Spurious consensus and opinion revision: Why might people be more confident in their less accurate judgments?

In the interest of improving their decision making, individuals revise their opinions on the basis of samples of opinions obtained from others. However, such a revision process may lead decision makers to experience greater confidence in their less accurate judgments. The authors theorize that people tend to underestimate the informative value of independently drawn opinions, if these appear to conflict with one another, yet place some confidence even in the spurious consensus, which may arise when opinions are sampled interdependently. The experimental task involved people's revision of their opinions (caloric estimates of foods) on the basis of advice. The method of sampling the advisory opinions (independent or interdependent) was the main factor. The results reveal a dissociation between confidence and accuracy. A theoretical underlying mechanism is suggested whereby people attend to consensus (consistency) cues at the expense of information on interdependence. Implications for belief updating and for individual and group decisions are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assessment of insulin resistance by a <Superscript>13</Superscript>C glucose breath test: a new tool for early diagnosis and follow-up of high-risk patients

Background/Aims

Insulin resistance (IR) plays an important role in the pathogenesis of diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Current methods for insulin resistance detection are cumbersome, or not sensitive enough for early detection and follow-up. The BreathID^® system can continuously analyse breath samples in real-time at the point-of-care. Here we determined the efficacy of the BreathID^® using the ¹³C-Glucose breath test (GBT) for evaluation of insulin resistance.

Methods

Twenty healthy volunteers were orally administered 75 mg of ¹³C-glucose 1-¹³C. An oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) was performed immediately; followed by serum glucose and insulin level determinations using GBT. GBT and OGTT were repeated following exercise, which alters insulin resistance levels.

Results

Within-subject correlations of GBT parameters with serum glucose and serum insulin levels were high. Before and after exercise, between-subjects correlations were high between the relative insulin levels and the % dose recoveries at 90 min (PDR 90), and the cumulative PDRs at 60 min (CPDR 60). Pairwise correlations were identified between pre-exercise Homeostasis Model Assessment (HOMA) IR at 90 min and PDR 90; HOMA B (for beta cell function) 120 and CPDR 30; HOMA IR 60 and peak time post-exercise; and HOMA B 150 with PDR 150.

Conclusions

The non-invasive real-time BreathID^® GBT reliably assesses changes in liver glucose metabolism, and the degree of insulin resistance. It may serve as a non-invasive tool for early diagnosis and follow up of patients in high-risk groups.

     

Space Complexity Vs. Query Complexity

Combinatorial property testing deals with the following relaxation of decision problems: Given a fixed property and an input x, one wants to decide whether x satisfies the property or is “far” from satisfying it. The main focus of property testing is in identifying large families of properties that can be tested with a certain number of queries to the input. In this paper we study the relation between the space complexity of a language and its query complexity. Our main result is that for any space complexity s(n) ≤ log n there is a language with space complexity O(s(n)) and query complexity 2^Ω(s(n)). Our result has implications with respect to testing languages accepted by certain restricted machines. Alon et al. [FOCS 1999] have shown that any regular language is testable with a constant number of queries. It is well known that any language in space o(log log n) is regular, thus implying that such languages can be so tested. It was previously known that there are languages in space O(log n) that are not testable with a constant number of queries and Newman [FOCS 2000] raised the question of closing the exponential gap between these two results. A special case of our main result resolves this problem as it implies that there is a language in space O(log log n) that is not testable with a constant number of queries. It was also previously known that the class of testable properties cannot be extended to all context-free languages. We further show that one cannot even extend the family of testable languages to the class of languages accepted by single counter machines.      

Communication—Processor Tradeoffs in a Limited Resources PRAM

   Abstract. We consider a simple restriction of the PRAM model (called PPRAM), where the input is arbitrarily partitioned between a fixed set of p processors and the shared memory is restricted to m cells. This model allows for investigation of the tradeoffs/ bottlenecks with respect to the communication bandwidth (modeled by the shared memory size m ) and the number of processors p . The model is quite simple and allows the design of optimal algorithms without losing the effect of communication bottlenecks. We have focused on the PPRAM complexity of problems that have

Prominent Field for Shape Processing and Analysis of?Archaeological Artifacts

Archaeological artifacts are an essential element of archaeological research. They provide evidence of the past and enable archaeologists to obtain qualified conclusion. Nowadays, many artifacts are scanned by 3D scanners. While convenient in many aspects, the 3D representation is often unsuitable for further analysis, due to flaws in the scanning process or defects in the original artifacts. We propose a new approach for automatic processing of scanned artifacts. It is based on the definition of a new direction field on surfaces (a normalized vector field), termed the prominent field. The prominent field is oriented with respect to the prominent feature curves of the surface. We demonstrate the applicability of the prominent field in two applications. The first is surface enhancement of archaeological artifacts, which helps enhance eroded features and remove scanning noise. The second is artificial coloring that can replace manual artifact illustration in archaeological reports.     

斯坦哈特自然历史博物馆

正新的博物馆将成为特拉维大学自然历史类收藏品的新家,该建筑设计包含展览和研究两种功能。通常未展出的收藏品都会放置在一个大木箱里——珍贵的植物和动物标本储存箱。设计师正是借鉴了标本箱这一形象,将建筑体打造成一个神秘的宝箱,邀请人们进入参观。盒子式建筑体象征着永恒,兼具历史与未来两种象征意义。     

Fast photochemical oxidation of proteins for comparing structures of protein-ligand complexes: the calmodulin-peptide model system

Fast photochemical oxidation of proteins (FPOP) is a mass spectrometry-based protein footprinting method that modifies proteins on the microsecond time scale. Highly reactive (?)OH, produced by laser photolysis of hydrogen peroxide, oxidatively modifies the side chains of approximately one-half the common amino acids on this time scale. Because of the short labeling exposure, only solvent-accessible residues are sampled. Quantification of the modification extent for the apo and holo states of a protein-ligand complex provides structurally sensitive information at the amino-acid level to compare the structures of unknown protein complexes with known ones. We report here the use of FPOP to monitor the structural changes of calmodulin in its established binding to M13 of the skeletal muscle myosin light chain kinase. We use the outcome to establish the unknown structures resulting from binding with melittin and mastoparan. The structural comparison follows a comprehensive examination of the extent of FPOP modifications as measured by proteolysis and LC-MS/MS for each protein-ligand equilibrium. The results not only show that the three calmodulin-peptide complexes have similar structures but also reveal those regions of the protein that became more or less solvent-accessible upon binding. This approach has the potential for relatively high throughput, information-dense characterization of a series of protein-ligand complexes in biochemistry and drug discovery when the structure of one reference complex is known, as is the case for calmodulin and M13 of the skeletal muscle myosin light chain kinase, and the structures of related complexes are not.     

Housing and the Material Imagination – Earth,Fire, Air and Water

This paper focuses on the possibilities of the material imagination as a theoretical and practical lens for contemporary housing research. The emphasis is on housing/home as complex material cultural assemblages interwoven across the four key ancient elements: earth, air, fire and water. The principle behind the material imagination is that “matter” – which we are immersed in and indeed ourselves composed of – is important, indeed underpins everything, and yet is typically rendered invisible within housing theory and research. As a critical response to social scientific engagement – “a needed radical corrective” – the potential of the material imagination for housing theory and practice is considered in ways that purposively attend to the elemental dimensions of housing as dynamic, fluid environments comprised of living matter. Suggestions for taking this approach forward through empirical housing studies are outlined.