Bulletin of NTU "KhPI". Series: Problems of Electrical Machines and Apparatus Perfection. The Theory and Practice / Вісник Національного технічного університету "ХПІ". Серія: Проблеми удосконалювання електричних машин і апаратів. Теорія і практика
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Characterisation of the S1 satellite DNA family in Rana dalmatina
No full textIn this study, the DNA of Rana dalmatina was digested with Asp 718I and the two bands of highly repeated DNA produced were cloned and characterised. The largest fragment (494 bp) corresponded to the entire repetitive unit of the major satellite DNA (RdS1a), while the smaller fragment of 385 bp corresponded to the major fragment of RdS1a produced by digestion. A fragment of 332 bpbcorresponding to the repetitive unit of satellite S1b (RdS1b) was instead achieved by digestion with Eco RV. RdS1b is highly homologous to the corresponding portion of the repetition of RdS1a and presents the first 36 bp repeated and inverted. This suggested that RdS1b would have been derived from satellite S1a by two distinct and subsequent events. Further, the high sequence homology and length between RdS1a and the S1a of Rana italica (RiS1a) confirmed the hypothesis that the satellite S1a is antecedent to S1b and inherited from a common ancestor. Southern blots of R. dalmatina genomic DNA digested with Asp 718I produced hybrid bands of fragments of different sizes containing in addition to the satellite S1a, also one or more copies of the S1b satellites. The only sequenced band at the moment corresponded to the repetitive unit of the satellite RdS1a + b (826 bp) deleted of the fragment Asp 718I less than RdS1a (109 bp), while the other double bands should almost certainly correspond to repetitive units of satellites RdS1a + 2b and RdS1a + 3b. Our data suggested different satellite DNA organisation in R. dalmatina, including the tandem structure of the repetitive units of the RdS1a or RdS1b. Our data also suggested the existence in R. dalmatina of at least four different types of hybrid repeating units in all the populations examined
Systematizing Confidence in Open Research and Evidence (SCORE)
No full textAssessing the credibility of research claims is a central, continuous, and laborious part of the scientific process. Credibility assessment strategies range from expert judgment to aggregating existing evidence to systematic replication efforts. Such assessments can require substantial time and effort. Research progress could be accelerated if there were rapid, scalable, accurate credibility indicators to guide attention and resource allocation for further assessment. The SCORE program is creating and validating algorithms to provide confidence scores for research claims at scale. To investigate the viability of scalable tools, teams are creating: a database of claims from papers in the social and behavioral sciences; expert and machine generated estimates of credibility; and, evidence of reproducibility, robustness, and replicability to validate the estimates. Beyond the primary research objective, the data and artifacts generated from this program will be openly shared and provide an unprecedented opportunity to examine research credibility and evidence
Perceived fatigue does not alter effort-based decision making but does undermine confidence in the ability to perform physical actions
No full textFatigue may affect the decision to deploy effort (cost) for a given rewarded outcome (benefit). However, it remains unclear whether these fatigue-associated changes can be attributed to simply feeling fatigued. To investigate this question, twenty-two healthy males made a series of choices between two rewarded options: a fixed, no effort option, where no physical effort was required to obtain a set, low reward vs. a variable, effortful option, in which both the physical effort requirements (i.e. different durations of a sustained contraction performed in the lower limbs) and rewards (i.e. greater monetary incentives) was varied. Effort-based choices were made under two conditions: 1) a rested (control) state, (2) a pre-induced state of perceived fatigue, evoked through physical exertion in the upper-limbs, thus controlling for the physical manifestation of fatigue (i.e. decline in muscular force production) on the decision process. Though prior physical exertion increased the perception of fatigue, participants choice behaviour did not significantly differ between control and fatigue conditions. Across both conditions, participants demonstrated an anticipated aversion to effort, with greater effort requirements reducing the decision to engage in actions associated with higher rewards. However, in the fatigue state only, decision time was prolonged and self-reported confidence in individuals’ ability to perform high effort actions was reduced. The findings suggest that a perceived state of fatigue does not necessarily alter cost/benefit comparisons within effort-based decisions, but may introduce greater uncertainty within choice and reduce self-confidence. These findings evidence altered evaluative processes during decision making under conditions of fatigue
REFUTING 'ANTI-IMPERIALIST' MYTHS A Review of Warren's Imperialism, Pioneer of Capitalism
No full textBill Warren's book, Imperialism, Pioneer of Capitalism, performs a useful service by refuting much of the mythology that the left has embraced in the name of 'anti-imperialism'. On the other hand, he manages to create his own brand of confusion. He does this, firstly, by blaming Lenin's Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism for many of the left's erroneous views. And secondly, he is so busy extolling the historical mission of capitalism, that no effort is devoted to discussing how capitalism is an obstacle to human development and is becoming increasingly obsolete. Despite these shortcomings it is the myth shattering quality of the book that predominates
The Reliability of Replications: A Study in Computational Reproductions
No full textThis paper reports findings from a crowdsourced replication. Eighty-five independent teams attempted a computational replication of results reported in an original study of policy preferences and immigration by fitting the same statistical models to the same data. The replication involved an experimental condition. Random assignment put participating teams into either the transparent group that received the original study and code, or the opaque group receiving only a methods section, rough results description and no code. The transparent group mostly verified the numerical results of the original study with the same sign and p-value threshold (95.7%), while the opaque group had less success (89.3%). Exact numerical reproductions to the second decimal place were far less common (76.9% and 48.1%), and the number of teams who verified at least 95% of all effects in all models they ran was 79.5% and 65.2% respectively. Therefore, the reliability we quantify depends on how reliability is defined, but most definitions suggest it would take a minimum of three independent replications to achieve reliability. Qualitative investigation of the teams’ workflows reveals many causes of error including mistakes and procedural variations. Although minor error across researchers is not surprising, we show this occurs where it is least expected in the case of computational reproduction. Even when we curate the results to boost ecological validity, the error remains large enough to undermine reliability between researchers to some extent. The presence of inter-researcher variability may explain some of the current “reliability crisis” in the social sciences because it may be undetected in all forms of research involving data analysis. The obvious implication of our study is more transparency. Broader implications are that researcher variability adds an additional meta-source of error that may not derive from conscious measurement or modeling decisions, and that replications cannot alone resolve this type of uncertainty
Effects on nutrient availability in agricultural soils following the application of slurry amended with additives
No full textIn many farm systems, both inorganic and organic fertilisers, including manure and slurry, are applied to the soil to replenish nutrient offtake in agricultural products and additional nutrient losses to soil as well as surface water and groundwater. With respect to sole reliance on inorganic fertilisers, the use of manure/slurry as a nutrient resource offers important benefits, including the reuse and recycling of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) within farming systems as well as a reduction in the reliance on agricultural production on
finite inorganic fertiliser reserves. There is increasing interest in the extent to which
additives can enhance the nutrient value of slurry/manure. However, little is known about the impacts of these amended slurries/manures on the quantity and composition of N and P within agricultural and pasture soils. We report data from incubation experiments in which soils received a range of treatments, including the application of livestock slurry that had
received a mixture of commercial additives. Our experiments were designed to understand how slurry that has received additives ultimately affects nutrient availability in organic, clay-loam and sandy-loam grassland soils. The addition of the additives to slurry resulted in a slight increase or no difference in total solids, pH, total N, ammonium-N, total P, total
potassium, total magnesium and total sodium compared to the untreated counterpart. We considered the effects of our treatments on a range of agronomically important soil parameters, including Olsen-P, mineral-N, available-K, pH and organic matter content. This experiment aimed to understand the extent to which soil fertility could be enhanced through the application of slurries/manures that have received additives. The application of both amended and unamended slurry treatments on soil led to higher values of NH4-N, available-K, available Mg and pH than the addition of inorganic fertiliser. In addition, no substantial differences were observed between the treatment of the three soils with unamended and amended slurry
Principals’ Demographic Qualities and the Misuse of School Material Capital in Secondary Schools
No full textPrevious studies tend to assess principals' demographic variables but also use other dependent variables, such as administrative effectiveness, job performance and student achievement. In the literature, principals' demographic qualities and the misuse of material capital have been under-assessed. This study used a quantitative approach to investigate the demographic attributes of principals and the abuse of school material capital in secondary schools. Using a questionnaire, data were gathered from 667 secondary school administrators in Cross River State, Nigeria. The findings revealed significant differences in the misuse of school material capital by principals of different ages, professional qualifications and years of experience. However, major disparities between male and female principals were not identified. More specifically, principals who were older, seasoned, and possessed bachelor's and Master of Education degrees were efficient managers of school material capital. A high rate of misuse was found among principals who were younger and inexperienced than their counterparts who were young, less experienced and possessed a postgraduate diploma in education, as well as other professional academic qualifications unrelated to the field of education (e.g., HND, BSc., BA and MSc.). Based on these findings, key implications for quality service delivery and administrative effectiveness were discussed
The Costs and Benefits of Mindfulness and Reappraisal in Daily Life
No full textReappraisal and mindfulness represent two fundamentally different ways of dealing with one’s emotions: Whereas reappraisal aims at changing one’s thoughts and emotions, mindfulness is aimed at not changing, but appreciating them. Despite this difference, prior research has shown that both are similarly associated with short-term benefits and trait-level correlates. However, research on the spontaneous use of reappraisal and mindfulness in daily life found that mindfulness is more effective in decreasing negative affect than reappraisal. The spontaneous use of reappraisal may be less effective than mindfulness in daily life given that it is more cognitively taxing. Therefore, we assumed in the present research that the increased costs (i.e., feeling exhausted) of spontaneously endorsing reappraisal compared to mindfulness can explain why reappraisal is less effective in regulating negative affect than mindfulness. In two experience sampling studies (N = 125 and N = 179), we found evidence for different costs and benefits of reappraisal compared to mindfulness. Regarding short-term benefits, endorsing reappraisal was significantly associated with increases in positive affect, whereas endorsing the mindfulness component acceptance was significantly associated with decreases in negative affect. Regarding short-term costs, we found that endorsing reappraisal was more exhausting, and that reappraisal was selected less often than mindfulness in daily life. Finally, acceptance was associated more strongly with trait level indicators of well-being than reappraisal, which may be explained by the reduced costs of endorsing acceptance compared to reappraisal. Our results demonstrate the importance of assessing both the benefits and costs of emotion regulation in daily life
Validated measures of semantic knowledge and semantic control: Normative data from young and older adults for more than 300 semantic judgements
No full textRecent studies suggest that knowledge representations and control processes are the two key components underpinning semantic cognition, and are also crucial indicators of the shifting cognitive architecture of semantics in later life. Although there are many standardized assessments that provide measures of the quantity of semantic knowledge participants possess, normative data for tasks that probe semantic control processes are not yet available. Here, we present normative data from more than 200 young and older participants on a large set of stimuli in two semantic tasks, which probe controlled semantic processing (feature-matching task) and semantic knowledge (synonym judgement task). We verify the validity of our norms by replicating established age- and psycholinguistic-property-related effects on semantic cognition. Specifically, we find that older people have more detailed semantic knowledge than young people but have less effective semantic control processes. We also obtain expected effects of word frequency and inter-item competition on performance. Parametrically varied difficulty levels are defined for half of the stimuli based on participants’ behavioral performance, allowing future studies to produce customized sets of experimental stimuli based on our norms. We provide all stimuli, data and code used for analysis, in the hope that they are useful to other researchers
To what extent do erotic images elicit visuospatial versus cognitive attentional processes? Consistent support for a (non-spatial) Sexual Content-Induced Delay
No full textIt is almost a cultural truism that erotic images attract our attention, presumably because paying attention to erotic stimuli provided our ancestors with mating benefits. Attention, however, can be narrowly defined as visuospatial attention (keeping such stimuli in view) or more broadly as cognitive attention (such stimuli taking up one’s thoughts). We present four independent studies aiming to test the extent to which erotic images have priority in capturing visuospatial versus cognitive attention. Whereas the former would show in quicker reactions to stimuli presented in locations where erotic images appeared previously, the latter causes delayed responding after erotic images, independent of their location). To this end, we specifically modified spatial cueing tasks to disentangle visuospatial attention capture from general sexual content-induced delay (SCID) effects—a major drawback in the previous literature. Consistently across all studies (total N = 399), we found no evidence in support of visuospatial attention capture but reliably observed an unspecific delay of responding for trials in which erotic images appeared (irrespective of cue location). This SCID is equally large for heterosexual men and women and reliably associated with their self-reported sexual excitability