Brooklyn College

The principle of relativity Relativistic mechanics Electromagnetic fields Electromagnetic waves The propagation of light The field of moving charges Radiation of electromagnetic waves Particle in a gravitational field The gravitational field equation The field of gravitational bodies Gravitational waves Relativistic cosmology Index.

There is increasing evidence that subjective cognitive decline (SCD) in individuals with unimpaired performance on cognitive tests may represent the first symptomatic manifestation of Alzheimer's disease (AD). The research on SCD in early AD, however, is limited by the absence of common standards. The working group of the Subjective Cognitive Decline Initiative (SCD-I) addressed this deficiency by reaching consensus on terminology and on a conceptual framework for research on SCD in AD. In this publication, research criteria for SCD in pre-mild cognitive impairment (MCI) are presented. In addition, a list of core features proposed for reporting in SCD studies is provided, which will enable comparability of research across different settings. Finally, a set of features is presented, which in accordance with current knowledge, increases the likelihood of the presence of preclinical AD in individuals with SCD. This list is referred to as SCD plus.

I examine the phenomenon of implicit learning, the process by which knowledge about the ralegoverned complexities of the stimulus environment is acquired independently of conscious attempts to do so. Our research with the two, seemingly disparate experimental paradigms of synthetic grammar learning and probability learning is reviewed and integrated with other approaches to the general problem of unconscious cognition. The conclusions reached are as follows: (a) Implicit learning produces a tacit knowledge base that is abstract and representative of the structure of the environment; (b) such knowledge is optimally acquired independently of conscious efforts to learn; and (c) it can be used implicitly to solve problems and make accurate decisions about novel stimulus circumstances. Various epistemological issues and related prob1 lems such as intuition, neuroclinical disorders of learning and memory, and the relationship of evolutionary processes to cognitive science are also discussed. Some two decades ago the term implicit learning was first used to characterize how one develops intuitive knowledge about the underlying structure of a complex stimulus environment (Reber, 1965, 1967). In those early writings, I argued that implicit learning is characterized by two critical features: (a) It is an unconscious process and (b) it yields abstract knowledge. Implicit knowledge results from the induction of an abstract representation of the structure that the stimulus environment displays, and this knowledge is acquired in the absence of conscious, reflective strategies to learn. Since then, the evidence in support of this theory has been abundant, and many of the details of the process have been sharpened. This article is an overview of this evidence and an attempt to extend the general concepts to provide some insight into a variety of related processes such as arriving at intuitive judgments, complex decision making, and, in a broad sense, learning about the complex covariations among events that characterize the environment. Put simply, this is an article about learning. It seems curious, given the pattern of psychological investigation of the middle decades of this century, that the topic of learning should be so poorly represented in the contemporary literature in cognitive psychology. The energies of cognitive scientists have been invested largely in the analysis and modeling of existing knowledge rather than in investigations of how it was acquired. For example, in an important recent article on the general topic of unconscious memorial systems, Schacter (1987) never came to grips with the distinction between implicit learning and implicit memory. The latter, the focus of his review, was dealt with historically, characterized, out

The causal role of students’ self-efficacy beliefs and academic goals in self-motivated academic attainment was studied using path analysis procedures. Parental goal setting and students’ self-efficacy and personal goals at the beginning of the semester served as predictors of students’ final course grades in social studies. In addition, their grades in a prior course in social studies were included in the analyses. A path model of four self-motivation variables and prior grades predicted students ‘final grades in social studies, R = .56. Students’ beliefs in their efficacy for self-regulated learning affected their perceived self-efficacy for academic achievement, which in turn influenced the academic goals they set for themselves and their final academic achievement. Students’ prior grades were predictive of their parents’ grade goals for them, which in turn were linked to the grade goals students set for themselves. These findings were interpreted in terms of the social cognitive theory of academic self-motivation.

The causal role of students’ self-efficacy beliefs and academic goals in self-motivated academic attainment was studied using path analysis procedures. Parental goal setting and students’ self-efficacy and personal goals at the beginning of the semester served as predictors of students’ final course grades in social studies. In addition, their grades in a prior course in social studies were included in the analyses. A path model of four self-motivation variables and prior grades predicted students ‘final grades in social studies, R = .56. Students’ beliefs in their efficacy for self-regulated learning affected their perceived self-efficacy for academic achievement, which in turn influenced the academic goals they set for themselves and their final academic achievement. Students’ prior grades were predictive of their parents’ grade goals for them, which in turn were linked to the grade goals students set for themselves. These findings were interpreted in terms of the social cognitive theory of academic self-motivation.

Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) is an online crowdsourcing service where anonymous online workers complete web-based tasks for small sums of money. The service has attracted attention from experimental psychologists interested in gathering human subject data more efficiently. However, relative to traditional laboratory studies, many aspects of the testing environment are not under the experimenter's control. In this paper, we attempt to empirically evaluate the fidelity of the AMT system for use in cognitive behavioral experiments. These types of experiment differ from simple surveys in that they require multiple trials, sustained attention from participants, comprehension of complex instructions, and millisecond accuracy for response recording and stimulus presentation. We replicate a diverse body of tasks from experimental psychology including the Stroop, Switching, Flanker, Simon, Posner Cuing, attentional blink, subliminal priming, and category learning tasks using participants recruited using AMT. While most of replications were qualitatively successful and validated the approach of collecting data anonymously online using a web-browser, others revealed disparity between laboratory results and online results. A number of important lessons were encountered in the process of conducting these replications that should be of value to other researchers.

Most plant communities consist of several or many species which compete for light, water, and nutrients. Species in a given community may be ranked by their relative success in competition; productivity seems to be the best measure of their success or importance in the community. Curves of decreasing productivity connect the few most important species (the dominants) with a larger number of species of intermediate importance (whose number primarily determines the community's diversity or richness in species) and a smaller number of rare species. These curves are of varied forms and are believed to express different patterns of competition and niche differentiation in communities. It is probably true of plants, as of animals, that no two species in a stable community occupy the same niche. Evolution of niche differentiation makes possible the occurrence together of many plant species which are partial, rather than direct, competitors. Species tend to evolve also toward habitat differentiation, toward scattering of their centers of maximum population density in relation to environmental gradients, so that few species are competing with one another in their population centers. Evolution of both niche and habitat differentiation permits many species to exist together in communities as partial competitors, with distributions broadly and continuously overlapping, forming the landscape's many intergrading communities.

Abstract We found that the cancerous pancreas harbors a markedly more abundant microbiome compared with normal pancreas in both mice and humans, and select bacteria are differentially increased in the tumorous pancreas compared with gut. Ablation of the microbiome protects against preinvasive and invasive pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA), whereas transfer of bacteria from PDA-bearing hosts, but not controls, reverses tumor protection. Bacterial ablation was associated with immunogenic reprogramming of the PDA tumor microenvironment, including a reduction in myeloid-derived suppressor cells and an increase in M1 macrophage differentiation, promoting TH1 differentiation of CD4+ T cells and CD8+ T-cell activation. Bacterial ablation also enabled efficacy for checkpoint-targeted immunotherapy by upregulating PD-1 expression. Mechanistically, the PDA microbiome generated a tolerogenic immune program by differentially activating select Toll-like receptors in monocytic cells. These data suggest that endogenous microbiota promote the crippling immune-suppression characteristic of PDA and that the microbiome has potential as a therapeutic target in the modulation of disease progression. Significance: We found that a distinct and abundant microbiome drives suppressive monocytic cellular differentiation in pancreatic cancer via selective Toll-like receptor ligation leading to T-cell anergy. Targeting the microbiome protects against oncogenesis, reverses intratumoral immune tolerance, and enables efficacy for checkpoint-based immunotherapy. These data have implications for understanding immune suppression in pancreatic cancer and its reversal in the clinic. Cancer Discov; 8(4); 403–16. ©2018 AACR. See related commentary by Riquelme et al., p. 386. This article is highlighted in the In This Issue feature, p. 371

The formation of the Schottky barrier height (SBH) is a complex problem because of the dependence of the SBH on the atomic structure of the metal-semiconductor (MS) interface. Existing models of the SBH are too simple to realistically treat the chemistry exhibited at MS interfaces. This article points out, through examination of available experimental and theoretical results, that a comprehensive, quantum-mechanics-based picture of SBH formation can already be constructed, although no simple equations can emerge, which are applicable for all MS interfaces. Important concepts and principles in physics and chemistry that govern the formation of the SBH are described in detail, from which the experimental and theoretical results for individual MS interfaces can be understood. Strategies used and results obtained from recent investigations to systematically modify the SBH are also examined from the perspective of the physical and chemical principles of the MS interface.

In this innovative book, a well-known feminist and sociologist-who is also the founding editor of Gender & Society-challenges our most basic assumptions about gender. Judith Lorber argues that gender is wholly a product of socialization, subject to human agency, organization, and interpretation, and that it is a social institution comparable to the economy, the family, and religion in its significance and consequences. Calling into question the inevitability and necessity of gender, she envisions a society structured for equality, where no gender, racial ethnic, or social class group is allowed to monopolize positions of power.

Describes an audio dataset of spoken words designed to help train and evaluate keyword spotting systems. Discusses why this task is an interesting challenge, and why it requires a specialized dataset that is different from conventional datasets used for automatic speech recognition of full sentences. Suggests a methodology for reproducible and comparable accuracy metrics for this task. Describes how the data was collected and verified, what it contains, previous versions and properties. Concludes by reporting baseline results of models trained on this dataset.

We conducted preregistered replications of 28 classic and contemporary published findings, with protocols that were peer reviewed in advance, to examine variation in effect magnitudes across samples and settings. Each protocol was administered to approximately half of 125 samples that comprised 15,305 participants from 36 countries and territories. Using the conventional criterion of statistical significance ( p < .05), we found that 15 (54%) of the replications provided evidence of a statistically significant effect in the same direction as the original finding. With a strict significance criterion ( p < .0001), 14 (50%) of the replications still provided such evidence, a reflection of the extremely high-powered design. Seven (25%) of the replications yielded effect sizes larger than the original ones, and 21 (75%) yielded effect sizes smaller than the original ones. The median comparable Cohen’s ds were 0.60 for the original findings and 0.15 for the replications. The effect sizes were small (< 0.20) in 16 of the replications (57%), and 9 effects (32%) were in the direction opposite the direction of the original effect. Across settings, the Q statistic indicated significant heterogeneity in 11 (39%) of the replication effects, and most of those were among the findings with the largest overall effect sizes; only 1 effect that was near zero in the aggregate showed significant heterogeneity according to this measure. Only 1 effect had a tau value greater than .20, an indication of moderate heterogeneity. Eight others had tau values near or slightly above .10, an indication of slight heterogeneity. Moderation tests indicated that very little heterogeneity was attributable to the order in which the tasks were performed or whether the tasks were administered in lab versus online. Exploratory comparisons revealed little heterogeneity between Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) cultures and less WEIRD cultures (i.e., cultures with relatively high and low WEIRDness scores, respectively). Cumulatively, variability in the observed effect sizes was attributable more to the effect being studied than to the sample or setting in which it was studied.

If we are to understand privacy as a future as well as a contemporary social issue, we must understand privacy as a concept. Individuals' concepts of privacy are tied to concrete situations in everyday life. These situations are described in terms of three dimensions: self‐ego, environmental, and interpersonal. In combination with the dynamic of time, both developmental and sociohistorical, this situational analysis helps us to understand individual perceptions of privacy and privacy invasion, to predict potential privacy or invasion experiences, and to see the potential effects of the absence of certain privacy‐related experiences.

BACKGROUND: A clear understanding of the macro-level contexts in which education impacts health is integral to improving national health administration and policy. In this research, we use a visual analytic approach to explore the association between education and health over a 20-year period for countries around the world. METHOD: Using empirical data from the OECD and the World Bank for 26 OECD countries for the years 1995-2015, we identify patterns/associations between education and health indicators. By incorporating pre- and post-educational attainment indicators, we highlight the dual role of education as both a driver of opportunity as well as of inequality. RESULTS: Adults with higher educational attainment have better health and lifespans compared to their less-educated peers. We highlight that tertiary education, particularly, is critical in influencing infant mortality, life expectancy, child vaccination, and enrollment rates. In addition, an economy needs to consider potential years of life lost (premature mortality) as a measure of health quality. CONCLUSIONS: We bring to light the health disparities across countries and suggest implications for governments to target educational interventions that can reduce inequalities and improve health. Our country-level findings on NEET (Not in Employment, Education or Training) rates offer implications for economies to address a broad array of vulnerabilities ranging from unemployment, school life expectancy, and labor market discouragement. The health effects of education are at the grass roots-creating better overall self-awareness on personal health and making healthcare more accessible.

Periodic phenomena play an important role in nature, both organic and inorganic. In chemical reactions rhythmic effects have been observed experimentally, and have also been shown, by the writer1 and others,2 to follow, under certain conditions, from the laws of chemical dynamics. However, in the cases hitherto considered on the basis of chemical dynamics, the oscillations were found to be of the damped kind, and therefore, only transitory (unlike certain experimentally observed periodic reactions). Furthermore, in a much more general investigation by the writer, covering the kinetics not only of chemical but also of biological systems, it appeared, from the nature of the solution obtained, improbable3 that undamped, permanent oscillations would arise in the absence of geometrical, structural causes, in the very comprehensive class of systems considered. For it seemed that the occurrence of such permanent oscillations, the occurrence of purely imaginary exponents in the exponential series solution presented, would demand peculiar and very specific relations between the characteristic constants of the systems undergoing transformation; whereas in nature these constants would, presumably, stand in random relation. It was, therefore, with considerable surprise that the writer, on applying his method to certain special cases, found these to lead to undamped, and hence indefinitely continued, oscillations. As the matter presents several features of interest, and illustrates certain methods and principles, it appears worth while to set forth the argument and conclusions here. Starting out first from a broad basis, we may consider a system in the process of evolution, such a system comprising a variety of species of matter S 1, S 2…. S n of mass X 1, X 2…. X n . The species of matter S may be defined in any suitable way. Some of …

Abstract Here, 10 guidelines are presented for a standardized definition of type I and type II photosensitized oxidation reactions. Because of varied notions of reactions mediated by photosensitizers, a checklist of recommendations is provided for their definitions. Type I and type II photoreactions are oxygen‐dependent and involve unstable species such as the initial formation of radical cation or neutral radicals from the substrates and/or singlet oxygen ( 1 O 2 1 ∆ g ) by energy transfer to molecular oxygen. In addition, superoxide anion radical ( ) can be generated by a charge‐transfer reaction involving O 2 or more likely indirectly as the result of O 2 ‐mediated oxidation of the radical anion of type I photosensitizers. In subsequent reactions, may add and/or reduce a few highly oxidizing radicals that arise from the deprotonation of the radical cations of key biological targets. can also undergo dismutation into H 2 O 2 , the precursor of the highly reactive hydroxyl radical ( ) that may induce delayed oxidation reactions in cells. In the second part, several examples of type I and type II photosensitized oxidation reactions are provided to illustrate the complexity and the diversity of the degradation pathways of mostly relevant biomolecules upon one‐electron oxidation and singlet oxygen reactions.

We derive a priori bounds for positive solutions of the non-linear elliptic boundary value problem where Ω is a bounded domain in R n. Our proof is by contradiction and uses a scaling (“blow up”) argument reminiscent to that used in the theory of Minimal Surfaces. This procedure reduces the problem of a priori bounds to global results of Liouville type.

In this work, the author searches for a critical aesthetic to inform education. It features in the John Dewey Lecture Series.

Previous research on personality traits and political attitudes has largely focused on the direct relationships between traits and ideological self-placement. There are theoretical reasons, however, to suspect that the relationships between personality traits and political attitudes (1) vary across issue domains and (2) depend on contextual factors that affect the meaning of political stimuli. In this study, we provide an explicit theoretical framework for formulating hypotheses about these differential effects. We then leverage the power of an unusually large national survey of registered voters to examine how the relationships between Big Five personality traits and political attitudes differ across issue domains and social contexts (as defined by racial groups). We confirm some important previous findings regarding personality and political ideology, find clear evidence that Big Five traits affect economic and social attitudes differently, show that the effect of Big Five traits is often as large as that of education or income in predicting ideology, and demonstrate that the relationships between Big Five traits and ideology vary substantially between white and black respondents.

An accurate spin-polarized exchange-only Kohn-Sham (KS) potential is constructed from a consideration of the optimized-effective-potential (OEP) method. A detailed analysis of the OEP integral equation for the exchange-only case results in a set of conditions which are manifestly satisfied by the exact OEP; these conditions are employed to construct an approximate OEP, ${\mathit{V}}_{\mathit{x}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\sigma}}}$, and therefore an approximate KS exchange-only potential as a functional of KS orbitals. Further, it is shown that this ${\mathit{V}}_{\mathit{x}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\sigma}}}$ can be derived analytically based on a simple approximation of the Green's functions in the OEP integral equation. The constructed potential, although approximate, contains many of the key analytic features of the exact KS potential: it reduces to the exact KS result in the homogeneous-electron-gas limit, approaches -1/r as r\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}, yields highest occupied-orbital energy eigenvalues ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\varepsilon}}}_{\mathit{m}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\sigma}}}$ that satisfy Koopmans's theorem, and exhibits an integer discontinuity when considered as a function of fractional occupancy of the highest-energy occupied single-particle state of a given spin projection \ensuremath{\sigma}. In addition ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\varepsilon}}}_{\mathit{m}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\sigma}}}$ nearly exactly satisfies Janak's theorem. The approximate OEP is a simple but remarkably accurate representation of the exact, numerically derived exchange-only OEP.Detailed numerical results obtained by employing ${\mathit{V}}_{\mathit{x}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\sigma}}}$ as the exchange-only potential for ten atoms with closed subshells yield total energies, Hartree potentials, single-particle expectation values, and ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\varepsilon}}}_{\mathit{m}}$ which are in excellent agreement with both exact OEP and Hartree-Fock (HF) results and represent a significant improvement over the results obtained by employing other exchange-only potentials. Similarly, the properties of alkali-metal atoms are calculated including the separate spin-up and spin-down densities to obtain results in excellent agreement with those of spin-unrestricted OEP and HF methods. Finally, we demonstrate the accuracy of ${\mathit{V}}_{\mathit{x}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\sigma}}}$ by calculating the total energy, ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\varepsilon}}}_{\mathit{m}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\uparrow}}}$, and ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\varepsilon}}}_{\mathit{m}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\downarrow}}}$ as a function of fractional filling f, of the highest occupied single-particle orbital for the magnesium atom (Z=12) from N=9--12 electrons and find excellent agreement with both spin-unrestricted OEP and HF results even when ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\varepsilon}}}_{\mathit{m}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\sigma}}}$ is strongly dependent on f. In addition we display the integer discontinuity in ${\mathit{V}}_{\mathit{x}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\sigma}}}$ when the highest-energy spin subshell begins to be filled.