Participant Vocabulary Use and Selection Differences in Serial Versus Parallel Presentation of Product Reaction Cards

This study looks at the effects on users’ choices when presented with Product Reaction Cards (PRC) in parallel and sequential order. Participants were given brief tasks on two websites and presented with PRC in parallel or sequential order to describe their sentiments. We found that participants selected 25% more words in the sequential condition, including the selection of more positive words (23%). However, the sequential condition took on average 5 minutes longer to complete word selection. Therefore, it is important to understand that the PRC presentation modality can affect the quantity and the choice of vocabulary used by participants.

Nonlinear dynamics in auditory cortical activity reveal the neural basis of perceptual warping in speech categorization

Surrounding context influences speech listening, resulting in dynamic shifts to category percepts. To examine its neural basis, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during vowel identification with continua presented in random, forward, and backward orders to induce perceptual nonlinearities. Behaviorally, sequential order shifted listeners' categorical boundary vs. random delivery revealing perceptual warping (biasing) of the heard phonetic category dependent on recent stimulus history. ERPs revealed later (~300 ms) activity localized to superior temporal and middle/inferior frontal gyri that predicted listeners' hysteresis magnitudes. Findings demonstrate that top-down, stimulus history effects on speech categorization are governed by interactions between frontotemporal brain regions.

SMCKAT, a Sequential Multi-Dimensional CNV Kernel-Based Association Test

Copy number variants (CNVs) are the most common form of structural genetic variation, reflecting the gain or loss of DNA segments compared with a reference genome. Studies have identified CNV association with different diseases. However, the association between the sequential order of CNVs and disease-related traits has not been studied, to our knowledge, and it is still unclear that CNVs function individually or whether they work in coordination with other CNVs to manifest a disease or trait. Consequently, we propose the first such method to test the association between the sequential order of CNVs and diseases. Our sequential multi-dimensional CNV kernel-based association test (SMCKAT) consists of three parts: (1) a single CNV group kernel measuring the similarity between two groups of CNVs; (2) a whole genome group kernel that aggregates several single group kernels to summarize the similarity between CNV groups in a single chromosome or the whole genome; and (3) an association test between the CNV sequential order and disease-related traits using a random effect model. We evaluate SMCKAT on CNV data sets exhibiting rare or common CNVs, demonstrating that it can detect specific biologically relevant chromosomal regions supported by the biomedical literature. We compare the performance of SMCKAT with MCKAT, a multi-dimensional kernel association test. Based on the results, SMCKAT can detect more specific chromosomal regions compared with MCKAT that not only have CNV characteristics, but the CNV order on them are significantly associated with the disease-related trait.

Ants Can Expect the Size of the Next Element in a Geometric Sequence of Increasing or Decreasing Shapes, Only If This Sequence Is Present

Having shown that the ant Myrmica sabuleti can expect the following number in an arithmetic sequence of increasing or decreasing numbers, we here investigated on their ability in expecting the size of the following element in an increasing or decreasing geometric sequence of shapes, otherwise identical. We found that the ants could anticipatively correctly increment or decrement a geometric sequence when tested in the presence of the learned sequence, but not without seeing the sequence in its learned sequential order. Such a behavior, i.e. perfectly choosing the next element of a sequence when in presence of that sequence but not otherwise, seems appropriate for the use of encountered cues while foraging and returning to the nest.

Synergistic Effect of Simultaneous versus Sequential Combined Treatment of Histone Deacetylase Inhibitor Valproic Acid with Etoposide on Melanoma Cells

Melanoma is the most lethal form of skin cancer, which is intrinsically resistant to conventional chemotherapy. Combination therapy has been developed to overcome this challenge and show synergistic anticancer effects on melanoma. Notably, the histone deacetylase inhibitor, valproic acid (VPA), has been indicated as a potential sensitizer of chemotherapy drugs on various metastatic cancers, including advanced melanoma. In this study, we explored whether VPA could serve as an effective sensitizer of chemotherapy drug etoposide (ETO) on B16-F10 and SK-MEL-2-Luc melanoma cell lines in response to drug-induced DNA damages. Our results demonstrated that the VPA-ETO simultaneous combined treatment and ETO pretreated sequential combined treatment generated higher inhibitory effectivities than the individual treatment of each drug. We found the VPA-ETO simultaneous combined treatment contributed to the synergistic inhibitory effect by the augmented DNA double-strand breaks, accompanied by a compromised homologous recombination activity. In comparison, the ETO pretreated sequential combined treatment led to synergistic inhibitory effect via enhanced apoptosis. Surprisingly, the enhanced homologous recombination activity and G2/M phase arrest resulted in the antagonistic effect in both cells under VPA pretreated sequential combined treatment. In summary, our findings suggested that sequential order and effective dose of drug administration in VPA-ETO combination therapy could induce different cellular responses in melanoma cells. Such understanding might help potentiate the effectiveness of melanoma treatment and highlight the importance of sequential order and effective dose in combination therapy.

Efficacy and Quality Attributes of Antimicrobial Agents Application via a Commercial Electrostatic Spray Cabinet to Inactivate Salmonella on Chicken Thigh Meat

Salmonella is a foodborne pathogen associated with poultry meat. This study aimed to determine the efficiency and quality attributes of two antimicrobial agents to reduce Salmonella on raw chicken meat when applied individually and in combination using an electrostatic spray cabinet. Five logs CFU/g of non-pathogenic, rifampicin-resistant Salmonella Typhimurium were inoculated on skin less, bone less, raw chicken thigh meat and passed through an electrostatic spray cabinet while being sprayed with 5% lauric arginate (LAE), and 100, 1000, 1500, 1750 ppm of peracetic acid (PAA). Spraying of 5% LAE for 45 s, significantly reduced Salmonella by 5 logs (p<0.05). The 1500 ppm of PAA reduced Salmonella significantly within 45 s (1.157 logs). Spraying of 1500 ppm PAA followed by LAE within 15 s reduced Salmonella significantly more than vice versa (p<0.05). The color, water holding capacity, and texture did not differ significantly, but resulted in a significantly strong aroma and flavor. Both LAE and PAA efficiently reduced Salmonella when applied in an electrostatic spray cabinet on raw chicken thigh meat. The results suggest that the sequential order of application of antimicrobial agents is important to improve the safety and quality of raw chicken thigh meat.

Label-Free, Color-Indicating, Polarizer-Free Dye-Doped Liquid Crystal Microfluidic Polydimethylsiloxane Biosensing Chips for Detecting Albumin

We reveal a novel design for dye-doped liquid crystal (DDLC) microfluidic biosensing chips in the polydimethylsiloxane material. With this design chip, the orientation of DDLCs was affected by the interface between the walls of the channels and DDLCs. When the inside of a channel was coated with an N,N-dimethyl-n-octadecyl-3-aminopropyltrimethoxysilyl chloride (DMOAP) alignment layer, the DDLCs oriented homeotropically in a homeotropic (H) state under cross-polarized microscopy. After immobilization of antigens with antibodies on the alignment layer-coated microchannel walls, the optical intensity of the DDLC change from the dark H state to the bright planar (P) state. Using pressure-driven flow, the binding of antigens/antibodies to the DDLCs could be detected in an experimental sequential order. The microfluidic DDLCs were tested by detecting bovine serum albumin (BSA) and its immune-responses of antigens/antibodies. We proved that this immunoassay chip was able to detect BSA antigens/antibodies pairs with the detection limit about 0.5 µg/mL. The novel DDLC chip was shown to be a simple, multi-detection device, and label-free microfluidic chips are presented.

Selective Code Duplication for Soft Error Protection on VLIW Architectures

Very Long Instruction Word, or VLIW, architectures have received much attention in specific-purpose applications such as scientific computation, digital signal processing, and even safety-critical systems. Several compilation techniques for VLIW architectures have been proposed in order to improve the performance, but there is a lack of research to improve reliability against soft errors. Instruction duplication techniques have been proposed by exploiting unused instruction slots (i.e., NOPs) in VLIW architectures. All the instructions cannot be replicated without additional code lines. Additional code lines are required to increase the number of duplicated instructions in VLIW architectures. Our experimental results show that 52% performance overhead as compared to unprotected source code when we duplicate all the instructions. This considerable performance overhead can be inapplicable for resource-constrained embedded systems so that we can limit the number of additional NOP instructions for selective protection. However, the previous static scheme duplicates instructions just in sequential order. In this work, we propose packing-oriented duplication to maximize the number of duplicated instructions within the same peroformance overhead bounds. Our packing-oriented approach can duplicate up to 18% more instructions within the same performance overheads compared to the previous static duplication techniques.

ARABIC: المقاصد المرعية لدى الفقهاء في مؤلفاتهم في ترتيب الأبواب الفقهية

This research clarifies the arrangement of Jurisprudential Chapters made by Jurists in their books. They divided these chapters to acts of worship and treatment and the other branches of Islamic Jurisprudence that regulate the relationship of the human with his Lord (Allah) as well as other matters which are needed by the human in his relationship with common people, so, we found our scholars arranging these different Jurisprudential provisions in their books in line with human reality in terms of commencing with the important thing and then the most important one ot reach the needed and the desired goal of writing these books, and one of the greatest of them is to bring closer understanding to those who benefit from this scientific heritage that was left for us by these exceptional scholars (Ulama) where they took care of arranging their books for the benefit and understanding of the intended meaning with ease, and this arrangement didn't happen randomly, but rather had a prominent reason in the author's mind, especially in jurisprudence, this systematic arrangement from these scholars in their books help students and readers to memorize and understand the issues contained therein, arranged in a sequential order that is compatible with the nature of man.

Quantitative model of eukaryotic Cdk control through the Forkhead CONTROLLER

In budding yeast, synchronization of waves of mitotic cyclins that activate the Cdk1 kinase occur through Forkhead transcription factors. These molecules act as controllers of their sequential order and may account for the separation in time of incompatible processes. Here, a Forkhead-mediated design principle underlying the quantitative model of Cdk control is proposed for budding yeast. This design rationalizes timing of cell division, through progressive and coordinated cyclin/Cdk-mediated phosphorylation of Forkhead, and autonomous cyclin/Cdk oscillations. A “clock unit” incorporating this design that regulates timing of cell division is proposed for both yeast and mammals, and has a DRIVER operating the incompatible processes that is instructed by multiple CLOCKS. TIMERS determine whether the clocks are active, whereas CONTROLLERS determine how quickly the clocks shall function depending on external MODULATORS. This “clock unit” may coordinate temporal waves of cyclin/Cdk concentration/activity in the eukaryotic cell cycle making the driver operate the incompatible processes, at separate times.