Mothers' Behavior Modifications During Pretense and Their Possible Signal Value for Toddlers.

An important issue for understanding early cognition is why very young children's real-world representations do not get confused by pretense events. One possible source of information for children is the pretender's behaviors. Pretender behaviors may vary systematically across real and pretend scenarios, perhaps signaling to toddlers to interpret certain events as not real. Pretender behaviors were examined in 2 experiments in which mothers were asked both to pretend to have a snack and really to have a snack with their 18-month-olds. Episodes were analyzed for condition differences in verbal and nonverbal behaviors, including smiling, looking, laughter, and functional movements. Reliable differences were found across conditions for several variables. In a 3rd experiment, children's apparent understanding of pretense in relation to their mothers' behaviors was examined, and significant associations were found with some of the mothers' behavioral changes but not others. This work provides a first inroad into the issue of how children learn to interpret pretense acts as pretense. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Trisection for genus 2 curves in odd characteristic

We provide trisection (division by 3) algorithms for Jacobians of genus 2 curves over finite fields \(\mathbb {F}_q\) of odd characteristic which rely on the factorization of a polynomial whose roots correspond (bijectively) to the set of trisections of the given divisor. We also construct a polynomial whose roots allow us to calculate the 3-torsion divisors. We show the relation between the rank of the 3-torsion subgroup and the factorization of this 3-torsion polynomial, and describe the factorization of the trisection polynomials in terms of the Galois structure of the 3-torsion subgroup. We also generalize these ideas for \(\ell \in \{5,7\}\).     

The Reprimo-Like Gene Is an Epigenetic-Mediated Tumor Suppressor and a Candidate Biomarker for the Non-Invasive Detection of Gastric Cancer

Reprimo-like (RPRML) is an uncharacterized member of the Reprimo gene family. Here, we evaluated the role of RPRML and whether its regulation by DNA methylation is a potential non-invasive biomarker of gastric cancer. RPRML expression was evaluated by immunohistochemistry in 90 patients with gastric cancer and associated with clinicopathologic characteristics and outcomes. The role of RPRML in cancer biology was investigated in vitro, through RPRML ectopic overexpression. Functional experiments included colony formation, soft agar, MTS, and Ki67 immunofluorescence assays. DNA methylation-mediated silencing was evaluated by the 5-azacytidine assay and direct bisulfite sequencing. Non-invasive detection of circulating methylated RPRML DNA was assessed in 25 gastric cancer cases and 25 age- and sex-balanced cancer-free controls by the MethyLight assay. Downregulation of RPRML protein expression was associated with poor overall survival in advanced gastric cancer. RPRML overexpression significantly inhibited clonogenic capacity, anchorage-independent growth, and proliferation in vitro. Circulating methylated RPRML DNA distinguished patients with gastric cancer from controls with an area under the curve of 0.726. The in vitro overexpression results and the poor patient survival associated with lower RPRML levels suggest that RPRML plays a tumor-suppressive role in the stomach. Circulating methylated RPRML DNA may serve as a biomarker for the non-invasive detection of gastric cancer.     

Effects of maternal negativity and of early and recent recurrent depressive disorder on children's false belief understanding.

Research has shown that children of depressed mothers are at risk for problems in a variety of developmental domains; however, little is known about the effects of maternal depression on children's emerging understanding of false beliefs. In this study, 3 false belief tasks were administered to 5-year-old children whose mothers had either met criteria for major depressive disorder within the first 20 months of the child's life (n = 91) or had never been depressed (n = 50). Significant difficulties in performance were found among the children of depressed mothers, especially those whose mothers had experienced early and recent recurrent depressive disorder. Regardless of diagnostic status, children whose mothers exhibited negativity during problem-solving tasks administered at an earlier developmental period also were less likely to demonstrate false belief understanding. These effects remained even after child verbal ability was controlled. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Fast estimation of fractal dimension and correlation integral on stream data

In this paper we give a very space-efficient, yet fast method for estimating the fractal dimensionality of the points in a data stream. Algorithms to estimate the fractal dimension exist, such as the straightforward quadratic algorithm and the faster O(NlogN) or even O(N) box-counting algorithms. However, the sub-quadratic algorithms require Ω(N) space. In this paper, we propose an algorithm that computes the fractal dimension in a single pass, using a constant amount of memory relative to data cardinality. Experimental results on synthetic and real world data sets demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithm.     

A pilot study on the effects of cultivation conditions of chicory (Cichorium intybus L.) roots on the levels of sesquiterpene lactones in chicons

 One of the quality parameters of chicory (Cichorium intybus L.) is its slightly bitter taste which is caused by sesquiterpene lactones. As the quality of chicons is highly dependent on the quality of the roots, the effects of the cultivation conditions of the roots on the levels of sesquiterpene lactones in chicons were investigated. Roots from a collection of 11 commercially available and 2 experimental chicory cultivars were grown at five different locations with two nitrogen manuring levels to evaluate the differences in sesquiterpene lactone levels as measured with enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs). There were significant differences (P<0.001) between cultivars in both lactucopicrin and lactucin-like (lactucin, 8-deoxylactucin and their 11β,13-dihydro derivatives) sesquiterpene lactone levels. In addition, a significant (P=0.006 and P=0.019, respectively) effect of additional nitrogen manuring was observed on the levels of lactucopicrin and lactucin-like sesquiterpene lactones. The interaction of cultivar with nitrogen manuring had a significant (P=0.013) effect on the level of lactucin-like sesquiterpene lactones. Furthermore, the lactucopicrin level was significantly influenced by the interactions of the cultivar with the nitrogen manuring level (P<0.001), with the location (P=0.001) and with both the nitrogen manuring level and location (P<0.001). The results indicate that it may be possible to influence the level of the bitter sesquiterpene lactones and, consequently, to influence the taste of chicons by cultivar choice and/or cultivation location and conditions. Received: 17 December 1996     

Minimalist Antibodies and Mimetics: An Update and Recent Applications

The immune system utilizes antibodies to recognize foreign or disease‐relevant receptors, initiating an immune response to destroy unwelcomed guests. Because researchers can evolve antibodies to bind virtually any target, it is perhaps unsurprising that these reagents, and their small‐molecule conjugates, are used extensively in clinical and basic research environments. However, virtues of antibodies are countered by significant challenges. Foremost among these is the need for expression in mammalian cells (largely due to often necessary post‐translational modifications). In response to these challenges, researchers have developed an array of minimalist antibodies and mimetics, which are smaller, more stable, simpler to express in Escherichia coli, and amendable to laboratory evolution and protein engineering. Here we describe these scaffolds and discuss recent applications of minimalist antibodies and mimetics.     

An evolutionary algorithm that constructs recurrent neural networks

Standard methods for simultaneously inducing the structure and weights of recurrent neural networks limit every task to an assumed class of architectures. Such a simplification is necessary since the interactions between network structure and function are not well understood. Evolutionary computations, which include genetic algorithms and evolutionary programming, are population-based search methods that have shown promise in many similarly complex tasks. This paper argues that genetic algorithms are inappropriate for network acquisition and describes an evolutionary program, called GNARL, that simultaneously acquires both the structure and weights for recurrent networks. GNARL's empirical acquisition method allows for the emergence of complex behaviors and topologies that are potentially excluded by the artificial architectural constraints imposed in standard network induction methods.