Examining a multidimensional framework of racial identity across different biracial groups.

The term multiracial is complex. Recent research has adopted a multidimensional view initially proposed by Rockquemore and colleagues (2002, 2009) for examining racial identity among Black/White biracial people. This approach has acknowledged the social construction of race and broadened the range of racial identity options beyond the two “traditional” options of being “Black” or “biracial.” This study was designed to further assess this framework by examining a more diverse multiracial sample from Canada and the U.S. (N = 122). Both the Black/White biracials (n = 38) and Asian/White biracials (n = 40) showed great variability in their selection of Rockquemore's multiracial identity categories, but the pattern of responses differed across the two groups. In addition to revealing different patterns of identity selection between Asian/White and Black/White biracial persons, findings demonstrated the importance of identity validation by others and its relation to conceptions of the self. Having a multiracial identity that is validated by others (as opposed to invalidated or contextually dependent identities) was associated with higher levels of identity integration and self-concept clarity. Theoretical implications for extending a multidimensional model to other biracial groups are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

One Step Lithography of Polypyrrole

Large areas of polypyrrole (PPy) thin films deposited onto inert polymeric substrates are structured by direct laser interference patterning (DLIP). Several square millimeter areas could be produced with one single (10 ns) pulse, at room temperature and atmospheric pressure. Nanometric arrays of lines (>600 nm) or grids of PPy deposited on dielectric polymers polypropilene or polypirrol (PP or PE) are fabricated by DLIP at 355 nm. The period of the lines structures, measured by white light interferometry (WLI), is 3.5 µm. Regular structures are analyzed using scanning electron microscope (SEM) and a focus ion beam (FIB) tomography. It is shown that only the PPy film is structured while the PP or PE substrate remains unaltered. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and UV‐vis spectroscopy, permit to ensure that PPy chemical structure remains unaltered after the structuration process. The width of PPy lines can be tailored by controlling the fluence of the laser beam. Contact angle measurement shows that the wettability is affected by the structuring, making the surface more hydrophobic. The structuring technique seems to be suitable for the fabrication of PPy regular structures over various substrates.     

Choosing an Appropriate Infection Model to Study Quorum Sensing Inhibition in Pseudomonas Infections

Bacteria, although considered for decades to be antisocial organisms whose sole purpose is to find nutrients and multiply are, in fact, highly communicative organisms. Referred to as quorum sensing, cell-to-cell communication mechanisms have been adopted by bacteria in order to co-ordinate their gene expression. By behaving as a community rather than as individuals, bacteria can simultaneously switch on their virulence factor production and establish successful infections in eukaryotes. Understanding pathogen-host interactions requires the use of infection models. As the use of rodents is limited, for ethical considerations and the high costs associated with their use, alternative models based on invertebrates have been developed. Invertebrate models have the benefits of low handling costs, limited space requirements and rapid generation of results. This review presents examples of such models available for studying the pathogenicity of the Gram-negative bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Quorum sensing interference, known as quorum quenching, suggests a promising disease-control strategy since quorum-quenching mechanisms appear to play important roles in microbe-microbe and host-pathogen interactions. Examples of natural and synthetic quorum sensing inhibitors and their potential as antimicrobials in Pseudomonas-related infections are discussed in the second part of this review.     

Compositional model-theoretic semantics for logic programs

We present a compositional model-theoretic semantics for logic programs, where the composition of programs is modelled by the composition of the admissible Herbrand models of the programs. An Herbrand model is admissible if it is supported by the assumption of a set of hypotheses. On one hand, the hypotheses supporting a model correspond to an open interpretation of the program intended to capture possible compositions with other programs. On the other hand, admissible models provide a natural model-theory for a form of hypothetical reasoning, called abduction. The application of admissibel models to programs with negation is discussed. Antonio Brogi: Dipartimento di Informatica, Università di Pisa, Corso Italia 40, 56125 Pisa, ItalyResearch interests: Programming Language Design and Semantics, Logic Programming and Artificial Intelligence     

IgGs-Abzymes from the Sera of Patients with Multiple Sclerosis Recognize and Hydrolyze miRNAs

Autoantibodies-abzymes hydrolyzing DNA, myelin basic protein, and oligosaccharides have been revealed in the sera of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). In MS, specific microRNAs are found in blood and cerebrospinal fluid, which are characterized by increased expression. Autoantibodies, specifically hydrolyzing four different miRNAs, were first detected in the blood of schizophrenia patients. Here, we present the first evidence that 23 IgG antibodies of MS patients effectively recognize and hydrolyze four neuroregulatory miRNAs (miR-137, miR-9-5p, miR-219-2-3p, and miR-219-5p) and four immunoregulatory miRNAs (miR-21-3p, miR-146a-3p, miR-155-5p, and miR-326). Several known criteria were checked to show that the recognition and hydrolysis of miRNAs is an intrinsic property of MS IgGs. The hydrolysis of all miRNAs is mostly site-specific. The major and moderate sites of the hydrolysis of each miRNA for most of the IgG preparations coincided; however, some of them showed other specific sites of splitting. Several individual IgGs hydrolyzed some miRNAs almost nonspecifically at nearly all internucleoside bonds or demonstrated a combination of site-specific and nonspecific splitting. Maximum average relative activity (RA) was observed in the hydrolysis of miR-155-5p for IgGs of patients of two types of MS—clinically isolated syndrome and relapsing-remitting MS—but was also high for patients with primary progressive and secondary progressive MS. Differences between RAs of IgGs of four groups of MS patients and healthy donors were statistically significant (p < 0.015). There was a tendency of decreasing efficiency of hydrolysis of all eight miRNAs during remission compared with the exacerbation of the disease.     

The Gender Congruency Effect and the Selection of Freestanding and Bound Morphemes: Evidence From Croatian.

The authors report 3 picture-word interference experiments in which they explore some properties of the agreement process in speech production. In Experiment 1, Croatian speakers were asked to produce utterances in which the noun's gender value had an impact on the selection of gender-marked freestanding morphemes (pronouns) while ignoring the presentation of same- or different-gender distractor words. In Experiments 2 and 3, Croatian speakers were asked to name the same pictures using noun phrases in which the noun's gender value surfaced as an inflectional suffix. Different-gender distractors interfered more than same-gender distractors (the gender congruency effect) in Experiment 1, but not in Experiments 2 and 3. These contrasting results show that the cause of the gender congruency effect is not at the level where lexical-grammatical information is selected but at the level of selection of freestanding morphemes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Distributed logic objects

This paper presents a language based on the logic programming paradigm that supports objects, messages and inheritance. The object-oriented extension is fairly simple: objects are clusters of processes, objects' state is represented by logical variables, message-passing communication between objects is performed via multi-head clauses, and inheritance is mapped into clause union. The language implementation is obtained by translating logic objects into a concurrent logic language based on multi-head clauses, taking advantage of its distributed implementation on a massively parallel architecture. The runtime support realizes some interesting features such as intensional messages and the transparency of object allocation, object migration and parallelism.     

Specification and Verification of Agent Interaction using Social Integrity Constraints

In this paper we propose a logic-based social approach to the specification and verification of agent interaction. We firstly introduce integrity constraints about social acts (called Social Integrity Constraints) as a formalism to express interaction protocols and to give a social semantics to the behavior of agents, focusing on communicative acts. Then, we discuss several possible kinds of verification of agent interaction, and we show how social integrity constraints can be used to verify some properties in this respect. We focus our attention on static verification of compliance of agent specifications to interaction protocols, and on run-time verification, based on agents' observable behavior. We adopt as a running example the NetBill security transaction protocol for the selling and delivery of information goods.     

Cooperation and Competition in ALIAS: A Logic Framework for Agents that Negotiate

This paper presents ALIAS, an agent architecture based on intelligent logic agents, where the main form of agent reasoning is abduction. The system is particularly suited for solving problems where knowledge is incomplete, where agents may need to make reasonable hypotheses about the problem domain and other agents, and where the raised hypotheses have to be consistent for the overall set of agents. ALIAS agents are pro-active, exhibiting a goal-directed behavior, and autonomous, since each one can solve problems using its own private knowledge base. ALIAS agents are also social, because they are able to interact with other agents, in order to cooperatively solve problems. The coordination mechanisms are modeled by means of LAILA, a logic-based language which allows to express intra-agent reasoning and inter-agent coordination. As an application, we show how LAILA can be used to implement inter-agent dialogues, e.g., for negotiation. In particular, LAILA is well-suited to coordinate the process of negotiation aimed at exchanging resources between agents, thus allowing them to execute the plans to achieve their goals.