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Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences36%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting27%

Selected Abstracts

Neural connectivity as an intermediate phenotype: Brain networks under genetic control

HUMAN BRAIN MAPPING, Issue 7 2009
Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg
Abstract Recent evidence suggests that default mode connectivity characterizes neural states that account for a sizable proportion of brain activity and energy expenditure, and therefore represent a plausible neural intermediate phenotype. This implies the possibility of genetic control over systems-level connectivity features. Imaging genetics is an approach to combine genetic assessment with multimodal neuroimaging to discover neural systems linked to genetic abnormalities or variation. In the present contribution, we report results obtained from applying this strategy to both structural connectivity and functional connectivity data. Using data for serotonergic (5-HTTLPR, MAO-A) and dopaminergic (DARPP-32) genes as examples, we show that systems-level connectivity networks under genetic control can be identified. Remarkable similarities are observed across modalities and scales of description. Features of connectivity often better account for behavioral effects of genetic variation than regional parameters of activation or structure. These data provide convergent evidence for genetic control in humans over connectivity systems, whose characterization has promise for identifying neural systems mediating genetic risk for complex human behavior and psychiatric disease. Hum Brain Mapp, 2009. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]

Mental rotation of random lined figures

JAPANESE PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH, Issue 3 2001
Fumio Kanbe
The present study investigated the possible occurrence of mental rotation in judgments of whether pairs of line figures were identical. The feasibility of two discrete cognitive explanations based on holistic transformation and on feature computation was examined with varied levels of complexity controlled by the numbers of lines in a figure. In the experiment, participants were required to judge whether simultaneously presented pairs of figures were the same or different. When the participants' data were collapsed for regression analyses, evidence for mental rotation was not detected at any level of complexity, but reanalysis of the data revealed that some participants employed mental rotation in the cognition of complex figures. A monotonous increase in reaction times as a function of the number of lines was evident in identical pairs of figures but not in nonidentical pairs. It is argued that the feature computation explanation would better account for these results than would the holistic transformation explanation. [source]

Dependent and Accountable: Evidence from the Modern Theory of Central Banking

JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC SURVEYS, Issue 5 2000
Gustavo Piga
In this paper we take another look at the literature on central bank independence. We show that the representative-agent approach to monetary policy is seriously flawed and does not provide a sound basis for deriving institutional solutions to the inflationary-bias. We then argue that the political approach to monetary policy provides a better account of the inflationary-bias and that this has important implications for the set-up of institutional arrangements, like central-bank independence, and the role of contractual arrangements, like indexation. Central bank independence, if appropriately modeled, can fail to reduce inflationary pressures in plausible circumstances. We then identify some issues in the theory of central banking that have not been clearly resolved and we offer some intuition as to the way they could be studied. We conclude by showing some potentially worrisome implications for the future of the European Monetary Union. [source]

Evaluation of correlation forecasting models for risk management

JOURNAL OF FORECASTING, Issue 7 2007
Vasiliki D. Skintzi
Abstract Reliable correlation forecasts are of paramount importance in modern risk management systems. A plethora of correlation forecasting models have been proposed in the open literature, yet their impact on the accuracy of value-at-risk calculations has not been explicitly investigated. In this paper, traditional and modern correlation forecasting techniques are compared using standard statistical and risk management loss functions. Three portfolios consisting of stocks, bonds and currencies are considered. We find that GARCH models can better account for the correlation's dynamic structure in the stock and bond portfolios. On the other hand, simpler specifications such as the historical mean model or simple moving average models are better suited for the currency portfolio.,,Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Reduced Labial Temperature in Response to Sexual Films with Distractors among Women with Lower Sexual Desire

THE JOURNAL OF SEXUAL MEDICINE, Issue 2pt2 2010
Nicole Prause PhD
ABSTRACT Introduction., Sexual desire variation traditionally has been treated as due to variance in affective response to sexual stimulation, but differences in attention to the stimuli may better account for differences in sexual desire. Aim., Determine whether sexual desire varies due to attention biases towards sexual stimuli. Main outcome measures., Sexual arousal was quantified by physiological (labia minus temperature) and experienced (continuously adjusting a potentiometer) indicators. Methods., Twenty-two women who varied in their level of sexual desire attended one laboratory session during which they viewed a neutral nature film, a sexual film, and a sexual film with distractors while their labial temperature and self-reported sexual arousal were recorded. Results., Participants reported and displayed lower sexual arousal during the sexual stimulus with distractors as compared to the sexual film without distractors. While all women reported lower sexual arousal to the sexual film with distractors, women with relatively lower sexual desire also reported lower sexual arousal to the sexual film with no distractors than women with higher sexual desire. Physiologically, women with lower sexual desire exhibited lower labial temperature. Conclusions., Since the predicted lower self-reported and physiological sexual arousal to the sexual stimulus with distractors for the women with lower sexual desire did not emerge, this study does not support that sexual desire levels vary due to differential attention to sexual stimuli. Prause N, and Heiman J. Reduced labial temperature in response to sexual films with distractors among women with lower sexual desire. J Sex Med 2010;7:951,963. [source]

Reconceptualizing Collective Action in the Contemporary Media Environment

COMMUNICATION THEORY, Issue 4 2005
Bruce Bimber
Collective action theory, which is widely applied to explain human phenomena in which public goods are at stake, traditionally rests on at least two main tenets: that individuals confront discrete decisions about free riding and that formal organization is central to locating and contacting potential participants in collective action, motivating them, and coordinating their actions. Recent uses of technologies of information and communication for collective action appear in some instances to violate these two tenets. In order to explain these, we reconceptualize collective action as a phenomenon of boundary crossing between private and public domains. We show how a reconceptualized theory of collective action can better account for certain contemporary phenomena, and we situate traditional collective action theory as a special case of our expanded theory. [source]

Entertainment,Education and Elaboration Likelihood: Understanding the Processing of Narrative Persuasion

COMMUNICATION THEORY, Issue 2 2002
Michael D. Slater
The impact of entertainment,education messages on beliefs, attitudes, and behavior is typically explained in terms of social cognitive theory principles. However, important additional insights regarding reasons why entertainment,education messages have effects can be derived from the processing of persuasive content in narrative messages. Elaboration likelihood approaches suggest that absorption in a narrative, and response to characters in a narrative, should enhance persuasive effects and suppress counterarguing if the implicit persuasive content is counterattitudinal. Also, persuasion mediators and moderators such as topic involvement should be reduced in importance. Evidence in support of these propositions are reviewed in this article. Research needed to extend application of these findings to entertainment,education contexts, to further develop theory in the area of persuasion and narrative, and to better account for other persuasive effects of entertainment narrative, such as those hypothesized in cultivation theory, are discussed. [source]

To All the Girls I've Loved Before: Academic Love Letters on Mentoring, Power, and Desire

COMMUNICATION THEORY, Issue 1 2000
Elizabeth Bell
This epistolary essay features 6 letters portraying mentoring relationships among 4 women in the academy. Interrogating both genderless and gendered models of mentoring, this essay argues for "entrustment," a symbolic mother-daughter relationship between women is a better account of women's power and desire than traditional frameworks of male power and female mutuality. Second, these letters put academic labor in the background to foreground the multiple contexts-career, family, heterosexual relationship-from which women of different ages, races, and status approach work and relationship in the academy. Third, these letters pay debts to specific women, as well as paint portraits of past and future generations of women, in the creation and inheritance of legacies of cultural work. This project takes the risk of strategic separatism to create and to enact women-centered spaces in the academy where academic and relational labor thrives. [source]

Motion picture performance: A review and research agenda

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT REVIEWS, Issue 3 2009
Allègre L. Hadida
This paper provides a comprehensive literature review of empirical studies of motion picture performance published from 1977 to 2006 inclusive in the following five disciplines of the social sciences: strategy, organization theory, marketing, cultural economics and sociology. It introduces a novel framework which organizes the various dimensions and explanatory factors of movie performance into five distinct categories and underscores their relationships. The paper, which uses this model as a roadmap for discussions of film success, serves two complementary purposes. First, it clarifies the current state of the literature, stresses core contributions and exposes limitations in existing research by emphasizing hitherto neglected independent explanatory factors, dependent dimensions and correlations between them. Second, it introduces five conceptual, methodological and empirical suggestions for further cinema performance research aimed at addressing these limitations and, accordingly, at providing better accounts of motion picture performance in view of the fast-changing conditions of cinema production, marketing and consumption. [source]

Anthropological Knowledge and Native American Cultural Practice in the Liberal Polity

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 2 2002
Professor James P. Boggs
U.S. Indian policy is caught between two incommensurable theories or paradigms. First, liberal theory extended the worldviewof early physical science to understand human nature. Providing the conceptual foundation for liberal polities, it largely underwrote U.S. Indian policy into the mid-20th century. Liberal theory recently has been superceded, as theory, by anthropological culture theory, which better accounts for variations between peoples and the realities of human life. The advent of culture theory marks a major paradigm shift within science and public consciousness. Liberal theory, however, remains the foundation for the powerful ideology of liberalism and the institutional practices of Western capitalism and democracy. Thus arise uncomfortable disjunctions,first, between incommensurable theories that both remain vital forces in public life, and, secondarily, between knowledge and practice. This article explores these contending theoretical formations, disjunctions between them, and illustrates how these disjunctions translate into contemporary argument in U.S. Indian policy. [source]

Fluorescence spectroscopy of H-ras transfected murine fibroblasts: A comparison with Monte Carlo simulations

BIOPOLYMERS, Issue 2 2010
Shlomo Mark
Abstract Autofluorescence properties of tissues have been widely used to diagnose various types of malignancies. In this study, we measured the autofluorescence properties of H-ras transfected murine fibroblasts and the counterpart control cells. The pair of cells is genetically identical except for the transfected H-ras gene. We applied Monte Carlo simulations to evaluate the relative contributions of Rayleigh and Mie scattering effects towards fluorescence in an in vitro model system of normal and H-ras transfected fibroblasts. The experimental results showed that fluorescence emission intensity was higher for normal cells than the malignant counterpart cells by about 30%. In normal cells, linearity in emission intensity was observed for cell densities of up to 1.0 × 106 cells/ml whereas for transformed cells it was up to 1.4 × 106 cells/ml. Nuclear volume changes give good account for the differences in the intrinsic fluorescence between normal and malignant cells. The Monte Carlo (MC) code, newly developed for this study, explains both predominant experimental features: the large fluorescence intensity differences between the transfected and the corresponding control cells as well as the phenomena of the red shift in the excitation spectra as a function of cell density. The contribution of Rayleigh scattering was found to be predominant compared to Mie scattering. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Biopolymers 93: 132,140, 2010. This article was originally published online as an accepted preprint. The "Published Online" date corresponds to the preprint version. You can request a copy of the preprint by emailing the Biopolymers editorial office at biopolymers@wiley.com [source]