfully for classification of corn was applied to spring wheat classifications. The software programs and the procedures used to generate full-scene classifications are presented, and numerical results of the acreage estimations are given.

Transformation and Alignment in Similarity

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hodgetts, Carl J.; Hahn, Ulrike; Chater, Nick

2009-01-01

This paper contrasts two structural accounts of psychological similarity: structural alignment (SA) and Representational Distortion (RD). SA proposes that similarity is determined by how readily the structures of two objects can be brought into alignment; RD measures similarity by the complexity of the transformation that "distorts" one…

Essays on Educational Achievement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ampaabeng, Samuel Kofi

2013-01-01

This dissertation examines the determinants of student outcomes--achievement, attainment, occupational choices and earnings--in three different contexts. The first two chapters focus on Ghana while the final chapter focuses on the US state of Massachusetts. In the first chapter, I exploit the incidence of famine and malnutrition that resulted to…

Sample selection in foreign similarity regions for multicrop experiments

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Malin, J. T. (Principal Investigator)

1981-01-01

The selection of sample segments in the U.S. foreign similarity regions for development of proportion estimation procedures and error modeling for Argentina, Australia, Brazil, and USSR in AgRISTARS is described. Each sample was chosen to be similar in crop mix to the corresponding indicator region sample. Data sets, methods of selection, and resulting samples are discussed.

Parenting styles and adolescents' achievement strategies.

PubMed

Aunola, K; Stattin, H; Nurmi, J E

2000-04-01

The aim of the study was to investigate the extent to which adolescents' achievement strategies are associated with the parenting styles they experience in their families. Three hundred and fifty-four 14-year-old adolescents completed a Strategy and Attribution Questionnaire and a family parenting style inventory. Analogous questionnaires were also completed by the adolescents' parents. Based on adolescents' report of the parenting styles, four types of families were identified: those with Authoritative, Authoritarian, Permissive, and Neglectful parenting styles. The results further showed that adolescents from authoritative families applied most adaptive achievement strategies characterized by low levels of failure expectations, task-irrelevant behaviour and passivity, and the use of self-enhancing attributions. Adolescents from neglectful families, in turn, applied maladaptive strategies characterized by high levels of task-irrelevant behaviour, passivity and a lack of self-enhancing attributions. The results provide a basis for understanding some of the processes by which parenting styles may influence adolescents' academic achievement and performance.

Achievement Test Provincial Report, June 1987 Administration.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alberta Dept. of Education, Edmonton. Student Evaluation and Records Branch.

This document summarizes results of province-wide achievement tests given in Alberta, Canada in June 1987. These tests evaluated student achievement in third grade science, sixth grade mathematics, and ninth grade social studies. The test questions for each subject area reflected Alberta's curriculum specifications for that subject. The grade 3…

Streaming, Tracking and Reading Achievement: A Multilevel Analysis of Students in 40 Countries

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chiu, Ming Ming; Chow, Bonnie Wing-Yin; Joh, Sung Wook

2017-01-01

Grouping similar students together within schools ("streaming") or classrooms ("tracking") based on past literacy skills (reported by parents), family socioeconomic status (SES) or reading attitudes might affect their reading achievement. Our multilevel analysis of the reading tests of 208,057 fourth-grade students across 40…

Strategic Staffing? How Performance Pressures Affect the Distribution of Teachers within Schools and Resulting Student Achievement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Grissom, Jason A.; Kalogrides, Demetra; Loeb, Susanna

2017-01-01

School performance pressures apply disproportionately to tested grades and subjects. Using longitudinal administrative data--including achievement data from untested grades--and teacher survey data from a large urban district, we examine schools' responses to those pressures in assigning teachers to high-stakes and low-stakes classrooms. We find…

PHOG analysis of self-similarity in aesthetic images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Amirshahi, Seyed Ali; Koch, Michael; Denzler, Joachim; Redies, Christoph

2012-03-01

In recent years, there have been efforts in defining the statistical properties of aesthetic photographs and artworks using computer vision techniques. However, it is still an open question how to distinguish aesthetic from non-aesthetic images with a high recognition rate. This is possibly because aesthetic perception is influenced also by a large number of cultural variables. Nevertheless, the search for statistical properties of aesthetic images has not been futile. For example, we have shown that the radially averaged power spectrum of monochrome artworks of Western and Eastern provenance falls off according to a power law with increasing spatial frequency (1/f2 characteristics). This finding implies that this particular subset of artworks possesses a Fourier power spectrum that is self-similar across different scales of spatial resolution. Other types of aesthetic images, such as cartoons, comics and mangas also display this type of self-similarity, as do photographs of complex natural scenes. Since the human visual system is adapted to encode images of natural scenes in a particular efficient way, we have argued that artists imitate these statistics in their artworks. In support of this notion, we presented results that artists portrait human faces with the self-similar Fourier statistics of complex natural scenes although real-world photographs of faces are not self-similar. In view of these previous findings, we investigated other statistical measures of self-similarity to characterize aesthetic and non-aesthetic images. In the present work, we propose a novel measure of self-similarity that is based on the Pyramid Histogram of Oriented Gradients (PHOG). For every image, we first calculate PHOG up to pyramid level 3. The similarity between the histograms of each section at a particular level is then calculated to the parent section at the previous level (or to the histogram at the ground level). The proposed approach is tested on datasets of aesthetic and

The Effects of Similarity on High-Level Visual Working Memory Processing.

PubMed

Yang, Li; Mo, Lei

2017-01-01

Similarity has been observed to have opposite effects on visual working memory (VWM) for complex images. How can these discrepant results be reconciled? To answer this question, we used a change-detection paradigm to test visual working memory performance for multiple real-world objects. We found that working memory for moderate similarity items was worse than that for either high or low similarity items. This pattern was unaffected by manipulations of stimulus type (faces vs. scenes), encoding duration (limited vs. self-paced), and presentation format (simultaneous vs. sequential). We also found that the similarity effects differed in strength in different categories (scenes vs. faces). These results suggest that complex real-world objects are represented using a centre-surround inhibition organization . These results support the category-specific cortical resource theory and further suggest that centre-surround inhibition organization may differ by category.

Pollinators show flower colour preferences but flowers with similar colours do not attract similar pollinators

PubMed Central

Reverté, Sara; Retana, Javier; Gómez, José M.; Bosch, Jordi

2016-01-01

Background and aims Colour is one of the main floral traits used by pollinators to locate flowers. Although pollinators show innate colour preferences, the view that the colour of a flower may be considered an important predictor of its main pollinators is highly controversial because flower choice is highly context-dependent, and initial innate preferences may be overridden by subsequent associative learning. Our objective is to establish whether there is a relationship between flower colour and pollinator composition in natural communities. Methods We measured the flower reflectance spectrum and pollinator composition in four plant communities (85 plant species represented by 109 populations, and 32 305 plant–pollinator interactions in total). Pollinators were divided into six taxonomic groups: bees, ants, wasps, coleopterans, dipterans and lepidopterans. Key Results We found consistent associations between pollinator groups and certain colours. These associations matched innate preferences experimentally established for several pollinators and predictions of the pollination syndrome theory. However, flowers with similar colours did not attract similar pollinator assemblages. Conclusions The explanation for this paradoxical result is that most flower species are pollination generalists. We conclude that although pollinator colour preferences seem to condition plant–pollinator interactions, the selective force behind these preferences has not been strong enough to mediate the appearance and maintenance of tight colour-based plant–pollinator associations. PMID:27325897

Repeated testing improves achievement in a blended learning approach for risk competence training of medical students: results of a randomized controlled trial.

PubMed

Spreckelsen, C; Juenger, J

2017-09-26

Adequate estimation and communication of risks is a critical competence of physicians. Due to an evident lack of these competences, effective training addressing risk competence during medical education is needed. Test-enhanced learning has been shown to produce marked effects on achievements. This study aimed to investigate the effect of repeated tests implemented on top of a blended learning program for risk competence. We introduced a blended-learning curriculum for risk estimation and risk communication based on a set of operationalized learning objectives, which was integrated into a mandatory course "Evidence-based Medicine" for third-year students. A randomized controlled trial addressed the effect of repeated testing on achievement as measured by the students' pre- and post-training score (nine multiple-choice items). Basic numeracy and statistical literacy were assessed at baseline. Analysis relied on descriptive statistics (histograms, box plots, scatter plots, and summary of descriptive measures), bootstrapped confidence intervals, analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), and effect sizes (Cohen's d, r) based on adjusted means and standard deviations. All of the 114 students enrolled in the course consented to take part in the study and were assigned to either the intervention or control group (both: n = 57) by balanced randomization. Five participants dropped out due to non-compliance (control: 4, intervention: 1). Both groups profited considerably from the program in general (Cohen's d for overall pre vs. post scores: 2.61). Repeated testing yielded an additional positive effect: while the covariate (baseline score) exhibits no relation to the post-intervention score, F(1, 106) = 2.88, p > .05, there was a significant effect of the intervention (repeated tests scenario) on learning achievement, F(1106) = 12.72, p < .05, d = .94, r = .42 (95% CI: [.26, .57]). However, in the subgroup of participants with a high initial numeracy score no similar

Effectiveness of image features and similarity measures in cluster-based approaches for content-based image retrieval

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Du, Hongbo; Al-Jubouri, Hanan; Sellahewa, Harin

2014-05-01

Content-based image retrieval is an automatic process of retrieving images according to image visual contents instead of textual annotations. It has many areas of application from automatic image annotation and archive, image classification and categorization to homeland security and law enforcement. The key issues affecting the performance of such retrieval systems include sensible image features that can effectively capture the right amount of visual contents and suitable similarity measures to find similar and relevant images ranked in a meaningful order. Many different approaches, methods and techniques have been developed as a result of very intensive research in the past two decades. Among many existing approaches, is a cluster-based approach where clustering methods are used to group local feature descriptors into homogeneous regions, and search is conducted by comparing the regions of the query image against those of the stored images. This paper serves as a review of works in this area. The paper will first summarize the existing work reported in the literature and then present the authors' own investigations in this field. The paper intends to highlight not only achievements made by recent research but also challenges and difficulties still remaining in this area.

Black Achievement in a Desegregated School District.

PubMed

Sheehan, Daniel S

1979-04-01

This study compared the achievement of black students (N = 1115) who attended segregated schools with the achievement of black students (N = 810) who attended desegregated schools. Analyses of covariance indicated that after controlling for previous achievement level, student sex, prior school experience, social status, parental involvement, and attitude toward education the segregated black students had the highest adjusted language arts, reading, and mathematics posttest scores. In addition to differences in ethnic composition between the segregated and desegregated schools, several potential confounding factors could have caused these results.

Investigating Pharmacological Similarity by Charting Chemical Space.

PubMed

Buonfiglio, Rosa; Engkvist, Ola; Várkonyi, Péter; Henz, Astrid; Vikeved, Elisabet; Backlund, Anders; Kogej, Thierry

2015-11-23

In this study, biologically relevant areas of the chemical space were analyzed using ChemGPS-NP. This application enables comparing groups of ligands within a multidimensional space based on principle components derived from physicochemical descriptors. Also, 3D visualization of the ChemGPS-NP global map can be used to conveniently evaluate bioactive compound similarity and visually distinguish between different types or groups of compounds. To further establish ChemGPS-NP as a method to accurately represent the chemical space, a comparison with structure-based fingerprint has been performed. Interesting complementarities between the two descriptions of molecules were observed. It has been shown that the accuracy of describing molecules with physicochemical descriptors like in ChemGPS-NP is similar to the accuracy of structural fingerprints in retrieving bioactive molecules. Lastly, pharmacological similarity of structurally diverse compounds has been investigated in ChemGPS-NP space. These results further strengthen the case of using ChemGPS-NP as a tool to explore and visualize chemical space.

BIBLIOGRAPHY ON ACHIEVEMENT.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA. Graduate School of Education.

THIS BIBLIOGRAPHY LISTS MATERIAL ON VARIOUS ASPECTS OF ACHIEVEMENT. APPROXIMATELY 40 UNANNOTATED REFERENCES ARE PROVIDED TO DOCUMENTS DATING FROM 1952 TO 1965. JOURNALS, BOOKS, AND REPORT MATERIALS ARE LISTED. SUBJECT AREAS INCLUDED ARE BEHAVIOR TESTS, ACHIEVEMENT BEHAVIOR, ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT, AND SOCIAL-CLASS BACKGROUND. A RELATED REPORT IS ED…

Average is Boring: How Similarity Kills a Meme's Success

PubMed Central

Coscia, Michele

2014-01-01

Every day we are exposed to different ideas, or memes, competing with each other for our attention. Previous research explained popularity and persistence heterogeneity of memes by assuming them in competition for limited attention resources, distributed in a heterogeneous social network. Little has been said about what characteristics make a specific meme more likely to be successful. We propose a similarity-based explanation: memes with higher similarity to other memes have a significant disadvantage in their potential popularity. We employ a meme similarity measure based on semantic text analysis and computer vision to prove that a meme is more likely to be successful and to thrive if its characteristics make it unique. Our results show that indeed successful memes are located in the periphery of the meme similarity space and that our similarity measure is a promising predictor of a meme success. PMID:25257730

Similarity constraints in testing of cooled engine parts

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Colladay, R. S.; Stepka, F. S.

1974-01-01

A study is made of the effect of testing cooled parts of current and advanced gas turbine engines at the reduced temperature and pressure conditions which maintain similarity with the engine environment. Some of the problems facing the experimentalist in evaluating heat transfer and aerodynamic performance when hardware is tested at conditions other than the actual engine environment are considered. Low temperature and pressure test environments can simulate the performance of actual size prototype engine hardware within the tolerance of experimental accuracy if appropriate similarity conditions are satisfied. Failure to adhere to these similarity constraints because of test facility limitations or other reasons, can result in a number of serious errors in projecting the performance of test hardware to engine conditions.

Achievement Goals and Discrete Achievement Emotions: A Theoretical Model and Prospective Test

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pekrun, Reinhard; Elliot, Andrew J.; Maier, Markus A.

2006-01-01

A theoretical model linking achievement goals to discrete achievement emotions is proposed. The model posits relations between the goals of the trichotomous achievement goal framework and 8 commonly experienced achievement emotions organized in a 2 (activity/outcome focus) x 2 (positive/negative valence) taxonomy. Two prospective studies tested…

The Phantom Collapse of Student Achievement in New York

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cronin, John; Jensen, Nate

2014-01-01

When New York state released the first results of the exams under the Common Core State Standards, many wrongly believed that the results showed dramatic declines in student achievement. A closer look at the results showed that student achievement may have increased. Another lesson from the exams is that states need to closely coordinate new data…

Toward a Social Psychology of Diagnosis: Similarity, Attraction, and Clinical Evaluation.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mazer, Donald B.

1979-01-01

Clinicians and undergraduates evaluated a client similar or dissimilar to themselves in political radicalism. Results document the presence of diagnostic bias, but only among student subjects is bias a function of similarity. For clinicians, the more radical client is seen as less disturbed. Similarity-attraction relationships were absent in both…

Similarity increases altruistic punishment in humans

PubMed Central

Mussweiler, Thomas; Ockenfels, Axel

2013-01-01

Humans are attracted to similar others. As a consequence, social networks are homogeneous in sociodemographic, intrapersonal, and other characteristics—a principle called homophily. Despite abundant evidence showing the importance of interpersonal similarity and homophily for human relationships, their behavioral correlates and cognitive foundations are poorly understood. Here, we show that perceived similarity substantially increases altruistic punishment, a key mechanism underlying human cooperation. We induced (dis)similarity perception by manipulating basic cognitive mechanisms in an economic cooperation game that included a punishment phase. We found that similarity-focused participants were more willing to punish others’ uncooperative behavior. This influence of similarity is not explained by group identity, which has the opposite effect on altruistic punishment. Our findings demonstrate that pure similarity promotes reciprocity in ways known to encourage cooperation. At the same time, the increased willingness to punish norm violations among similarity-focused participants provides a rationale for why similar people are more likely to build stable social relationships. Finally, our findings show that altruistic punishment is differentially involved in encouraging cooperation under pure similarity vs. in-group conditions. PMID:24218611

[Gender differences in the perception of professional achievement in family medicine, Spain].

PubMed

Saletti-Cuesta, Lorena; Delgado, Ana; Ortiz-Gómez, Teresa; López-Fernández, Luis Andrés

2013-01-01

The concept of achievement is important to study the professional development. In medicine there are gender inequalities in career. The purpose was to know and compare the professional achievement's perceptions and attributions of female and male primary care physicians in Andalusia. Qualitative study with 12 focus groups (October 2009 to November 2010). primary care physicians. intentionally segmented by age, sex and health care management. Were conducted by sex: two groups with young physicians, two groups with middle aged and two with health care management. TOTAL: 32 female physician and 33 male physicians. Qualitative content analysis with Nuddist Vivo. Female and male physicians agree to perceive internal achievements and to consider aspects inherent to the profession as external achievements. The most important difference is that female physician related professional achievement with affective bond and male physician with institutional merit. Internal attributions are more important for female physician who also highlight the importance of family, the organization of working time and work-family balance. Patients, continuing education, institutional resources and computer system are the most important attributions for male physician. There are similarities and differences between female and male physicians both in the understanding and the attributions of achievement. The differences are explained by the gender system. The perception of achievement of the female physicians questions the dominant professional culture and incorporates new values in defining achievement. The attributions reflect the unequal impact of family and organizational variables and suggest that the female physicians would be changing gender socialization.

Prediction of microRNAs Associated with Human Diseases Based on Weighted k Most Similar Neighbors

PubMed Central

Guo, Maozu; Guo, Yahong; Li, Jinbao; Ding, Jian; Liu, Yong; Dai, Qiguo; Li, Jin; Teng, Zhixia; Huang, Yufei

2013-01-01

Background The identification of human disease-related microRNAs (disease miRNAs) is important for further investigating their involvement in the pathogenesis of diseases. More experimentally validated miRNA-disease associations have been accumulated recently. On the basis of these associations, it is essential to predict disease miRNAs for various human diseases. It is useful in providing reliable disease miRNA candidates for subsequent experimental studies. Methodology/Principal Findings It is known that miRNAs with similar functions are often associated with similar diseases and vice versa. Therefore, the functional similarity of two miRNAs has been successfully estimated by measuring the semantic similarity of their associated diseases. To effectively predict disease miRNAs, we calculated the functional similarity by incorporating the information content of disease terms and phenotype similarity between diseases. Furthermore, the members of miRNA family or cluster are assigned higher weight since they are more probably associated with similar diseases. A new prediction method, HDMP, based on weighted k most similar neighbors is presented for predicting disease miRNAs. Experiments validated that HDMP achieved significantly higher prediction performance than existing methods. In addition, the case studies examining prostatic neoplasms, breast neoplasms, and lung neoplasms, showed that HDMP can uncover potential disease miRNA candidates. Conclusions The superior performance of HDMP can be attributed to the accurate measurement of miRNA functional similarity, the weight assignment based on miRNA family or cluster, and the effective prediction based on weighted k most similar neighbors. The online prediction and analysis tool is freely available at http://nclab.hit.edu.cn/hdmpred. PMID:23950912

A graph-based semantic similarity measure for the gene ontology.

PubMed

Alvarez, Marco A; Yan, Changhui

2011-12-01

Existing methods for calculating semantic similarities between pairs of Gene Ontology (GO) terms and gene products often rely on external databases like Gene Ontology Annotation (GOA) that annotate gene products using the GO terms. This dependency leads to some limitations in real applications. Here, we present a semantic similarity algorithm (SSA), that relies exclusively on the GO. When calculating the semantic similarity between a pair of input GO terms, SSA takes into account the shortest path between them, the depth of their nearest common ancestor, and a novel similarity score calculated between the definitions of the involved GO terms. In our work, we use SSA to calculate semantic similarities between pairs of proteins by combining pairwise semantic similarities between the GO terms that annotate the involved proteins. The reliability of SSA was evaluated by comparing the resulting semantic similarities between proteins with the functional similarities between proteins derived from expert annotations or sequence similarity. Comparisons with existing state-of-the-art methods showed that SSA is highly competitive with the other methods. SSA provides a reliable measure for semantics similarity independent of external databases of functional-annotation observations.

Which Achievement Gap?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Anderson, Sharon; Medrich, Elliott; Fowler, Donna

2007-01-01

From the halls of Congress to the local elementary school, conversations on education reform have tossed around the term "achievement gap" as though people all know precisely what that means. As it's commonly used, "achievement gap" refers to the differences in scores on state or national achievement tests between various…

African American Homeschool Parents' Motivations for Homeschooling and Their Black Children's Academic Achievement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ray, Brian

2015-01-01

This study explores the motivations of African American parents for choosing homeschooling for their children and the academic achievement of their Black homeschool students. Their reasons for homeschooling are similar to those of homeschool parents in general, although some use homeschooling to help their children understand Black culture and…

Deep Convolutional Neural Networks Outperform Feature-Based But Not Categorical Models in Explaining Object Similarity Judgments

PubMed Central

Jozwik, Kamila M.; Kriegeskorte, Nikolaus; Storrs, Katherine R.; Mur, Marieke

2017-01-01

Recent advances in Deep convolutional Neural Networks (DNNs) have enabled unprecedentedly accurate computational models of brain representations, and present an exciting opportunity to model diverse cognitive functions. State-of-the-art DNNs achieve human-level performance on object categorisation, but it is unclear how well they capture human behavior on complex cognitive tasks. Recent reports suggest that DNNs can explain significant variance in one such task, judging object similarity. Here, we extend these findings by replicating them for a rich set of object images, comparing performance across layers within two DNNs of different depths, and examining how the DNNs’ performance compares to that of non-computational “conceptual” models. Human observers performed similarity judgments for a set of 92 images of real-world objects. Representations of the same images were obtained in each of the layers of two DNNs of different depths (8-layer AlexNet and 16-layer VGG-16). To create conceptual models, other human observers generated visual-feature labels (e.g., “eye”) and category labels (e.g., “animal”) for the same image set. Feature labels were divided into parts, colors, textures and contours, while category labels were divided into subordinate, basic, and superordinate categories. We fitted models derived from the features, categories, and from each layer of each DNN to the similarity judgments, using representational similarity analysis to evaluate model performance. In both DNNs, similarity within the last layer explains most of the explainable variance in human similarity judgments. The last layer outperforms almost all feature-based models. Late and mid-level layers outperform some but not all feature-based models. Importantly, categorical models predict similarity judgments significantly better than any DNN layer. Our results provide further evidence for commonalities between DNNs and brain representations. Models derived from visual features

An evaluation of multi-probe locality sensitive hashing for computing similarities over web-scale query logs.

PubMed

Cormode, Graham; Dasgupta, Anirban; Goyal, Amit; Lee, Chi Hoon

2018-01-01

Many modern applications of AI such as web search, mobile browsing, image processing, and natural language processing rely on finding similar items from a large database of complex objects. Due to the very large scale of data involved (e.g., users' queries from commercial search engines), computing such near or nearest neighbors is a non-trivial task, as the computational cost grows significantly with the number of items. To address this challenge, we adopt Locality Sensitive Hashing (a.k.a, LSH) methods and evaluate four variants in a distributed computing environment (specifically, Hadoop). We identify several optimizations which improve performance, suitable for deployment in very large scale settings. The experimental results demonstrate our variants of LSH achieve the robust performance with better recall compared with "vanilla" LSH, even when using the same amount of space.

A similarity-based data warehousing environment for medical images.

PubMed

Teixeira, Jefferson William; Annibal, Luana Peixoto; Felipe, Joaquim Cezar; Ciferri, Ricardo Rodrigues; Ciferri, Cristina Dutra de Aguiar

2015-11-01

A core issue of the decision-making process in the medical field is to support the execution of analytical (OLAP) similarity queries over images in data warehousing environments. In this paper, we focus on this issue. We propose imageDWE, a non-conventional data warehousing environment that enables the storage of intrinsic features taken from medical images in a data warehouse and supports OLAP similarity queries over them. To comply with this goal, we introduce the concept of perceptual layer, which is an abstraction used to represent an image dataset according to a given feature descriptor in order to enable similarity search. Based on this concept, we propose the imageDW, an extended data warehouse with dimension tables specifically designed to support one or more perceptual layers. We also detail how to build an imageDW and how to load image data into it. Furthermore, we show how to process OLAP similarity queries composed of a conventional predicate and a similarity search predicate that encompasses the specification of one or more perceptual layers. Moreover, we introduce an index technique to improve the OLAP query processing over images. We carried out performance tests over a data warehouse environment that consolidated medical images from exams of several modalities. The results demonstrated the feasibility and efficiency of our proposed imageDWE to manage images and to process OLAP similarity queries. The results also demonstrated that the use of the proposed index technique guaranteed a great improvement in query processing. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Increasing Male Academic Achievement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jackson, Barbara Talbert

2008-01-01

The No Child Left Behind legislation has brought greater attention to the academic performance of American youth. Its emphasis on student achievement requires a closer analysis of assessment data by school districts. To address the findings, educators must seek strategies to remedy failing results. In a mid-Atlantic district of the Unites States,…

Similar or Different?: The Importance of Similarities and Differences for Support between Siblings

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Voorpostel, Marieke; van der Lippe, Tanja; Dykstra, Pearl A.; Flap, Henk

2007-01-01

Using a large-scale Dutch national sample (N = 7,126), the authors examine the importance of similarities and differences in the sibling dyad for the provision of support. Similarities are assumed to enhance attraction and empathy; differences are assumed to be related to different possibilities for exchange. For helping with housework, helping…

Finding Protein and Nucleotide Similarities with FASTA

PubMed Central

Pearson, William R.

2016-01-01

The FASTA programs provide a comprehensive set of rapid similarity searching tools ( fasta36, fastx36, tfastx36, fasty36, tfasty36), similar to those provided by the BLAST package, as well as programs for slower, optimal, local and global similarity searches ( ssearch36, ggsearch36) and for searching with short peptides and oligonucleotides ( fasts36, fastm36). The FASTA programs use an empirical strategy for estimating statistical significance that accommodates a range of similarity scoring matrices and gap penalties, improving alignment boundary accuracy and search sensitivity (Unit 3.5). The FASTA programs can produce “BLAST-like” alignment and tabular output, for ease of integration into existing analysis pipelines, and can search small, representative databases, and then report results for a larger set of sequences, using links from the smaller dataset. The FASTA programs work with a wide variety of database formats, including mySQL and postgreSQL databases (Unit 9.4). The programs also provide a strategy for integrating domain and active site annotations into alignments and highlighting the mutational state of functionally critical residues. These protocols describe how to use the FASTA programs to characterize protein and DNA sequences, using protein:protein, protein:DNA, and DNA:DNA comparisons. PMID:27010337

Finding Protein and Nucleotide Similarities with FASTA.

PubMed

Pearson, William R

2016-03-24

The FASTA programs provide a comprehensive set of rapid similarity searching tools (fasta36, fastx36, tfastx36, fasty36, tfasty36), similar to those provided by the BLAST package, as well as programs for slower, optimal, local, and global similarity searches (ssearch36, ggsearch36), and for searching with short peptides and oligonucleotides (fasts36, fastm36). The FASTA programs use an empirical strategy for estimating statistical significance that accommodates a range of similarity scoring matrices and gap penalties, improving alignment boundary accuracy and search sensitivity. The FASTA programs can produce "BLAST-like" alignment and tabular output, for ease of integration into existing analysis pipelines, and can search small, representative databases, and then report results for a larger set of sequences, using links from the smaller dataset. The FASTA programs work with a wide variety of database formats, including mySQL and postgreSQL databases. The programs also provide a strategy for integrating domain and active site annotations into alignments and highlighting the mutational state of functionally critical residues. These protocols describe how to use the FASTA programs to characterize protein and DNA sequences, using protein:protein, protein:DNA, and DNA:DNA comparisons. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

The impact of bereaved parents' perceived grief similarity on relationship satisfaction.

PubMed

Buyukcan-Tetik, Asuman; Finkenauer, Catrin; Schut, Henk; Stroebe, Margaret; Stroebe, Wolfgang

2017-06-01

The present research focused on bereaved parents' perceived grief similarity, and aimed to investigate the concurrent and longitudinal effects of the perceptions that the partner has less, equal, or more grief intensity than oneself on relationship satisfaction. Participants of our longitudinal study were 229 heterosexual bereaved Dutch couples who completed questionnaires 6, 13, and 20 months after the loss of their child. Average age of participants was 40.7 (SD = 9.5). Across 3 study waves, participants' perceived grief similarity and relationship satisfaction were assessed. To control for their effects, own grief level, child's gender, expectedness of loss, parent's age, parent's gender, and time were also included in the analyses. Consistent with the hypotheses, cross-sectional results revealed that bereaved parents who perceived dissimilar levels of grief (less or more grief) had lower relationship satisfaction than bereaved parents who perceived similar levels of grief. This effect remained significant controlling for the effects of possible confounding variables and actual similarity in grief between partners. We also found that perceived grief similarity at the first study wave was related to the highest level of relationship satisfaction at the second study wave. Moreover, results showed that perceived grief similarity was associated with a higher level in partner's relationship satisfaction. Results are discussed considering the comparison and similarity in grief across bereaved partners after child loss. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Class Size, Academic Achievement and Public Policy.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ziegler, Suzanne

1997-01-01

This report addresses some of the concerns surrounding smaller classes and looks at whether reduced class sizes result in higher achievement levels, and concludes that it in fact does increase student achievement, so long as classes do not exceed 17 students. But many critics question whether the high cost of reducing classes to 17 or fewer…

Subgroup Achievement and Gap Trends: New Hampshire

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Center on Education Policy, 2009

2009-01-01

This year the Center on Education Policy analyzed data on the achievement of different groups of students in two distinct ways. First, it looked at grade 4 test results to determine whether the performance of various groups improved at three achievement levels--basic and above, proficient and above, and advanced. Second, it looked at gaps between…

SCPRED: accurate prediction of protein structural class for sequences of twilight-zone similarity with predicting sequences.

PubMed

Kurgan, Lukasz; Cios, Krzysztof; Chen, Ke

2008-05-01

Protein structure prediction methods provide accurate results when a homologous protein is predicted, while poorer predictions are obtained in the absence of homologous templates. However, some protein chains that share twilight-zone pairwise identity can form similar folds and thus determining structural similarity without the sequence similarity would be desirable for the structure prediction. The folding type of a protein or its domain is defined as the structural class. Current structural class prediction methods that predict the four structural classes defined in SCOP provide up to 63% accuracy for the datasets in which sequence identity of any pair of sequences belongs to the twilight-zone. We propose SCPRED method that improves prediction accuracy for sequences that share twilight-zone pairwise similarity with sequences used for the prediction. SCPRED uses a support vector machine classifier that takes several custom-designed features as its input to predict the structural classes. Based on extensive design that considers over 2300 index-, composition- and physicochemical properties-based features along with features based on the predicted secondary structure and content, the classifier's input includes 8 features based on information extracted from the secondary structure predicted with PSI-PRED and one feature computed from the sequence. Tests performed with datasets of 1673 protein chains, in which any pair of sequences shares twilight-zone similarity, show that SCPRED obtains 80.3% accuracy when predicting the four SCOP-defined structural classes, which is superior when compared with over a dozen recent competing methods that are based on support vector machine, logistic regression, and ensemble of classifiers predictors. The SCPRED can accurately find similar structures for sequences that share low identity with sequence used for the prediction. The high predictive accuracy achieved by SCPRED is attributed to the design of the features, which are

Noise suppression for dual-energy CT via penalized weighted least-square optimization with similarity-based regularization

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Harms, Joseph; Wang, Tonghe; Petrongolo, Michael

in noise standard deviation (STD). Similar performance on spatial resolution is observed on an anthropomorphic head phantom. In addition, results of PWLS-SBR show substantially improved image quality due to preservation of image NPS. On the Catphan{sup ©}600 phantom, NPS using PWLS-SBR has a correlation of 93% with that via direct matrix inversion, while the correlation drops to −52% for PWLS-EPR. Electron density measurement studies indicate high accuracy of PWLS-SBR. On seven different materials, the measured electron densities calculated from the decomposed material images using PWLS-SBR have a root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 1.20%, while the results of PWLS-EPR have a RMSE of 2.21%. In the study on a head-and-neck patient, PWLS-SBR is shown to reduce noise STD by a factor of 3 on material images with image qualities comparable to CT images, whereas fine structures are lost in the PWLS-EPR result. Additionally, PWLS-SBR better preserves low contrast on the tissue image. Conclusions: The authors propose improvements to the regularization term of an optimization framework which performs iterative image-domain decomposition for DECT with noise suppression. The regularization term avoids calculation of image gradient and is based on pixel similarity. The proposed method not only achieves a high decomposition accuracy, but also improves over the previous algorithm on NPS as well as spatial resolution.« less

Noise suppression for dual-energy CT via penalized weighted least-square optimization with similarity-based regularization

PubMed Central

Harms, Joseph; Wang, Tonghe; Petrongolo, Michael; Niu, Tianye; Zhu, Lei

2016-01-01

standard deviation (STD). Similar performance on spatial resolution is observed on an anthropomorphic head phantom. In addition, results of PWLS-SBR show substantially improved image quality due to preservation of image NPS. On the Catphan©600 phantom, NPS using PWLS-SBR has a correlation of 93% with that via direct matrix inversion, while the correlation drops to −52% for PWLS-EPR. Electron density measurement studies indicate high accuracy of PWLS-SBR. On seven different materials, the measured electron densities calculated from the decomposed material images using PWLS-SBR have a root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 1.20%, while the results of PWLS-EPR have a RMSE of 2.21%. In the study on a head-and-neck patient, PWLS-SBR is shown to reduce noise STD by a factor of 3 on material images with image qualities comparable to CT images, whereas fine structures are lost in the PWLS-EPR result. Additionally, PWLS-SBR better preserves low contrast on the tissue image. Conclusions: The authors propose improvements to the regularization term of an optimization framework which performs iterative image-domain decomposition for DECT with noise suppression. The regularization term avoids calculation of image gradient and is based on pixel similarity. The proposed method not only achieves a high decomposition accuracy, but also improves over the previous algorithm on NPS as well as spatial resolution. PMID:27147376

Similar herpes zoster incidence across Europe: results from a systematic literature review.

PubMed

Pinchinat, Sybil; Cebrián-Cuenca, Ana M; Bricout, Hélène; Johnson, Robert W

2013-04-10

Herpes zoster (HZ) is caused by reactivation of the varicella-zoster virus (VZV) and mainly affects individuals aged ≥50 years. The forthcoming European launch of a vaccine against HZ (Zostavax®) prompts the need for a better understanding of the epidemiology of HZ in Europe. Therefore the aim of this systematic review was to summarize the available data on HZ incidence in Europe and to describe age-specific incidence. The Medline database of the National Library of Medicine was used to conduct a comprehensive literature search of population-based studies of HZ incidence published between 1960 and 2010 carried out in the 27 member countries of the European Union, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland. The identified articles were reviewed and scored according to a reading grid including various quality criteria, and HZ incidence data were extracted and presented by country. The search identified 21 studies, and revealed a similar annual HZ incidence throughout Europe, varying by country from 2.0 to 4.6/1 000 person-years with no clearly observed geographic trend. Despite the fact that age groups differed from one study to another, age-specific HZ incidence rates seemed to hold steady during the review period, at around 1/1 000 children <10 years, around 2/1 000 adults aged <40 years, and around 1-4/1 000 adults aged 40-50 years. They then increased rapidly after age 50 years to around 7-8/1 000, up to 10/1 000 after 80 years of age. Our review confirms that in Europe HZ incidence increases with age, and quite drastically after 50 years of age. In all of the 21 studies included in the present review, incidence rates were higher among women than men, and this difference increased with age. This review also highlights the need to identify standardized surveillance methods to improve the comparability of data within European Union Member States and to monitor the impact of VZV immunization on the epidemiology of HZ. Available data in Europe have shortcomings which

Childhood vaccination: achievements and challenges.

PubMed

Ndumbe, P

1996-09-01

As the goal of eradicating smallpox was being met, the World Health Organization created its Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) in 1974 and reached its initial goal of achieving full vaccination of 80% of the world's children by 1990. This effort was aided by the creation of "cold chain" delivery systems and resulted in the annual saving of 3.5 million children in less-developed countries. Current EPI vaccination goals include 1) eradication of poliomyelitis by the year 2000, 2) elimination of neonatal tetanus by the year 1995, 3) control of measles and hepatitis B, and 4) immunization of 90% of the world's children 1 year or younger by the year 2000. Goals of the Children's Vaccine Initiative (formed in 1991) include 1) provision of an adequate supply of affordable, safe, and effective vaccines; 2) production of improved and new vaccines; and 3) simplification of the logistics of vaccine delivery. Future challenges are to sustain high vaccination coverage, reach the unreached, achieve proper storage of vaccines and reduce waste, integrate new vaccines into national programs, and achieve vaccine self-sufficiency. The fact that these challenges will be difficult to achieve is illustrated by the situation in Africa where the high immunization levels achieved in 1990 have dropped dramatically. Those who must act to implement immunization programs are health personnel, families, governments, and development partners. In order to achieve equity in health, every child must be reached, governments must be made accountable for programs, health workers must convince families of the importance of vaccination, delivery systems must be in place to take advantage of the new vaccines being delivered, and a multisectoral approach must be taken to assure sustainability.

Results of a workplace health campaign: what can be achieved?

PubMed

Leyk, Dieter; Rohde, Ulrich; Hartmann, Nadine D; Preuß, Philipp A; Sievert, Alexander; Witzki, Alexander

2014-05-02

Effective health promotion in the workplace is now essential because of the rising health-related costs for businesses, the increasing pressure arising from international competition, prolonged working lives, and the aging of the work force. The basic problem of prevention campaigns is that the target groups are too rarely reached and sustainable benefits too rarely achieved. In 2011, we carried out a broad-based health and fitness campaign to assess how many personnel could be motivated to participate in a model study under nearly ideal conditions. 1010 personnel were given the opportunity to participate in various kinds of sports, undergo sports-medicine examinations, attend monthly expert lectures, and benefit from nutritional offerings and Intranet information during work hours. Pseudonymized questionnaires were used to classify the participants according to their exercise behavior as non-active, not very active, and very active. The participants' subjective responses (regarding, e.g., health, exercise, nutrition, and the factors that motivated them to participate in sports or discouraged them from doing so) were recorded, as were their objective data (measures of body size and strength). The duration of the study was one year. 490 of the 1010 personnel (48.5%, among whom 27.2% were nonactive, 44.1% not very active, and 28.7% very active) participated in the initial questionnaire and testing. By the end of the study, this figure had dropped to 17.8%; diminished participation affected all three groups to a comparable extent. A comparison of dropouts and non-dropouts revealed that older age was a stable predictor for drop-out (bivariate odds ratio [OR] 1.028, p = 0.006; multivariate OR 1.049, p = 0.009). The study participants reported beneficial effects on their health and health awareness, performance ability, psychological balance, stress perception, exercise and dietary behavior. Even under optimal conditions and with high use of staff resources, this model

How to Achieve Better Results Using Pass-Based Virtual Screening: Case Study for Kinase Inhibitors

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pogodin, Pavel V.; Lagunin, Alexey A.; Rudik, Anastasia V.; Filimonov, Dmitry A.; Druzhilovskiy, Dmitry S.; Nicklaus, Mark C.; Poroikov, Vladimir V.

2018-04-01

Discovery of new pharmaceutical substances is currently boosted by the possibility of utilization of the Synthetically Accessible Virtual Inventory (SAVI) library, which includes about 283 million molecules, each annotated with a proposed synthetic one-step route from commercially available starting materials. The SAVI database is well-suited for ligand-based methods of virtual screening to select molecules for experimental testing. In this study, we compare the performance of three approaches for the analysis of structure-activity relationships that differ in their criteria for selecting of “active” and “inactive” compounds included in the training sets. PASS (Prediction of Activity Spectra for Substances), which is based on a modified Naïve Bayes algorithm, was applied since it had been shown to be robust and to provide good predictions of many biological activities based on just the structural formula of a compound even if the information in the training set is incomplete. We used different subsets of kinase inhibitors for this case study because many data are currently available on this important class of drug-like molecules. Based on the subsets of kinase inhibitors extracted from the ChEMBL 20 database we performed the PASS training, and then applied the model to ChEMBL 23 compounds not yet present in ChEMBL 20 to identify novel kinase inhibitors. As one may expect, the best prediction accuracy was obtained if only the experimentally confirmed active and inactive compounds for distinct kinases in the training procedure were used. However, for some kinases, reasonable results were obtained even if we used merged training sets, in which we designated as inactives the compounds not tested against the particular kinase. Thus, depending on the availability of data for a particular biological activity, one may choose the first or the second approach for creating ligand-based computational tools to achieve the best possible results in virtual screening.

Factors Predicting Turkish and Korean Students' Science and Mathematics Achievement in TIMSS 2011

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Topçu, Mustafa Sami; Erbilgin, Evrim; Arikan, Serkan

2016-01-01

This study makes an important contribution to an expanding body of international comparative studies by exploring factors predicting differences in science and mathematics achievement by students in Turkey and the Republic of Korea on the 2011 TIMSS assessment. While these countries are similar with regards to population size, cultural beliefs…

Why are hyperactivity and academic achievement related?

PubMed

Saudino, Kimberly J; Plomin, Robert

2007-01-01

Although a negative association between hyperactivity and academic achievement is well documented, little is known about the genetic and/or environmental mechanisms responsible for the association. The present study explored links between parent and teacher ratings of hyperactive behavior problems and teacher-assessed achievement in a sample of 1,876 twin pairs (mean age 7.04 years). The results did not differ across rater, nor were there significant differences between males or females or for twins in the same or different classrooms. Hyperactivity was significantly correlated with achievement. Multivariate model-fitting analyses revealed significant genetic and nonshared environmental covariance between the two phenotypes. In addition, bivariate heritabilities were substantial, indicating that the phenotypic correlations between hyperactivity and achievement were largely mediated by genetic influences.

Attitudes and achievement of Bruneian science students

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dhindsa, Harkirat S.; Chung, Gilbert

2003-08-01

The aim of this study was to evaluate attitudes towards and achievement in science of Form 3 students studying in single-sex and coeducational schools in Brunei. The results demonstrated significant differences in attitudes towards and achievement in science of male and female students in single-sex schools and students in coeducational schools. These differences were at moderate level. In single-sex schools, the girls achieved moderately better in science than the boys despite their attitudes were only marginally better than the boys. However, there were no gender differences in attitudes towards and achievement in science of students in coeducational schools. The attitudes towards and achievement in science of girls in single-sex schools were moderately better than those of girls in coeducational schools. Whereas the attitudes towards and achievement in science of boys in single-sex schools were only marginally better than the boys in coeducational schools. However, further research to investigate (a) if these differences are repeated at other levels as well as in other subjects, and (b) the extent to which school type contributed towards these differences is recommended.

Longitudinal Predictors of Achievement: Achievement History, Family Environment, and Mental Health.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Petersen, Anne C.; Kellam, Sheppard G.

In this seven year longitudinal study predictors of achievement for first graders were measured against actual school achievement of the same students in the seventh and eight grades. Three sets of variables were obtained in the first grade. Achievement history, family environment, and mental health were used as measures. Mental health was…

Can Within-Race Achievement Comparisons Help Narrow Between-Race Achievement Gaps?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Duke, Daniel L.

2017-01-01

Reports on the low achievement of African American students tend to focus on Black-White achievement gaps. This study draws from official reports that also consider within-race achievement differences. An argument is presented that within-race comparisons are likely to reveal important causal factors that may go unnoticed when between-race…

Racial and Social Class Differences in How Parents Respond to Inadequate Achievement: Consequences for Children’s Future Achievement

PubMed Central

Robinson, Keith; Harris, Angel L.

2013-01-01

Objective Despite numerous studies on parental involvement in children’s academic schooling, there is a dearth of knowledge on how parents respond specifically to inadequate academic performance. This study examines whether 1) racial differences exist in parenting philosophy for addressing inadequate achievement, 2) social class has implications for parenting philosophy, and 3) parents’ philosophies are consequential for children’s academic achievement. Methods Using data from the Child Development Supplement (N=1041) to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we sort parents into two categories—those whose parenting repertoires for addressing poor achievement include punitive responses and those whose repertoires do not. We then determine whether racial differences exist between these categories and how various responses within the aforementioned categories are related to students’ academic achievement. Results The findings show that white and black parents have markedly different philosophies on how to respond to inadequate performance, and these differences appear to impact children’s achievement in dramatically different ways. Conclusion Educators and policy makers should pay particular attention to how parents respond to inadequate achievement as imploring parents of inadequately performing students to be more involved without providing them with some guidance might exacerbate the problem. PMID:24563554

Similarity of Cortical Activity Patterns Predicts generalization Behavior

PubMed Central

Engineer, Crystal T.; Perez, Claudia A.; Carraway, Ryan S.; Chang, Kevin Q.; Roland, Jarod L.; Sloan, Andrew M.; Kilgard, Michael P.

2013-01-01

Humans and animals readily generalize previously learned knowledge to new situations. Determining similarity is critical for assigning category membership to a novel stimulus. We tested the hypothesis that category membership is initially encoded by the similarity of the activity pattern evoked by a novel stimulus to the patterns from known categories. We provide behavioral and neurophysiological evidence that activity patterns in primary auditory cortex contain sufficient information to explain behavioral categorization of novel speech sounds by rats. Our results suggest that category membership might be encoded by the similarity of the activity pattern evoked by a novel speech sound to the patterns evoked by known sounds. Categorization based on featureless pattern matching may represent a general neural mechanism for ensuring accurate generalization across sensory and cognitive systems. PMID:24147140

Affectionless control by the same-sex parents increases dysfunctional attitudes about achievement.

PubMed

Otani, Koichi; Suzuki, Akihito; Matsumoto, Yoshihiko; Sadahiro, Ryoichi; Enokido, Masanori

2014-08-01

The affectionless control parenting has been associated with depression in recipients. The aim of this study was to examine the effect of this parenting style on dysfunctional attitudes predisposing to depression. The subjects were 666 Japanese volunteers. Perceived parental rearing was evaluated by the Parental Bonding Instrument, which has the care and protection subscales. Parental rearing was classified into four types, i.e., optimal parenting (high care/low protection), affectionate constraint (high care/high protection), neglectful parenting (low care/low protection), and affectionless control (low care/high protection). Dysfunctional attitudes were evaluated by the 24-item Dysfunctional Attitude Scale, which has the achievement, dependency and self-control subscales. Males with paternal affectionless control had higher achievement scores than those with paternal optimal parenting (P=.016). Similarly, females with maternal affectionless control had higher achievement scores than those with maternal optimal parenting (P=.016). The present study suggests that affectionless control by the same-sex parents increases dysfunctional attitudes about achievement. Copyright © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Does the COPD assessment test (CAT(TM)) questionnaire produce similar results when self- or interviewer administered?

PubMed

Agusti, A; Soler-Cataluña, J J; Molina, J; Morejon, E; Garcia-Losa, M; Roset, M; Badia, X

2015-10-01

The COPD assessment test (CAT) is a questionnaire that assesses the impact of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) on health status, but some patients have difficulties filling it up by themselves. We examined whether the mode of administration of the Spanish version of CAT (self vs. interviewer) influences its scores and/or psychometric properties. Observational, prospective study in 49 Spanish centers that includes clinically stable COPD patients (n = 153) and patients hospitalized because of an exacerbation (ECOPD; n = 224). The CAT was self-administered (CAT-SA) or administered by an interviewer (CAT-IA) based on the investigator judgment of the patient's capacity. To assess convergent validity, the Saint George's Respiratory Disease Questionnaire (SGRQ) and the London Chest Activity of Daily Living (LCADL) instrument were also administered. Psychometric properties were compared across modes of administration. A total of 118 patients (31 %) completed the CAT-SA and 259 (69 %) CAT-IA. Multiple regression analysis showed that mode of administration did not affect CAT scores. The CAT showed excellent psychometric properties in both modes of administration. Internal consistency coefficients (Cronbach's alpha) were high (0.86 for CAT-SA and 0.85 for CAT-IA) as was test-retest reliability (intraclass correlation coefficients of 0.83 for CAT-SA and CAT-IA). Correlations with SGRQ and LCADL were moderate to strong both in CAT-SA and CAT-IA, indicating good convergent validity. Similar results were observed when testing longitudinal validity. The mode of administration does not influence CAT scores or its psychometric properties. Hence, both modes of administration can be used in clinical practice depending on the physician judgment of patient's capacity.

Fuzzy measures on the Gene Ontology for gene product similarity.

PubMed

Popescu, Mihail; Keller, James M; Mitchell, Joyce A

2006-01-01

One of the most important objects in bioinformatics is a gene product (protein or RNA). For many gene products, functional information is summarized in a set of Gene Ontology (GO) annotations. For these genes, it is reasonable to include similarity measures based on the terms found in the GO or other taxonomy. In this paper, we introduce several novel measures for computing the similarity of two gene products annotated with GO terms. The fuzzy measure similarity (FMS) has the advantage that it takes into consideration the context of both complete sets of annotation terms when computing the similarity between two gene products. When the two gene products are not annotated by common taxonomy terms, we propose a method that avoids a zero similarity result. To account for the variations in the annotation reliability, we propose a similarity measure based on the Choquet integral. These similarity measures provide extra tools for the biologist in search of functional information for gene products. The initial testing on a group of 194 sequences representing three proteins families shows a higher correlation of the FMS and Choquet similarities to the BLAST sequence similarities than the traditional similarity measures such as pairwise average or pairwise maximum.

Lemurs and macaques show similar numerical sensitivity.

PubMed

Jones, Sarah M; Pearson, John; DeWind, Nicholas K; Paulsen, David; Tenekedjieva, Ana-Maria; Brannon, Elizabeth M

2014-05-01

We investigated the precision of the approximate number system (ANS) in three lemur species (Lemur catta, Eulemur mongoz, and Eulemur macaco flavifrons), one Old World monkey species (Macaca mulatta) and humans (Homo sapiens). In Experiment 1, four individuals of each nonhuman primate species were trained to select the numerically larger of two visual arrays on a touchscreen. We estimated numerical acuity by modeling Weber fractions (w) and found quantitatively equivalent performance among all four nonhuman primate species. In Experiment 2, we tested adult humans in a similar procedure, and they outperformed the four nonhuman species but showed qualitatively similar performance. These results indicate that the ANS is conserved over the primate order.

Mathematics Achievement in High- and Low-Achieving Secondary Schools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mohammadpour, Ebrahim; Shekarchizadeh, Ahmadreza

2015-01-01

This paper identifies the amount of variance in mathematics achievement in high- and low-achieving schools that can be explained by school-level factors, while controlling for student-level factors. The data were obtained from 2679 Iranian eighth graders who participated in the 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. Of the…

A similarity based agglomerative clustering algorithm in networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Zhiyuan; Wang, Xiujuan; Ma, Yinghong

2018-04-01

The detection of clusters is benefit for understanding the organizations and functions of networks. Clusters, or communities, are usually groups of nodes densely interconnected but sparsely linked with any other clusters. To identify communities, an efficient and effective community agglomerative algorithm based on node similarity is proposed. The proposed method initially calculates similarities between each pair of nodes, and form pre-partitions according to the principle that each node is in the same community as its most similar neighbor. After that, check each partition whether it satisfies community criterion. For the pre-partitions who do not satisfy, incorporate them with others that having the biggest attraction until there are no changes. To measure the attraction ability of a partition, we propose an attraction index that based on the linked node's importance in networks. Therefore, our proposed method can better exploit the nodes' properties and network's structure. To test the performance of our algorithm, both synthetic and empirical networks ranging in different scales are tested. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can obtain superior clustering results compared with six other widely used community detection algorithms.

Self-Concept Predicts Academic Achievement Across Levels of the Achievement Distribution: Domain Specificity for Math and Reading.

PubMed

Susperreguy, Maria Ines; Davis-Kean, Pamela E; Duckworth, Kathryn; Chen, Meichu

2017-09-18

This study examines whether self-concept of ability in math and reading predicts later math and reading attainment across different levels of achievement. Data from three large-scale longitudinal data sets, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development-Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, and Panel Study of Income Dynamics-Child Development Supplement, were used to answer this question by employing quantile regression analyses. After controlling for demographic variables, child characteristics, and early ability, the findings indicate that self-concept of ability in math and reading predicts later achievement in each respective domain across all quantile levels of achievement. These results were replicated across the three data sets representing different populations and provide robust evidence for the role of self-concept of ability in understanding achievement from early childhood to adolescence across the spectrum of performance (low to high). © 2017 The Authors. Child Development © 2017 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.

Self-similar expansion of adiabatic electronegative dusty plasma

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Shahmansouri, M.; Bemooni, A.; Mamun, A. A.

2017-12-01

The self-similar expansion of an adiabatic electronegative dusty plasma (consisting of inertialess adiabatic electrons, inertialess adiabatic ions and inertial adiabatic negatively charged dust fluids) is theoretically investigated by employing the self-similar approach. It is found that the effects of the plasma adiabaticity (represented by the adiabatic index ) and dusty plasma parameters (determined by dust temperature and initial dust population) significantly modify the nature of the plasma expansion. The implications of our results are expected to play an important role in understanding the physics of the expansion of space and laboratory electronegative dusty plasmas.

Effect of between-category similarity on basic-level superiority in pigeons

PubMed Central

Lazareva, Olga F.; Soto, Fabián A.; Wasserman, Edward A.

2010-01-01

Children categorize stimuli at the basic level faster than at the superordinate level. We hypothesized that between-category similarity may affect this basic-level superiority effect. Dissimilar categories may be easy to distinguish at the basic level but be difficult to group at the superordinate level, whereas similar categories may be easy to group at the superordinate level but be difficult to distinguish at the basic level. Consequently, similar basic-level categories may produce a superordinate-before-basic learning trend, whereas dissimilar basic-level categories may result in a basic-before-superordinate learning trend. We tested this hypothesis in pigeons by constructing superordinate-level categories out of basic-level categories with known similarity. In Experiment 1, we experimentally evaluated the between-category similarity of four basic-level photographic categories using multiple fixed interval-extinction training (Astley & Wasserman, 1992). We used the resultant similarity matrices in Experiment 2 to construct two superordinate-level categories from basic-level categories with high between-category similarity (cars and persons; chairs and flowers). We then trained pigeons to concurrently classify those photographs into either the proper basic-level category or the proper superordinate-level category. Under these conditions, the pigeons learned the superordinate-level discrimination faster than the basic-level discrimination, confirming our hypothesis that basic-level superiority is affected by between-category similarity. PMID:20600696

Classification of auxin plant hormones by interaction property similarity indices

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tomić, Sanja; Gabdoulline, Razif R.; Kojić-Prodić, Biserka; Wade, Rebecca C.

1998-01-01

Although auxins were the first type of plant hormone to be identified, little is known about the molecular mechanism of this important class of plant hormones. We present a classification of a set of about 50 compounds with measured auxin activities, according to their interaction properties. Four classes of compounds were defined: strongly active, weakly active with weak antiauxin behaviour, inactive and inhibitory. All compounds were modeled in two low-energy conformations, `P' and `T', so as to obtain the best match to the `planar' and `tilted' conformations, respectively, of indole 3-acetic acid. Each set of conformers was superimposed separately using several different alignment schemes. Molecular interaction energy fields were computed for each molecule with five different chemical probes and then compared by computing similarity indices. Similarity analysis showed that the classes are on average distinguishable, with better differentiation achieved for the T conformers than the P conformers. This indicates that the T conformation might be the active one. Further, a screening was developed which could distinguish compounds with auxin activity from inactive compounds and most antiauxins using the T conformers. The classifications rationalize ambiguities in activity data found in the literature and should be of value in predicting the activities of new plant growth substances and herbicides.

A similarity measure method combining location feature for mammogram retrieval.

PubMed

Wang, Zhiqiong; Xin, Junchang; Huang, Yukun; Li, Chen; Xu, Ling; Li, Yang; Zhang, Hao; Gu, Huizi; Qian, Wei

2018-05-28

Breast cancer, the most common malignancy among women, has a high mortality rate in clinical practice. Early detection, diagnosis and treatment can reduce the mortalities of breast cancer greatly. The method of mammogram retrieval can help doctors to find the early breast lesions effectively and determine a reasonable feature set for image similarity measure. This will improve the accuracy effectively for mammogram retrieval. This paper proposes a similarity measure method combining location feature for mammogram retrieval. Firstly, the images are pre-processed, the regions of interest are detected and the lesions are segmented in order to get the center point and radius of the lesions. Then, the method, namely Coherent Point Drift, is used for image registration with the pre-defined standard image. The center point and radius of the lesions after registration are obtained and the standard location feature of the image is constructed. This standard location feature can help figure out the location similarity between the image pair from the query image to each dataset image in the database. Next, the content feature of the image is extracted, including the Histogram of Oriented Gradients, the Edge Direction Histogram, the Local Binary Pattern and the Gray Level Histogram, and the image pair content similarity can be calculated using the Earth Mover's Distance. Finally, the location similarity and content similarity are fused to form the image fusion similarity, and the specified number of the most similar images can be returned according to it. In the experiment, 440 mammograms, which are from Chinese women in Northeast China, are used as the database. When fusing 40% lesion location feature similarity and 60% content feature similarity, the results have obvious advantages. At this time, precision is 0.83, recall is 0.76, comprehensive indicator is 0.79, satisfaction is 96.0%, mean is 4.2 and variance is 17.7. The results show that the precision and recall of this

Achievement Motivation: A Rational Approach to Psychological Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Smith, Robert L.; Troth, William A.

1975-01-01

Investigated the achievement motivation training component of psychological education. The subjects were 54 late-adolescent pupils. The experimental training program had as its objectives an increase in academic achievement motivation, internal feelings of control, and school performance, and a reduction of test anxiety. Results indicated…

Retrieval evaluation and distance learning from perceived similarity between endomicroscopy videos.

PubMed

André, Barbara; Vercauteren, Tom; Buchner, Anna M; Wallace, Michael B; Ayache, Nicholas

2011-01-01

Evaluating content-based retrieval (CBR) is challenging because it requires an adequate ground-truth. When the available groundtruth is limited to textual metadata such as pathological classes, retrieval results can only be evaluated indirectly, for example in terms of classification performance. In this study we first present a tool to generate perceived similarity ground-truth that enables direct evaluation of endomicroscopic video retrieval. This tool uses a four-points Likert scale and collects subjective pairwise similarities perceived by multiple expert observers. We then evaluate against the generated ground-truth a previously developed dense bag-of-visual-words method for endomicroscopic video retrieval. Confirming the results of previous indirect evaluation based on classification, our direct evaluation shows that this method significantly outperforms several other state-of-the-art CBR methods. In a second step, we propose to improve the CBR method by learning an adjusted similarity metric from the perceived similarity ground-truth. By minimizing a margin-based cost function that differentiates similar and dissimilar video pairs, we learn a weight vector applied to the visual word signatures of videos. Using cross-validation, we demonstrate that the learned similarity distance is significantly better correlated with the perceived similarity than the original visual-word-based distance.

Elementary School Achievement Profiles, Portland Public Schools. A School-by-School Report of Basic Skills Test Results and School/Student/Staff Data. School Year 1985-86.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Portland Public Schools, OR. Dept. of Research, Evaluation, and Testing.

This report contains Portland Achievement Levels Tests results for the 63 elementary schools, 16 middle schools, and 1 special program school in the Portland (Oregon) School District for the 1985-86 school year. Results in reading, language usage, and mathematics are reported for children in grades 3 to 8. Each school data page presents the…

Musical structure analysis using similarity matrix and dynamic programming

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Shiu, Yu; Jeong, Hong; Kuo, C.-C. Jay

2005-10-01

Automatic music segmentation and structure analysis from audio waveforms based on a three-level hierarchy is examined in this research, where the three-level hierarchy includes notes, measures and parts. The pitch class profile (PCP) feature is first extracted at the note level. Then, a similarity matrix is constructed at the measure level, where a dynamic time warping (DTW) technique is used to enhance the similarity computation by taking the temporal distortion of similar audio segments into account. By processing the similarity matrix, we can obtain a coarse-grain music segmentation result. Finally, dynamic programming is applied to the coarse-grain segments so that a song can be decomposed into several major parts such as intro, verse, chorus, bridge and outro. The performance of the proposed music structure analysis system is demonstrated for pop and rock music.

The Classroom Ratio of High- and Low-aptitude Students and Its Effect on Achievement.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Beckerman, Terrill M.; Good, Thomas L.

1981-01-01

This study examined the effect of the ratio of high-aptitude to low-aptitude students in a classroom upon mathematics achievement. The hypothesis tested was that both high- and low-aptitude students in "more favorable" classrooms would outperform similar students in "less favorable" classrooms. (Author/GK)

Teachers' perceptions of students' mathematics proficiency may exacerbate early gender gaps in achievement.

PubMed

Robinson-Cimpian, Joseph P; Lubienski, Sarah Theule; Ganley, Colleen M; Copur-Gencturk, Yasemin

2014-04-01

A recent wave of research suggests that teachers overrate the performance of girls relative to boys and hold more positive attitudes toward girls' mathematics abilities. However, these prior estimates of teachers' supposed female bias are potentially misleading because these estimates (and teachers themselves) confound achievement with teachers' perceptions of behavior and effort. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999 (ECLS-K), Study 1 demonstrates that teachers actually rate boys' mathematics proficiency higher than that of girls when conditioning on both teachers' ratings of behavior and approaches to learning as well as past and current test scores. In other words, on average girls are only perceived to be as mathematically competent as similarly achieving boys when the girls are also seen as working harder, behaving better, and being more eager to learn. Study 2 uses mediation analysis with an instrumental-variables approach, as well as a matching strategy, to explore the extent to which this conditional underrating of girls may explain the widening gender gap in mathematics in early elementary school. We find robust evidence suggesting that underrating girls' mathematics proficiency accounts for a substantial portion of the development of the mathematics achievement gap between similarly performing and behaving boys and girls in the early grades. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

Fusing literature and full network data improves disease similarity computation.

PubMed

Li, Ping; Nie, Yaling; Yu, Jingkai

2016-08-30

Identifying relatedness among diseases could help deepen understanding for the underlying pathogenic mechanisms of diseases, and facilitate drug repositioning projects. A number of methods for computing disease similarity had been developed; however, none of them were designed to utilize information of the entire protein interaction network, using instead only those interactions involving disease causing genes. Most of previously published methods required gene-disease association data, unfortunately, many diseases still have very few or no associated genes, which impeded broad adoption of those methods. In this study, we propose a new method (MedNetSim) for computing disease similarity by integrating medical literature and protein interaction network. MedNetSim consists of a network-based method (NetSim), which employs the entire protein interaction network, and a MEDLINE-based method (MedSim), which computes disease similarity by mining the biomedical literature. Among function-based methods, NetSim achieved the best performance. Its average AUC (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve) reached 95.2 %. MedSim, whose performance was even comparable to some function-based methods, acquired the highest average AUC in all semantic-based methods. Integration of MedSim and NetSim (MedNetSim) further improved the average AUC to 96.4 %. We further studied the effectiveness of different data sources. It was found that quality of protein interaction data was more important than its volume. On the contrary, higher volume of gene-disease association data was more beneficial, even with a lower reliability. Utilizing higher volume of disease-related gene data further improved the average AUC of MedNetSim and NetSim to 97.5 % and 96.7 %, respectively. Integrating biomedical literature and protein interaction network can be an effective way to compute disease similarity. Lacking sufficient disease-related gene data, literature-based methods such as MedSim can

Concept Similarity in Publications Precedes Cross-disciplinary Collaboration

PubMed Central

Post, Andrew R.; Harrison, James H.

2008-01-01

Innovative science frequently occurs as a result of cross-disciplinary collaboration, the importance of which is reflected by recent NIH funding initiatives that promote communication and collaboration. If shared research interests between collaborators are important for the formation of collaborations, methods for identifying these shared interests across scientific domains could potentially reveal new and useful collaboration opportunities. MEDLINE represents a comprehensive database of collaborations and research interests, as reflected by article co-authors and concept content. We analyzed six years of citations using information retrieval-based methods to compute articles’ conceptual similarity, and found that articles by basic and clinical scientists who later collaborated had significantly higher average similarity than articles by similar scientists who did not collaborate. Refinement of these methods and characterization of found conceptual overlaps could allow automated discovery of collaboration opportunities that are currently missed. PMID:18999254

Concept similarity in publications precedes cross-disciplinary collaboration.

PubMed

Post, Andrew R; Harrison, James H

2008-11-06

Innovative science frequently occurs as a result of cross-disciplinary collaboration, the importance of which is reflected by recent NIH funding initiatives that promote communication and collaboration. If shared research interests between collaborators are important for the formation of collaborations,methods for identifying these shared interests across scientific domains could potentially reveal new and useful collaboration opportunities. MEDLINE represents a comprehensive database of collaborations and research interests, as reflected by article co-authors and concept content. We analyzed six years of citations using information retrieval based methods to compute articles conceptual similarity, and found that articles by basic and clinical scientists who later collaborated had significantly higher average similarity than articles by similar scientists who did not collaborate.Refinement of these methods and characterization of found conceptual overlaps could allow automated discovery of collaboration opportunities that are currently missed.

Enriching the hierarchical model of achievement motivation: autonomous and controlling reasons underlying achievement goals.

PubMed

Michou, Aikaterini; Vansteenkiste, Maarten; Mouratidis, Athanasios; Lens, Willy

2014-12-01

The hierarchical model of achievement motivation presumes that achievement goals channel the achievement motives of need for achievement and fear of failure towards motivational outcomes. Yet, less is known whether autonomous and controlling reasons underlying the pursuit of achievement goals can serve as additional pathways between achievement motives and outcomes. We tested whether mastery approach, performance approach, and performance avoidance goals and their underlying autonomous and controlling reasons would jointly explain the relation between achievement motives (i.e., fear of failure and need for achievement) and learning strategies (Study 1). Additionally, we examined whether the autonomous and controlling reasons underlying learners' dominant achievement goal would account for the link between achievement motives and the educational outcomes of learning strategies and cheating (Study 2). Six hundred and six Greek adolescent students (Mage = 15.05, SD = 1.43) and 435 university students (Mage M = 20.51, SD = 2.80) participated in studies 1 and 2, respectively. In both studies, a correlational design was used and the hypotheses were tested via path modelling. Autonomous and controlling reasons underlying the pursuit of achievement goals mediated, respectively, the relation of need for achievement and fear of failure to aspects of learning outcomes. Autonomous and controlling reasons underlying achievement goals could further explain learners' functioning in achievement settings. © 2014 The British Psychological Society.

Similarity to the self influences cortical recruitment during impression formation

PubMed Central

Leshikar, Eric D.; Cassidy, Brittany S.; Gutchess, Angela H.

2015-01-01

Prior work has shown that whether or not someone is similar to the self influences person memory—a type of self-reference effect for others. In this study, we were interested in understanding the neural regions supporting the generation of impressions and subsequent memory for targets who vary in similarity to the self. Participants underwent fMRI scanning while forming positive or negative impressions of face-behavior pairs. We tested participants’ memory for their generated impressions, and then back-sorted the impression trials (encoding) into different levels of self-similarity (high, medium, low) using a self-similarity post-test that came after recognition. Extending prior behavioral work, our data confirmed our hypothesis that memory would be highest for self-similar others and lowest for self-dissimilar others. Dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) activity increased with self-similarity (high > medium > low) to targets, regardless of later memory for them. An analysis of regions supporting impression memory revealed a double dissociation within medial temporal lobe regions: for similar others, amygdala recruitment supported memory, whereas for dissimilar others, hippocampal activation supported memory. These results suggest that self-similarity influences evaluation and memory for targets, but also affects the underlying neural resources engaged when thinking about others who vary in self-similarity. PMID:26558615

Spoken language achieves robustness and evolvability by exploiting degeneracy and neutrality.

PubMed

Winter, Bodo

2014-10-01

As with biological systems, spoken languages are strikingly robust against perturbations. This paper shows that languages achieve robustness in a way that is highly similar to many biological systems. For example, speech sounds are encoded via multiple acoustically diverse, temporally distributed and functionally redundant cues, characteristics that bear similarities to what biologists call "degeneracy". Speech is furthermore adequately characterized by neutrality, with many different tongue configurations leading to similar acoustic outputs, and different acoustic variants understood as the same by recipients. This highlights the presence of a large neutral network of acoustic neighbors for every speech sound. Such neutrality ensures that a steady backdrop of variation can be maintained without impeding communication, assuring that there is "fodder" for subsequent evolution. Thus, studying linguistic robustness is not only important for understanding how linguistic systems maintain their functioning upon the background of noise, but also for understanding the preconditions for language evolution. © 2014 WILEY Periodicals, Inc.

Similarity to the Self Affects Memory for Impressions of Others

PubMed Central

Leshikar, Eric D.; Gutchess, Angela H.

2017-01-01

The present studies investigated whether similarity to the self influenced memory for impressions of others. We predicted that similarity to the self would facilitate impression memory for others, paralleling the self-reference effect found when information is processed relative to the self. We were interested in how the initial valence of the impression, whether positive or negative, affected impression memory. Across two experiments, participants formed impressions while viewing faces paired with traits and behaviors. After recognition, participants rated the self-descriptiveness of the studied traits allowing impression memory to be sorted into high-, medium-, and low-self-similarity. For positive impressions, similar others were remembered better than dissimilar others. For negative impressions, similar others were remembered more poorly than dissimilar others. These results illustrate that similarity to the self has multifaceted effects on person memory, leading to memory enhancement in the case of people given positive impressions, but reducing memory for people associated with negative impressions. PMID:28936392

Protein-protein interaction network-based detection of functionally similar proteins within species.

PubMed

Song, Baoxing; Wang, Fen; Guo, Yang; Sang, Qing; Liu, Min; Li, Dengyun; Fang, Wei; Zhang, Deli

2012-07-01

Although functionally similar proteins across species have been widely studied, functionally similar proteins within species showing low sequence similarity have not been examined in detail. Identification of these proteins is of significant importance for understanding biological functions, evolution of protein families, progression of co-evolution, and convergent evolution and others which cannot be obtained by detection of functionally similar proteins across species. Here, we explored a method of detecting functionally similar proteins within species based on graph theory. After denoting protein-protein interaction networks using graphs, we split the graphs into subgraphs using the 1-hop method. Proteins with functional similarities in a species were detected using a method of modified shortest path to compare these subgraphs and to find the eligible optimal results. Using seven protein-protein interaction networks and this method, some functionally similar proteins with low sequence similarity that cannot detected by sequence alignment were identified. By analyzing the results, we found that, sometimes, it is difficult to separate homologous from convergent evolution. Evaluation of the performance of our method by gene ontology term overlap showed that the precision of our method was excellent. Copyright © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Predicting microRNA-disease associations using label propagation based on linear neighborhood similarity.

PubMed

Li, Guanghui; Luo, Jiawei; Xiao, Qiu; Liang, Cheng; Ding, Pingjian

2018-05-12

Interactions between microRNAs (miRNAs) and diseases can yield important information for uncovering novel prognostic markers. Since experimental determination of disease-miRNA associations is time-consuming and costly, attention has been given to designing efficient and robust computational techniques for identifying undiscovered interactions. In this study, we present a label propagation model with linear neighborhood similarity, called LPLNS, to predict unobserved miRNA-disease associations. Additionally, a preprocessing step is performed to derive new interaction likelihood profiles that will contribute to the prediction since new miRNAs and diseases lack known associations. Our results demonstrate that the LPLNS model based on the known disease-miRNA associations could achieve impressive performance with an AUC of 0.9034. Furthermore, we observed that the LPLNS model based on new interaction likelihood profiles could improve the performance to an AUC of 0.9127. This was better than other comparable methods. In addition, case studies also demonstrated our method's outstanding performance for inferring undiscovered interactions between miRNAs and diseases, especially for novel diseases. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Inc.

An evaluation of multi-probe locality sensitive hashing for computing similarities over web-scale query logs

PubMed Central

2018-01-01

Many modern applications of AI such as web search, mobile browsing, image processing, and natural language processing rely on finding similar items from a large database of complex objects. Due to the very large scale of data involved (e.g., users’ queries from commercial search engines), computing such near or nearest neighbors is a non-trivial task, as the computational cost grows significantly with the number of items. To address this challenge, we adopt Locality Sensitive Hashing (a.k.a, LSH) methods and evaluate four variants in a distributed computing environment (specifically, Hadoop). We identify several optimizations which improve performance, suitable for deployment in very large scale settings. The experimental results demonstrate our variants of LSH achieve the robust performance with better recall compared with “vanilla” LSH, even when using the same amount of space. PMID:29346410

Learning semantic and visual similarity for endomicroscopy video retrieval.

PubMed

Andre, Barbara; Vercauteren, Tom; Buchner, Anna M; Wallace, Michael B; Ayache, Nicholas

2012-06-01

Content-based image retrieval (CBIR) is a valuable computer vision technique which is increasingly being applied in the medical community for diagnosis support. However, traditional CBIR systems only deliver visual outputs, i.e., images having a similar appearance to the query, which is not directly interpretable by the physicians. Our objective is to provide a system for endomicroscopy video retrieval which delivers both visual and semantic outputs that are consistent with each other. In a previous study, we developed an adapted bag-of-visual-words method for endomicroscopy retrieval, called "Dense-Sift," that computes a visual signature for each video. In this paper, we present a novel approach to complement visual similarity learning with semantic knowledge extraction, in the field of in vivo endomicroscopy. We first leverage a semantic ground truth based on eight binary concepts, in order to transform these visual signatures into semantic signatures that reflect how much the presence of each semantic concept is expressed by the visual words describing the videos. Using cross-validation, we demonstrate that, in terms of semantic detection, our intuitive Fisher-based method transforming visual-word histograms into semantic estimations outperforms support vector machine (SVM) methods with statistical significance. In a second step, we propose to improve retrieval relevance by learning an adjusted similarity distance from a perceived similarity ground truth. As a result, our distance learning method allows to statistically improve the correlation with the perceived similarity. We also demonstrate that, in terms of perceived similarity, the recall performance of the semantic signatures is close to that of visual signatures and significantly better than those of several state-of-the-art CBIR methods. The semantic signatures are thus able to communicate high-level medical knowledge while being consistent with the low-level visual signatures and much shorter than them

Examining Charter Student Achievement Effects across Seven States

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zimmer, Ron; Gill, Brian; Booker, Kevin; Lavertu, Stephane; Witte, John

2012-01-01

Since their inception, charter schools have been a lighting rod for controversy, with much of the debate revolving around their effectiveness in improving student achievement. Previous research has shown mixed results for student achievement; this could be the consequence of different policy environments or varying methodological approaches with…

Enriching the Hierarchical Model of Achievement Motivation: Autonomous and Controlling Reasons Underlying Achievement Goals

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Michou, Aikaterini; Vansteenkiste, Maarten; Mouratidis, Athanasios; Lens, Willy

2014-01-01

Background: The hierarchical model of achievement motivation presumes that achievement goals channel the achievement motives of need for achievement and fear of failure towards motivational outcomes. Yet, less is known whether autonomous and controlling reasons underlying the pursuit of achievement goals can serve as additional pathways between…

Learning to distinguish similar objects

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Seibert, Michael; Waxman, Allen M.; Gove, Alan N.

1995-04-01

This paper describes how the similarities and differences among similar objects can be discovered during learning to facilitate recognition. The application domain is single views of flying model aircraft captured in silhouette by a CCD camera. The approach was motivated by human psychovisual and monkey neurophysiological data. The implementation uses neural net processing mechanisms to build a hierarchy that relates similar objects to superordinate classes, while simultaneously discovering the salient differences between objects within a class. Learning and recognition experiments both with and without the class similarity and difference learning show the effectiveness of the approach on this visual data. To test the approach, the hierarchical approach was compared to a non-hierarchical approach, and was found to improve the average percentage of correctly classified views from 77% to 84%.

Perceptions of similarity and responsibility attributions to an acquaintance sexual assault victim.

PubMed

Amacker, Amanda M; Littleton, Heather L

2013-11-01

Individuals view similar rape victims as less responsible for the rape than victims perceived as dissimilar. However, it is unclear if individuals hold victims they perceive as similar less responsible for the assault, or if individuals view themselves as more similar to victims they do not view as responsible for the assault. The current study, therefore, examined the temporal relationship between these constructs. A total of 167 college women listened to a date narrative that ended in sexual assault, consensual sex, or no sexual activity (these last two served as controls). Results supported that participants viewed themselves as less similar to the woman in the narrative when the date ended in sexual assault. Only similarity ratings made following learning that the woman was sexually assaulted predicted responsibility attributions suggesting that viewing a victim as responsible for the assault results in decreased perceptions of similarity toward her. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Resolving Quasi-Synonym Relationships in Automatic Thesaurus Construction Using Fuzzy Rough Sets and an Inverse Term Frequency Similarity Function

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Davault, Julius M., III.

2009-01-01

One of the problems associated with automatic thesaurus construction is with determining the semantic relationship between word pairs. Quasi-synonyms provide a type of equivalence relationship: words are similar only for purposes of information retrieval. Determining such relationships in a thesaurus is hard to achieve automatically. The term…

Color-size Relations of Disc Galaxies with Similar Stellar Masses

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fu, W.; Chang, R. X.; Shen, S. Y.; Zhang, B.

2011-01-01

To investigate the correlations between colors and sizes of disc galaxies with similar stellar masses, a sample of 7959 local face-on disc galaxies is collected from the main galaxy sample of the Seventh Data Release of Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS DR7). Our results show that, under the condition that the stellar masses of disc galaxies are similar, the relation between u-r and size is weak, while g-r, r-i and r-z colors decrease with disk size. This means that the color-size relations of disc galaxies with similar stellar masses do exist, i.e., the more extended disc galaxies with similar stellar masses tend to have bluer colors. An artificial sample is constructed to confirm that this correlation is not driven by the color-stellar mass relations and size-stellar mass relation of disc galaxies. Our results suggest that the mass distribution of disk galaxies may have an important influence on their stellar formation history, i.e., the galaxies with more extended mass distribution evolve more slowly.

Comparison of Various Similarity Measures for Average Image Hash in Mobile Phone Application

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Farisa Chaerul Haviana, Sam; Taufik, Muhammad

2017-04-01

One of the main issue in Content Based Image Retrieval (CIBR) is similarity measures for resulting image hashes. The main key challenge is to find the most benefits distance or similarity measures for calculating the similarity in term of speed and computing costs, specially under limited computing capabilities device like mobile phone. This study we utilize twelve most common and popular distance or similarity measures technique implemented in mobile phone application, to be compared and studied. The results show that all similarity measures implemented in this study was perform equally under mobile phone application. This gives more possibilities for method combinations to be implemented for image retrieval.

Competence with Fractions Predicts Gains in Mathematics Achievement

PubMed Central

Bailey, Drew H.; Hoard, Mary K.; Nugent, Lara; Geary, David C.

2012-01-01

Competence with fractions predicts later mathematics achievement, but the co-developmental pattern between fractions knowledge and mathematics achievement is not well understood. We assessed this co-development through examination of the cross-lagged relation between a measure of conceptual knowledge of fractions and mathematics achievement in sixth and seventh grade (n = 212). The cross-lagged effects indicated that performance on the sixth grade fractions concepts measure predicted one year gains in mathematics achievement (β = .14, p<.01), controlling for the central executive component of working memory and intelligence, but sixth grade mathematics achievement did not predict gains on the fractions concepts measure (β = .03, p>.50). In a follow-up assessment, we demonstrated that measures of fluency with computational fractions significantly predicted seventh grade mathematics achievement above and beyond the influence of fluency in computational whole number arithmetic, performance on number fluency and number line tasks, and central executive span and intelligence. Results provide empirical support for the hypothesis that competence with fractions underlies, in part, subsequent gains in mathematics achievement. PMID:22832199

Competence with fractions predicts gains in mathematics achievement.

PubMed

Bailey, Drew H; Hoard, Mary K; Nugent, Lara; Geary, David C

2012-11-01

Competence with fractions predicts later mathematics achievement, but the codevelopmental pattern between fractions knowledge and mathematics achievement is not well understood. We assessed this codevelopment through examination of the cross-lagged relation between a measure of conceptual knowledge of fractions and mathematics achievement in sixth and seventh grades (N=212). The cross-lagged effects indicated that performance on the sixth grade fractions concepts measure predicted 1-year gains in mathematics achievement (ß=.14, p<.01), controlling for the central executive component of working memory and intelligence, but sixth grade mathematics achievement did not predict gains on the fractions concepts measure (ß=.03, p>.50). In a follow-up assessment, we demonstrated that measures of fluency with computational fractions significantly predicted seventh grade mathematics achievement above and beyond the influence of fluency in computational whole number arithmetic, performance on number fluency and number line tasks, central executive span, and intelligence. Results provide empirical support for the hypothesis that competence with fractions underlies, in part, subsequent gains in mathematics achievement. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Longitudinal Process of Early Parent Involvement on Student Achievement: A Path Analysis

PubMed Central

Hayakawa, Momoko; Englund, Michelle M.; Warner-Richter, Mallory N.; Reynolds, Arthur J

2016-01-01

This longitudinal study investigated the process whereby early parent involvement in preschool effects student achievement from kindergarten through 6th grade. Participants were 1,539 low-income, mainly African American children and their mothers, in the Chicago Longitudinal Study. Program children (N = 989) received one or two years of the Child-Parent Center (CPC) program – a preschool intervention that strongly promoted parents' development of parent involvement skills within the school and at home. Children from similar backgrounds who did not attend the CPC, but participated in available local resources (e.g. day care), were obtained as a comparison group (N = 550). Path analysis revealed an interactive process between parent involvement, academic achievement, and children's motivation. Early parent involvement directly influenced kindergarten achievement, which in turn influenced first grade student motivation. Highly motivated children then encouraged parents to continue involvement. The cyclic nature of this process across elementary school was observed. The model accounted for 61% of the variance in 6th grade achievement. Findings suggest that early parent involvement promoted in the CPC program, sets the stage for subsequent parent involvement, student motivation, and academic achievement throughout early and middle childhood. PMID:27867317

Birds of a feather sit together: physical similarity predicts seating choice.

PubMed

Mackinnon, Sean P; Jordan, Christian H; Wilson, Anne E

2011-07-01

Across four studies, people sat (or reported they would sit) closer to physically similar others. Study 1 revealed significant aggregation in seating patterns on two easily observed characteristics: glasses wearing and sex. Study 2 replicated this finding with a wider variety of physical traits: race, sex, glasses wearing, hair length, and hair color. The overall tendency for people to sit beside physically similar others remained significant when controlling for sex and race, suggesting people aggregate on physical dimensions other than broad social categories. Study 3 conceptually replicated these results in a laboratory setting. The more physically similar participants were to a confederate, the closer they sat before an anticipated interaction when controlling for sex, race, and attractiveness similarity. In Study 4, overall physical similarity and glasses wearing similarity predicted self-reported seating distance. These effects were mediated by perceived attitudinal similarity. Liking and inferred acceptance also received support as mediators for glasses wearing similarity. © 2011 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc

The Roles of Similarity in Transfer: Determinants of Similarity-Based Reminding and Mapping

DTIC Science & Technology

1991-06-02

Psychology , Northwestern University, 2029 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208. Reproduction in whole or part is permitted for any purpose of the United...ADDRESS (City, State, and ZIPCode) 10 SOURCE OF FUNDING NUMBERS Department of Psychology PROGRAM PROJECT TASK WORK UNIT 603 E. Daniel ELEMENT NO NO NO...according to 3 whether the stimuli (in an S-R pair) or the responses are similar from training to test . Ellis (1965), while agreeing that similarity is

Scanned focussed ultrasound hyperthermia: initial clinical results.

PubMed

Shimm, D S; Hynynen, K H; Anhalt, D P; Roemer, R B; Cassady, J R

1988-11-01

Between November 1986 and July, 1987, a preliminary study to determine the feasibility of scanned focussed ultrasound for clinical hyperthermia at various sites was conducted. Fourteen patient (17 tumors) have been treated using a microprocessor-controlled apparatus developed at the University of Arizona by modifying a commercially available diagnostic ultrasound unit. We have treated nine pelvic tumors, four extremity tumors, two brain tumors, and two extracranial head and neck tumors for a total of 42 treatments. Multipoint thermometry was achieved for all patients, with 2-25 (mean = 10) points monitored during each treatments within the scanned tumor volume. Average maximum temperature within the scanned tumor volume was 44.2, 44.7, 44.8, and 42.0 degrees C for pelvic, extremity brain, and extracranial head and neck tumors, respectively; similarly, 55%, 45%, 71%, and 0 of monitored points exceeded 42.5 degrees C. Pain limited applied power in 15 of 42 treatments, and bone pain with a periodicity similar to the scanning periodicity was seen in 11 treatments. A non-randomized comparison of temperatures achieved using scanned focussed ultrasound to those achieved using the microwave annular array and the CDRH Helix suggests that scanned focussed ultrasound may have promise and potential advantages in heating selected pelvic tumors.

Visual-Motor Test Performance: Race and Achievement Variables.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fuller, Gerald B.; Friedrich, Douglas

1979-01-01

Rural Black and White children of variant academic achievement were tested on the Minnesota Percepto-Diagnostic Test, which consists of six gestalt designs for the subject to copy. Analyses resulted only in a significant achievement effect; when intellectual level was statistically controlled, race was not a significant variable. (Editor/SJL)

The Unique Trio: Academic Achievement, Sport, and Gender

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shachaf, Miri; Katz, Yaacov J.; Shoval, Ella

2013-01-01

This study examined gender, participation in sport and academic achievement of Israeli high school students. The study examined the academic achievement of those who participated in competitive or non-competitive sport and those who did not participate in sport. Results indicate that female athletes who participated in competitive sport attained…

Domain similarity based orthology detection.

PubMed

Bitard-Feildel, Tristan; Kemena, Carsten; Greenwood, Jenny M; Bornberg-Bauer, Erich

2015-05-13

Orthologous protein detection software mostly uses pairwise comparisons of amino-acid sequences to assert whether two proteins are orthologous or not. Accordingly, when the number of sequences for comparison increases, the number of comparisons to compute grows in a quadratic order. A current challenge of bioinformatic research, especially when taking into account the increasing number of sequenced organisms available, is to make this ever-growing number of comparisons computationally feasible in a reasonable amount of time. We propose to speed up the detection of orthologous proteins by using strings of domains to characterize the proteins. We present two new protein similarity measures, a cosine and a maximal weight matching score based on domain content similarity, and new software, named porthoDom. The qualities of the cosine and the maximal weight matching similarity measures are compared against curated datasets. The measures show that domain content similarities are able to correctly group proteins into their families. Accordingly, the cosine similarity measure is used inside porthoDom, the wrapper developed for proteinortho. porthoDom makes use of domain content similarity measures to group proteins together before searching for orthologs. By using domains instead of amino acid sequences, the reduction of the search space decreases the computational complexity of an all-against-all sequence comparison. We demonstrate that representing and comparing proteins as strings of discrete domains, i.e. as a concatenation of their unique identifiers, allows a drastic simplification of search space. porthoDom has the advantage of speeding up orthology detection while maintaining a degree of accuracy similar to proteinortho. The implementation of porthoDom is released using python and C++ languages and is available under the GNU GPL licence 3 at http://www.bornberglab.org/pages/porthoda .

Scale effects and a method for similarity evaluation in micro electrical discharge machining

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Qingyu; Zhang, Qinhe; Wang, Kan; Zhu, Guang; Fu, Xiuzhuo; Zhang, Jianhua

2016-08-01

Electrical discharge machining(EDM) is a promising non-traditional micro machining technology that offers a vast array of applications in the manufacturing industry. However, scale effects occur when machining at the micro-scale, which can make it difficult to predict and optimize the machining performances of micro EDM. A new concept of "scale effects" in micro EDM is proposed, the scale effects can reveal the difference in machining performances between micro EDM and conventional macro EDM. Similarity theory is presented to evaluate the scale effects in micro EDM. Single factor experiments are conducted and the experimental results are analyzed by discussing the similarity difference and similarity precision. The results show that the output results of scale effects in micro EDM do not change linearly with discharge parameters. The values of similarity precision of machining time significantly increase when scaling-down the capacitance or open-circuit voltage. It is indicated that the lower the scale of the discharge parameter, the greater the deviation of non-geometrical similarity degree over geometrical similarity degree, which means that the micro EDM system with lower discharge energy experiences more scale effects. The largest similarity difference is 5.34 while the largest similarity precision can be as high as 114.03. It is suggested that the similarity precision is more effective in reflecting the scale effects and their fluctuation than similarity difference. Consequently, similarity theory is suitable for evaluating the scale effects in micro EDM. This proposed research offers engineering values for optimizing the machining parameters and improving the machining performances of micro EDM.