Investigating five key predictive text entry with combined distance and keystroke modelling

This paper investigates text entry on mobile devices using only five-keys. Primarily to support text entry on smaller devices than mobile phones, this method can also be used to maximise screen space on mobile phones. Reported combined Fitt's law and keystroke modelling predicts similar performance with bigram prediction using a five-key keypad as is currently achieved on standard mobile phones using unigram prediction. User studies reported here show similar user performance on five-key pads as found elsewhere for novice nine-key pad users

The effect of distance on reaction time in aiming movements

Target distance affects movement duration in aiming tasks but its effect on reaction time (RT) is poorly documented. RT is a function of both preparation and initiation. Experiment 1 pre-cued movement (allowing advanced preparation) and found no influence of distance on RT. Thus, target distance does not affect initiation time. Experiment 2 removed pre-cue information and found that preparing a movement of increased distance lengthens RT. Experiment 3 explored movements to targets of cued size at non-cued distances and found size altered peak speed and movement duration but RT was influenced by distance alone. Thus, amplitude influences preparation time (for reasons other than altered duration) but not initiation time. We hypothesise that the RT distance effect might be due to the increased number of possible trajectories associated with further targets: a hypothesis that can be tested in future experiments

Utility of Parental Mediation Model on Youth’s Problematic Online Gaming

The Parental Mediation Model PMM) was initially designed to regulate children’s attitudes towards the traditional media. In the present era, because of prevalent online media there is a need for similar regulative measures. Spending long hours on social media and playing online games increase the risks of exposure to the negative outcomes of online gaming. This paper initially applied the PMM developed by European Kids Online to (i) test the reliability and validity of this model and (ii) identify the effectiveness of this model in controlling problematic online gaming (POG). The data were collected from 592 participants comprising 296 parents and 296 students of four foreign universities, aged 16 to 22 years in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia). The study found that the modified model of the five-factor PMM (Technical mediation, Monitoring mediation, Restrictive mediation, Active Mediation of Internet Safety, and Active mediation of Internet Use) functions as a predictor for mitigating POG. The findings suggest the existence of a positive relation between ‘monitoring’ and ‘restrictive’ mediation strategies and exposure to POG while Active Mediation of Internet Safety and Active mediation of Internet use were insignificant predictors. Results showed a higher utility of ‘technical’ strategies by the parents led to less POG. The findings of this study do not support the literature suggesting active mediation is more effective for reducing youth’s risky behaviour. Instead, parents need to apply more technical mediations with their children and adolescents’ Internet use to minimize the negative effects of online gaming

Anticarbamylated protein antibodies are associated with long-term disability and increased disease activity in patients with early inflammatory arthritis:Results from the Norfolk Arthritis Register

Objectives: Anticarbamylated protein (anti-CarP) antibodies are a novel family of autoantibodies recently identified in patients with inflammatory arthritis. The aim of this study was to investigate their association with long-term outcomes of disability and disease activity over 20 years’ follow-up in a cohort of patients with inflammatory polyarthritis (IP).  Methods: Norfolk Arthritis Register recruited adults with recent-onset swelling of ≥2 joints for ≥4 weeks from 1990 to 2009. At baseline, Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ) and 28 joint disease activity scores (DAS28) were obtained, and C reactive protein, rheumatoid factor (RF), anticitrullinated protein antibodies (ACPA) and anti-CarP antibodies were measured. Further HAQ scores and DAS28 were obtained at regular intervals over 20 years. Generalised estimating equations were used to test the association between anti-CarP antibody status and longitudinal HAQ and DAS28 scores; adjusting for age, gender, smoking status, year of inclusion and ACPA status. Analyses were repeated in subgroups stratified by ACPA status. The relative association of RF, ACPA and anti-CarP antibodies with HAQ and DAS28 scores was investigated using a random effects model.  Results: 1995 patients were included; 1310 (66%) were female. Anti-CarP antibodies were significantly associated with more disability and higher disease activity, HAQ multivariate β-coefficient (95% CI) 0.12 (0.02 to 0.21), and these associations remained significant in the ACPA-negative subgroups. The associations of RF, ACPA and anti-CarP antibodies were found to be additive in the random effects model.  Conclusions: Anti-CarP antibodies are associated with increased disability and higher disease activity in patients with IP. Our results suggest that measurement of anti-CarP antibodies may be useful in identifying ACPA-negative patients with worse long-term outcomes. Further, anti-CarP antibody status provided additional information about RF and ACPA

Robot rights? Towards a social-relational justification of moral consideration \ud

Should we grant rights to artificially intelligent robots? Most current and near-future robots do not meet the hard criteria set by deontological and utilitarian theory. Virtue ethics can avoid this problem with its indirect approach. However, both direct and indirect arguments for moral consideration rest on ontological features of entities, an approach which incurs several problems. In response to these difficulties, this paper taps into a different conceptual resource in order to be able to grant some degree of moral consideration to some intelligent social robots: it sketches a novel argument for moral consideration based on social relations. It is shown that to further develop this argument we need to revise our existing ontological and social-political frameworks. It is suggested that we need a social ecology, which may be developed by engaging with Western ecology and Eastern worldviews. Although this relational turn raises many difficult issues and requires more work, this paper provides a rough outline of an alternative approach to moral consideration that can assist us in shaping our relations to intelligent robots and, by extension, to all artificial and biological entities that appear to us as more than instruments for our human purpose

IL-4 impairs wound healing potential in the skin by repressing fibronectin expression

BACKGROUND: Atopic dermatitis (AD) is characterized by intense pruritis and is a common childhood inflammatory disease. Many factors are known to affect AD development, including the pleiotropic cytokine IL-4. Yet little is known regarding the direct effects of IL-4 on keratinocyte function. OBJECTIVE AND METHODS: In this report RNA sequencing and functional assays were used to define the effect of the allergic environment on primary keratinocyte function and wound repair in mice. RESULTS: Acute or chronic stimulation by IL-4 modified expression of more than 1000 genes expressed in human keratinocytes that are involved in a broad spectrum of nonoverlapping functions. Among the IL-4-induced changes, repression of fibronectin critically impaired the human keratinocyte wound response. Moreover, in mouse models of spontaneous and induced AD-like lesions, there was delayed re-epithelialization. Importantly, topical treatment with fibronectin restored the epidermal repair response. CONCLUSION: Keratinocyte gene expression is critically shaped by IL-4, altering cell fate decisions, which are likely important for the clinical manifestations and pathology of allergic skin disease

Short-term efficacy of physical interventions in osteoarthritic knee pain. A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised placebo-controlled trials.

BACKGROUND: Treatment efficacy of physical agents in osteoarthritis of the knee (OAK) pain has been largely unknown, and this systematic review was aimed at assessing their short-term efficacies for pain relief. METHODS: Systematic review with meta-analysis of efficacy within 1-4 weeks and at follow up at 1-12 weeks after the end of treatment. RESULTS: 36 randomised placebo-controlled trials (RCTs) were identified with 2434 patients where 1391 patients received active treatment. 33 trials satisfied three or more out of five methodological criteria (Jadad scale). The patient sample had a mean age of 65.1 years and mean baseline pain of 62.9 mm on a 100 mm visual analogue scale (VAS). Within 4 weeks of the commencement of treatment manual acupuncture, static magnets and ultrasound therapies did not offer statistically significant short-term pain relief over placebo. Pulsed electromagnetic fields offered a small reduction in pain of 6.9 mm [95% CI: 2.2 to 11.6] (n = 487). Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS, including interferential currents), electro-acupuncture (EA) and low level laser therapy (LLLT) offered clinically relevant pain relieving effects of 18.8 mm [95% CI: 9.6 to 28.1] (n = 414), 21.9 mm [95% CI: 17.3 to 26.5] (n = 73) and 17.7 mm [95% CI: 8.1 to 27.3] (n = 343) on VAS respectively versus placebo control. In a subgroup analysis of trials with assumed optimal doses, short-term efficacy increased to 22.2 mm [95% CI: 18.1 to 26.3] for TENS, and 24.2 mm [95% CI: 17.3 to 31.3] for LLLT on VAS. Follow-up data up to 12 weeks were sparse, but positive effects seemed to persist for at least 4 weeks after the course of LLLT, EA and TENS treatment was stopped. CONCLUSION: TENS, EA and LLLT administered with optimal doses in an intensive 2-4 week treatment regimen, seem to offer clinically relevant short-term pain relief for OAK

The Explication Defence of Arguments from Reference

In a number of influential papers, Machery, Mallon, Nichols and Stich have presented a powerful critique of so-called arguments from reference, arguments that assume that a particular theory of reference is correct in order to establish a substantive conclusion. The critique is that, due to cross-cultural variation in semantic intuitions supposedly undermining the standard methodology for theorising about reference, the assumption that a theory of reference is correct is unjustified. I argue that the many extant responses to Machery et al.’s critique do little for the proponent of an argument from reference, as they do not show how to justify the problematic assumption. I then argue that it can in principle be justified by an appeal to Carnapian explication. I show how to apply the explication defence to arguments from reference given by Andreasen (for the biological reality of race) and by Churchland (against the existence of beliefs and desires)

Wide-Scale Analysis of Human Functional Transcription Factor Binding Reveals a Strong Bias towards the Transcription Start Site

We introduce a novel method to screen the promoters of a set of genes with shared biological function, against a precompiled library of motifs, and find those motifs which are statistically over-represented in the gene set. The gene sets were obtained from the functional Gene Ontology (GO) classification; for each set and motif we optimized the sequence similarity score threshold, independently for every location window (measured with respect to the TSS), taking into account the location dependent nucleotide heterogeneity along the promoters of the target genes. We performed a high throughput analysis, searching the promoters (from 200bp downstream to 1000bp upstream the TSS), of more than 8000 human and 23,000 mouse genes, for 134 functional Gene Ontology classes and for 412 known DNA motifs. When combined with binding site and location conservation between human and mouse, the method identifies with high probability functional binding sites that regulate groups of biologically related genes. We found many location-sensitive functional binding events and showed that they clustered close to the TSS. Our method and findings were put to several experimental tests. By allowing a "flexible" threshold and combining our functional class and location specific search method with conservation between human and mouse, we are able to identify reliably functional TF binding sites. This is an essential step towards constructing regulatory networks and elucidating the design principles that govern transcriptional regulation of expression. The promoter region proximal to the TSS appears to be of central importance for regulation of transcription in human and mouse, just as it is in bacteria and yeast.Comment: 31 pages, including Supplementary Information and figure

Integrating personality research and animal contest theory: aggressiveness in the green swordtail <i>Xiphophorus helleri</i>

&lt;p&gt;Aggression occurs when individuals compete over limiting resources. While theoretical studies have long placed a strong emphasis on context-specificity of aggression, there is increasing recognition that consistent behavioural differences exist among individuals, and that aggressiveness may be an important component of individual personality. Though empirical studies tend to focus on one aspect or the other, we suggest there is merit in modelling both within-and among-individual variation in agonistic behaviour simultaneously. Here, we demonstrate how this can be achieved using multivariate linear mixed effect models. Using data from repeated mirror trials and dyadic interactions of male green swordtails, &lt;i&gt;Xiphophorus helleri&lt;/i&gt;, we show repeatable components of (co)variation in a suite of agonistic behaviour that is broadly consistent with a major axis of variation in aggressiveness. We also show that observed focal behaviour is dependent on opponent effects, which can themselves be repeatable but were more generally found to be context specific. In particular, our models show that within-individual variation in agonistic behaviour is explained, at least in part, by the relative size of a live opponent as predicted by contest theory. Finally, we suggest several additional applications of the multivariate models demonstrated here. These include testing the recently queried functional equivalence of alternative experimental approaches, (e. g., mirror trials, dyadic interaction tests) for assaying individual aggressiveness.&lt;/p&gt