Search results for "General Commentary"

Predicting the Significance of Necessity

2019

With Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA), a necessity effect is estimated by calculating the amount of empty space in the upper-left corner in a plot with a predictor X and an outcome Y, and recently a method for testing the statistical significance of the necessity effect through permutation has been proposed. In the present simulation study, this method was found to give significant results already with a very weak true population necessity effect, i.e., exhibit high power, unless the sample size is very small. However, in some situations the significance of the necessity effect tends to increase with increased degree of sufficiency, which is paradoxical for a method whose objective is to …

Theileria parasites secrete a prolyl isomerase to maintain host leukocyte transformation

2015

Infectious agents develop intricate mechanisms to interact with host cell pathways and hijack their genetic and epigenetic machinery to change host cell phenotypic states. Among the Apicomplexa phylum of obligate intracellular parasites, which cause veterinary and human diseases, Theileria is the only genus that transforms its mammalian host cells. Theileria infection of bovine leukocytes induces proliferative and invasive phenotypes associated with activated signalling pathways, notably JNK and AP-1 (ref. 2). The transformed phenotypes are reversed by treatment with the theilericidal drug buparvaquone. We used comparative genomics to identify a homologue of the peptidyl-prolyl isomerase PI…

Commentary: Psychological Science's Aversion to the Null

2017

Commentary: Preliminary evaluation of an analog procedure to assess acceptability of intimate partner violence against women: the Partner Violence Ac…

2017

Acceptability of partner violence against women is a risk factor linked to its perpetration, and to public, professionals’ and victims’ responses to this behavior. Research on the acceptability of violence in intimate partner relationships is, however, limited by reliance solely on self-reports that often provide distorted or socially desirable accounts that may misrepresent respondents’ attitudes. This study presents data on the development and initial validation of a new analog task assessing respondents’ acceptability of physical violence toward women in intimate relationships: the Partner Violence Acceptability Movie Task (PVAM). This new analog task is intended to provide a more implic…

Misguided Effort with Elusive Implications

2016

Good self-control has been linked to adaptive outcomes such as better health, cohesive personal relationships, success in the workplace and at school, and less susceptibility to crime and addictions. In contrast, self-control failure is linked to maladaptive outcomes. Understanding the mechanisms by which self-control predicts behavior may assist in promoting better regulation and outcomes. A popular approach to understanding self-control is the strength or resource depletion model. Self-control is conceptualized as a limited resource that becomes depleted after a period of exertion resulting in self-control failure. The model has typically been tested using a sequential-task experimental p…

Tissue engineering: how to build a heart

2015

Decellularization and recellularization of hearts from newly dead donors is the latest fashion in cardiac tissue engineering. The first paper came out in 2008 in Nature Medicine (Ott et al., 2008), and news has been recently published in Nature again in July 2013 (Maher, 2013). Brendan Maher in this paper summarizes and comments on the latest important results on decellularization of a human heart and explains the steps that are necessary to build a heart from a decellularized organ. Two sources may be used to obtain a decellularized heart: human and pig heart. Another issue to resolve is the time of decellularization, since the detergents used may also destroy the architecture of the organ…

Statistical Adhockeries Are No Criteria for Legal Decisions—The Case of the Expert Medical Report on the Assessment of Urine Specimens Collected Amon…

2019

Anthropometric Indicators as a Tool for Diagnosis of Obesity and Other Health Risk Factors: A Literature Review

2021

[EN] Obesity is characterized by the accumulation of an excessive amount of fat mass (FM) in the adipose tissue, subcutaneous, or inside certain organs. The risk does not lie so much in the amount of fat accumulated as in its distribution. Abdominal obesity (central or visceral) is an important risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and cancer, having an important role in the so-called metabolic syndrome. Therefore, it is necessary to prevent, detect, and appropriately treat obesity. The diagnosis is based on anthropometric indices that have been associated with adiposity and its distribution. Indices themselves, or a combination of some of them, conform to a big picture with di…

Blood Flow Restriction Exercise: Considerations of Methodology, Application, and Safety

2020

The myth of cognitive agency: subpersonal thinking as a cyclically recurring loss of mental autonomy

2018

This metatheoretical paper investigates mind wandering from the perspective of philosophy of mind. It has two central claims. The first is that, on a conceptual level, mind wandering can be fruitfully described as a specific form of mental autonomy loss. The second is that, given empirical constraints, most of what we call “conscious thought” is better analyzed as a subpersonal process that more often than not lacks crucial properties traditionally taken to be the hallmark of personal-level cognition - such as mental agency, explicit, consciously experienced goal-directedness, or availability for veto control. I claim that for roughly two thirds of our conscious life-time we do not possess …