scholarly journals Development of the Open Digital Platform for Conducting the Large-Scale Psychological Research

Vestnik RFFI ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 105-119
Author(s):  
Evgeny V. Nikulchev ◽  
Dmitry Yu. Ilin ◽  
Pavel V. Kolyasnikov ◽  
Victoria I. Ismatullina ◽  
Ilya M. Zakharov ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Internal Standard ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Web Interface ◽  
Digital Platform ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
Functional Capabilities ◽  
Interface Generation ◽  
Target Environment ◽  
Study Participants

The paper presents result of the development of the open digital platform (DigitalPsyTools.ru), which provides support for conducting the large-scale psychological research. Development of the dedicated information and data analysis instrument has a goal to consolidate the efforts of the professional interdisciplinary specialists in the area of psychological research on a single platform. Digital psychological platform is built as an evolving information environment with the toolset for conducting psychological studies of all levels. The paper describes the key functional capabilities, tasks solved and requirements implied for the software implementation and target environment conditions. The scalability, variability of the target execution environments of the software components and local specifics provide the foundation for crystallization of the platform development principles. Internal standard of the psychological test representation in a semi-structured form, corresponding domain-specific programming language and its interpreter software were developed. These components provide means for automatic questionnaire web-interface generation for the study participants. The results of the web-interface testing using varying devices are presented.

Methods for the Quantification of Salivary Cortisol and of a-amylase in Biosensors and Portable Devices

2018 ◽  
Vol 68 (12) ◽  
pp. 2857-2859
Author(s):  
Cristina Mihaela Ghiciuc ◽  
Andreea Silvana Szalontay ◽  
Luminita Radulescu ◽  
Sebastian Cozma ◽  
Catalina Elena Lupusoru ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Medical Practice ◽  
Salivary Cortisol ◽  
Clinical Studies ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Portable Devices ◽  
Salivary Amylase ◽  
Specificity And Sensitivity

There is an increasing interest in the analysis of salivary biomarkers for medical practice. The objective of this article was to identify the specificity and sensitivity of quantification methods used in biosensors or portable devices for the determination of salivary cortisol and salivary a-amylase. There are no biosensors and portable devices for salivary amylase and cortisol that are used on a large scale in clinical studies. These devices would be useful in assessing more real-time psychological research in the future.

Evaluation of Second- and Third-Level Variance Proportions in Multilevel Designs With Completely Observed Populations: A Note on a Latent Variable Modeling Procedure

2021 ◽  
pp. 001316442110086
Author(s):  
Tenko Raykov ◽  
Natalja Menold ◽  
Jane Leer
Keyword(s):  
Latent Variable ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Present Note ◽  
Interval Estimation ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Latent Variable Modeling ◽  
Model Choice ◽  
Modeling Methodology ◽  
Level 3 ◽  
Level 2

Two- and three-level designs in educational and psychological research can involve entire populations of Level-3 and possibly Level-2 units, such as schools and educational districts nested within a given state, or neighborhoods and counties in a state. Such a design is of increasing relevance in empirical research owing to the growing popularity of large-scale studies in these and cognate disciplines. The present note discusses a readily applicable procedure for point-and-interval estimation of the proportions of second- and third-level variances in such multilevel settings, which may also be employed in model choice considerations regarding ensuing analyses for response variables of interest. The method is developed within the framework of the latent variable modeling methodology, is readily utilized with widely used software, and is illustrated with an example.

Beat the Bots: Exploring the Effects of Placebo Manipulation on Performance During Video Gameplay

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 923-927
Author(s):  
Sean Brantley ◽  
Michael Wilkinson ◽  
Jing Feng
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Underlying Mechanism ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Sports Psychology ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Subsequent Performance ◽  
Expectancy Effect ◽  
Expectancy Condition ◽  
Game Performance

This study investigates placebos and video games’ usefulness as psychological research tools. One proposed underlying mechanism of the placebo effect is participants’ expectations. Such expectation effects exist in sports psychology and healthcare domains, but inconsistent findings have emerged on whether similar effects impact a participants’ cognitive performance. Concurrently, using video games as task environments is an emerging methodology relating to expertise and large-scale behavioral data collection. Therefore, this study examines the expectancy effect induced by researcher instructions on in-game performance. The instructional expectancy condition for this study is in-game successes framed using emoting (e.g., emoting under the pretense of subsequent performance increases) versus a control group. Preliminary results showed no evidence of different in-game performance between expectancy conditions. Potential mechanisms that could have led to a lack of effect were discussed.

Cognition in a Social Context: A Social-Interactionist Approach to Emergent Phenomena

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 369-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madalina Vlasceanu ◽  
Karalyn Enz ◽  
Alin Coman
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Fundamental Characteristic ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
Emergent Phenomena ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Interactionist ◽  
Interactionist Approach

The formation of collective memories, emotions, and beliefs is a fundamental characteristic of human communities. These emergent outcomes are thought to be the result of a dynamical system of communicative interactions among individuals. But despite recent psychological research on collective phenomena, no programmatic framework to explore the processes involved in their formation exists. Here, we propose a social-interactionist approach that bridges cognitive and social psychology to illuminate how microlevel cognitive phenomena give rise to large-scale social outcomes. It involves first establishing the boundary conditions of cognitive phenomena, then investigating how cognition is influenced by the social context in which it is manifested, and finally studying how dyadic-level influences propagate in social networks. This approach has the potential to (a) illuminate the large-scale consequences of well-established cognitive phenomena, (b) lead to interdisciplinary dialogues between psychology and the other social sciences, and (c) be more relevant for public policy than existing approaches.

scholarly journals Phoenix 2: A locally installable large-scale 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis pipeline with Web interface

2013 ◽  
Vol 167 (4) ◽  
pp. 393-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jung Soh ◽  
Xiaoli Dong ◽  
Sean M. Caffrey ◽  
Gerrit Voordouw ◽  
Christoph W. Sensen
Keyword(s):  
Sequence Analysis ◽  
16S Rrna ◽  
16S Rrna Gene ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Gene Sequence ◽  
Rrna Gene ◽  
Web Interface ◽  
Rrna Gene Sequence ◽  
Analysis Pipeline ◽  
Gene Sequence Analysis

scholarly journals The Microbe Directory: An annotated, searchable inventory of microbes’ characteristics

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heba Shaaban ◽  
David A. Westfall ◽  
Rawhi Mohammad ◽  
David Danko ◽  
Daniela Bezdan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Biofilm Formation ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Research Effort ◽  
Gram Stain ◽  
Web Interface ◽  
Ongoing Effort ◽  
Student Researchers ◽  
User Friendly ◽  
Optimal Ph ◽  
Online Web

The Microbe Directory is a collective research effort to profile and annotate more than 7,500 unique microbial species from the MetaPhlAn2 database that includes bacteria, archaea, viruses, fungi, and protozoa. By collecting and summarizing data on various microbes’ characteristics, the project comprises a database that can be used downstream of large-scale metagenomic taxonomic analyses, allowing one to interpret and explore their taxonomic classifications to have a deeper understanding of the microbial ecosystem they are studying. Such characteristics include, but are not limited to: optimal pH, optimal temperature, Gram stain, biofilm-formation, spore-formation, antimicrobial resistance, and COGEM class risk rating. The database has been manually curated by trained student-researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine and CUNY—Hunter College, and its analysis remains an ongoing effort with open-source capabilities so others can contribute. Available in SQL, JSON, and CSV (i.e. Excel) formats, the Microbe Directory can be queried for the aforementioned parameters by a microorganism’s taxonomy. In addition to the raw database, The Microbe Directory has an online counterpart (https://microbe.directory/) that provides a user-friendly interface for storage, retrieval, and analysis into which other microbial database projects could be incorporated. The Microbe Directory was primarily designed to serve as a resource for researchers conducting metagenomic analyses, but its online web interface should also prove useful to any individual who wishes to learn more about any particular microbe.

scholarly journals Data-Driven Decision Making and Proactive Citizen–Scientist Communication: A Cross-Sectional Study on COVID-19 Vaccination Adherence

Vaccines ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 1384
Author(s):  
Emil Syundyukov ◽  
Martins Mednis ◽  
Linda Zaharenko ◽  
Eva Pildegovica ◽  
Ieva Danovska ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Logistic Regression ◽  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Severe Disease ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Personal Factors ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Digital Platform ◽  
Factors Associated

Due to the severe impact of COVID-19 on public health, rollout of the vaccines must be large-scale. Current solutions are not intended to promote an active collaboration between communities and public health researchers. We aimed to develop a digital platform for communication between scientists and the general population, and to use it for an exploratory study on factors associated with vaccination readiness. The digital platform was developed in Latvia and was equipped with dynamic consent management. During a period of six weeks 467 participants were enrolled in the population-based cross-sectional exploratory study using this platform. We assessed demographics, COVID-19-related behavioral and personal factors, and reasons for vaccination. Logistic regression models adjusted for the level of education, anxiety, factors affecting the motivation to vaccinate, and risk of infection/severe disease were built to investigate their association with vaccination readiness. In the fully adjusted multiple logistic regression model, factors associated with vaccination readiness were anxiety (odds ratio, OR = 3.09 [95% confidence interval 1.88; 5.09]), feelings of social responsibility (OR = 1.61 [1.16; 2.22]), and trust in pharmaceutical companies (OR = 1.53 [1.03; 2.27]). The assessment of a large number of participants in a six-week period show the potential of a digital platform to create a data-driven dialogue on vaccination readiness.

Functional domains of a T-DNA promoter active in crown gall tumors

1987 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-67
Author(s):  
W B Bruce ◽  
W B Gurley
Keyword(s):  
Promoter Activity ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Transcriptional Activity ◽  
Transcriptional Start Site ◽  
Internal Standard ◽  
Significant Loss ◽  
Internal Deletion ◽  
Substitution Mutations ◽  
Tata Motif ◽  
A Minor

Promoter domains required for transcriptional expression of the 780 gene of T-right (pTi15955) were identified by deletion mutagenesis. Accurate quantitation of transcriptional activity of a series of 5' and internal deletion mutants was achieved by using a double gene vector containing a reference 780 gene as an internal standard. Results of the 5' deletions delineated an activator element located between -440 and -229 base pairs (bp) from the start of transcription. Removal of this region resulted in a 100-fold decrease in promoter activity. Two relatively small internal deletion/substitution mutations at positions -74 to -76 and -98 to -112 reduced promoter activity to 38 and 42%, respectively. In most cases large-scale internal deletions (38 to 151 bp) occurring in various locations from positions -12 to -348 bp caused a significant loss in major promoter activity. However, three internal deletions starting at position -37 and extending upstream as far as -153 bp either had little effect on transcriptional activity or resulted in increased activity. Removal of the TATA motif drastically reduced promoter activity to less than 0.1% of the wild type. A minor start of transcription was detected 60 bases upstream from the major transcriptional start site. This minor promoter shares the same activator element as the major promoter for full activity. Deletion and insertion mutations downstream of the minor promoter TATA demonstrated the role of the TATA box in positioning the start of transcription.

Designing a clinical trial for neurorehabilitation

2020 ◽  
pp. 47-60
Author(s):  
Bruce Dobkin ◽  
Clarisa Martinez
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Trials ◽  
Gold Standard ◽  
Trial Design ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Randomized Clinical Trials ◽  
Neurological Diseases ◽  
Parallel Group ◽  
Study Participants ◽  
Parallel Group Trial ◽  
Group Trial

The design, implementation, and analysis of clinical trials for the types of complex therapies needed to lessen impairments and disabilities that result from neurological diseases are reviewed. A multistep progression from feasibility testing in small groups of selected participants to the demonstration of efficacy in large-scale, multicentre randomized clinical trials is presented. Designs other than the ‘gold standard’ parallel-group trial can be used to optimize the contents of a new therapeutic strategy. Emphasis is placed on defining clinical characteristics and establishing a stable functional baseline for study participants. How the choices of outcome measure and comparison intervention affect the statistical and clinical significance of trial results are highlighted. Discussion of methodological concerns about randomization and blinded outcome assessment is followed by a review of common statistical confounders in neurorehabilitation trials. The use of consensus standards about trial reporting provides a valuable checklist for basic decisions in trial design.

scholarly journals High-Throughput Stool Metaproteomics: Method and Application to Human Specimens

mSystems ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos G. Gonzalez ◽  
Hannah C. Wastyk ◽  
Madeline Topf ◽  
Christopher D. Gardner ◽  
Justin L. Sonnenburg ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mass Spectrometry ◽  
High Throughput ◽  
Clinical Studies ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Dietary Intervention ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Mass Spectrometry Analysis ◽  
Careful Study ◽  
Stool Samples ◽  
Study Participants

ABSTRACT Stool-based proteomics is capable of significantly augmenting our understanding of host-gut microbe interactions. However, compared to competing technologies, such as metagenomics and 16S rRNA sequencing, it is underutilized due to its low throughput and the negative impact sample contaminants can have on highly sensitive mass spectrometry equipment. Here, we present a new stool proteomic processing pipeline that addresses these shortcomings in a highly reproducible and quantitative manner. Using this method, 290 samples from a dietary intervention study were processed in approximately 1.5 weeks, largely done by a single researcher. These data indicated a subtle but distinct monotonic increase in the number of significantly altered proteins between study participants on fiber- or fermented food-enriched diets. Lastly, we were able to classify study participants based on their diet-altered proteomic profiles and demonstrated that classification accuracies of up to 89% could be achieved by increasing the number of subjects considered. Taken together, this study represents the first high-throughput proteomic method for processing stool samples in a technically reproducible manner and has the potential to elevate stool-based proteomics as an essential tool for profiling host-gut microbiome interactions in a clinical setting. IMPORTANCE Widely available technologies based on DNA sequencing have been used to describe the kinds of microbes that might correlate with health and disease. However, mechanistic insights might be best achieved through careful study of the dynamic proteins at the interface between the foods we eat, our microbes, and ourselves. Mass spectrometry-based proteomics has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of this complex system, but its application to clinical studies has been hampered by low-throughput and laborious experimentation pipelines. In response, we developed SHT-Pro, the first high-throughput pipeline designed to rapidly handle large stool sample sets. With it, a single researcher can process over one hundred stool samples per week for mass spectrometry analysis, conservatively approximately 10× to 100× faster than previous methods, depending on whether isobaric labeling is used or not. Since SHT-Pro is fairly simple to implement using commercially available reagents, it should be easily adaptable to large-scale clinical studies.

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