Children experiencing social difficulties: Sociometric neglect reconsidered.

Evaluates an oft-used sociometric procedure, the peer nomination technique. Examination of the data reveals support for the assumption that some rejected children are aggressive; however, the data concerning the behavioral characteristics of neglected children are equivocal. Data revealed that neglected children could not be distinguished from their average counterparts on any dependent measure. Rejected children were found to be more unpopular, aggressive, as well as withdrawn than the other sociometric groups. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for the use of sociometry to identify children "at risk" for social and emotional difficulties. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The eutrophication of Lake Champlain's northeastern arm: Insights from paleolimnological analyses

The trophic history of Lake Champlain's northeastern arm was assessed using a multi-proxy paleolimnological approach to provide sub-basin specific information for restoration planning. Sediment cores collected from Missisquoi Bay, St. Albans Bay, and the central Northeast Arm (Inland Sea) were analyzed for nutrients, organic carbon, carbon stable isotopes, biogenic silica, pigments, diatoms and soft algae microfossils. Results indicate that this arm of Lake Champlain was oligotrophic when Europeans arrived in 1609, and that clearance of > 70% of catchment forest cover had minor impact on algal production. Instead, eutrophication of St. Albans Bay was concurrent with sewer installation and expansion in early 20th century, and again with urban development in the 1960–70s. In contrast, less urbanized Missisquoi Bay remained mesotrophic until agriculture intensified after 1970. Interpretation of central Northeast Arm trophic history is complicated because road and railroad causeways built in 19th century reduced sediment input to this basin for several decades. Nevertheless, high surface-sediment concentrations of nutrients, pigments and organic matter along with replacement of Cyclotella bodanica with more eutrophic Fragilaria crotonensis suggest substantial eutrophication in deep as well as shallow water after 1970. We conclude that effective restoration of the northeastern arm is possible, but will require stringent control of animal and human wastes and reduced use of crop fertilizers.     

The Governmentality of Master Planning: Housing Consumption,Aesthetics and Community on a New Estate

The emergence of advanced liberalism as a political rationality has been accompanied by a trend towards more privatized forms of governing, in which market actors assume many of the responsibilities that were formerly state-provided. As a result, the problems of rule regarding who or what to govern and by what means are increasingly preoccupying private actors. This paper examines the privatized governmentalities of rules posed by a property developer of a master planned estate, as it seeks to govern the ethical conduct of local residents by governing through community so that they voluntarily maintain the aesthetic standards of the estate, not only for their own benefit, but also out of a sense of commitment to others.     

Automatic generation of matter-of-opinion video documentaries

In this paper we describe a model for automatically generating video documentaries. This allows viewers to specify the subject and the point of view of the documentary to be generated. The domain is matter-of-opinion documentaries based on interviews. The model combines rhetorical presentation patterns used by documentary makers with a data-driven approach. Rhetorical presentation patterns provide the viewer with an engaging viewing experience, while a data-driven approach can be applied to growing media repositories. To date, the modeling of rhetoric has been achieved in a top-down manner using closed repositories, while data-driven generation approaches were unable to implement non-trivial rhetorical presentation patterns. We describe an implementation of our model in a system, Vox Populi, and apply it to an online documentary shot by a group of independent amateur documentarists.     

Meddling with Medusa: on genetic manipulation, art and animals

Turning animals into art through genetic manipulation poses many questions for how we think about our relationship with other species. Here, I explore three rather disparate sets of issues. First, I ask to what extent the production of such living “artforms” really is as transgressive as advocates claim. Whether or not it counts as radical in terms of art I cannot say: but it is not at all radical, I argue, in terms of how we think about our human place in the world. On the contrary, producing these animals only reinforces our own sense of our importance. The second theme I explore is the extent to which making transgenic organisms for any purposes is radical in terms of complexity. Here, I focus on the idea of complexity as a concept in developmental biology; genetic manipulation may be successful to commercial companies, but it is deeply troubling to many biologists who consider that its deeply entrenched reductionism is enormously problematic. What risks do we run by ignoring nature’s own complexity—and creativity? And—in particular—what risks do we run of damaging or compromising animal welfare? The third theme turns to public perceptions of these new technologies (whether in science or art), and notes the extent of public unease. This unease is not simply a question of public ignorance about the technology, but reflects the enormously rich ways in which we make meanings about animals, and relate to them. These are, I suggest, a far more potent source of creativity than simply moving genes around to make photogenic animals.     

Evaluation of contextual information retrieval effectiveness: overview of issues and research

The increasing prominence of information arising from a wide range of sources delivered over electronic media has made traditional information retrieval systems less effective. Indeed, users are overwhelmed by the information delivered by such systems in response to their queries, particularly when the latter are ambiguous. In order to tackle this problem, the state-of-the-art reveals that there is a growing interest towards contextual information retrieval which relies on various sources of evidence issued from the user’s search background and environment like interests, preferences, time and location, in order to improve the retrieval accuracy. Contextual information retrieval systems are based on different definitions of the core concept of user’s context, various user’s context modeling approaches and several techniques of document relevance measurement, but all share the goal of providing the most useful information to the users in accordance with their context. However, the evaluation methodologies conceived in the past several years for traditional information retrieval and widely used in the evaluation campaigns have been challenged by the consideration of user’s context in the information retrieval process. Thus, we recognize that a critical review of existing evaluation methodologies in contextual information retrieval area is needed in order to design and develop standard evaluation frameworks. We present in this paper a comprehensive survey of contextual information retrieval evaluation methodologies and provide insights into how and why they are appropriate to measure the retrieval effectiveness. We also highlight some of the research challenges ahead that would constitute substantive research area for future research.     

Effects of Liposome and Cardiolipin on Folding and Function of Mitochondrial Erv1

Erv1 (EC number 1.8.3.2) is an essential mitochondrial enzyme catalyzing protein import and oxidative folding in the mitochondrial intermembrane space. Erv1 has both oxidase and cytochrome c reductase activities. While both Erv1 and cytochrome c were reported to be membrane associated in mitochondria, it is unknown how the mitochondrial membrane environment may affect the function of Erv1. Here, in this study, we used liposomes to mimic the mitochondrial membrane and investigated the effect of liposomes and cardiolipin on the folding and function of yeast Erv1. Enzyme kinetics of both the oxidase and cytochrome c reductase activity of Erv1 were studied using oxygen consumption analysis and spectroscopic methods. Our results showed that the presence of liposomes has mild impacts on Erv1 oxidase activity, but significantly inhibited the catalytic efficiency of Erv1 cytochrome c reductase activity in a cardiolipin-dependent manner. Taken together, the results of this study provide important insights into the function of Erv1 in the mitochondria, suggesting that molecular oxygen is a better substrate than cytochrome c for Erv1 in the yeast mitochondria.