This article explores significant updates in academic writing introduced by the new edition of the APA standards. With these changes, the International Journal of Innovation reinforces its mission to ...make scientific research not only clearer and easier to understand but also more inclusive and accessible to everyone. Here you will find what you need to know about the new rules and how they can improve the way we present our ideas and research in the academic world.
Este artigo investiga as atualizações significativas na redação acadêmica trazidas pela nova edição dos padrões APA. Com estas mudanças, o International Journal of Innovation reforça a sua missão de tornar a investigação científica não só mais clara e fácil de compreender, mas também mais inclusiva e acessível a todos. Aqui você encontrará o que precisa saber sobre as novas regras e como elas podem melhorar a forma como apresentamos nossas ideias e pesquisas no mundo acadêmico
Este artículo explora actualizaciones significativas en la escritura académica introducidas por la nueva edición de las normas APA. Con estos cambios, el International Journal of Innovation refuerza su misión de hacer la investigación científica no solo más clara y fácil de entender, sino también más inclusiva y accesible para todos. Aquí encontrarás lo que necesitas saber sobre las nuevas reglas y cómo pueden mejorar la manera en que presentamos nuestras ideas e investigaciones en el mundo académico
The Award for Distinguished Contributions to Research in Public Policy is given to a psychologist who has made a distinguished empirical and/or theoretical contribution to research in public policy, ...either through a single extraordinary achievement or a lifetime of work. This contribution may consist of such factors as research leading others to view specific national policies differently; research demonstrating the importance of the application of psychological methods and theory to public policy; or research clarifying the ways in which scientific knowledge of human behavior informs public policy. The 2020 recipients of the APA Awards for Distinguished Contributions to Research in Public Policy were selected by the 2019 Committee on Psychology in the Public Interest Awards. For over 40 years, Gary Wells has led the scientific study of eyewitness identifications, system problems, and solutions. In 1998, at the request of the U.S. attorney general, Wells joined a Department of Justice working group of police, prosecutors, and researchers, which produced a transformative Guide for Law Enforcement. Wells is also lead author of an APA Division 41 white paper, the first in its history. This white paper was revised and published in 2020. Over the years, Wells has worked tirelessly with policymakers, practitioners, and news media to advocate for the kinds of reforms that prevent wrongful convictions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
•A new centrality measure for attributed multiplex networks is proposed.•It solves the drawback of the existence of isolated nodes in any of the layers.
A new algorithm for attributed multiplex ...networks is proposed and analysed with the main objective to compute the centrality of the nodes based on the original PageRank model used to establish a ranking in the Web pages network. Taking as a basis the Adapted PageRank Algorithm for monoplex networks with data and the two-layer PageRank approach, an algorithm for biplex networks is designed with two main characteristics. First, it solves the drawback of the existence of isolated nodes in any of the layers. Second, the algorithm allows us to choose the value of the parameter α controlling the importance assigned to the network topology and the data associated to the nodes in the Adapted PageRank Algorithm, respectively. The proposed algorithm inherits this ability to determine the importance of node attribute data in the calculation of the centrality; yet, going further, it allows to choose different α values for each of the two layers. The biplex algorithm is then generalised to the case of multiple layers, that is, for multiplex networks. Its possibilities and characteristics are demonstrated using a dataset of aggregate origin-destination flows of private cars in Rome. This dataset is augmented with attribute data describing city locations. In particular, a biplex network is constructed by taking the data about car mobility for layer 1. Layer 2 is generated from data describing the local bus transport system. The algorithm establishes the most central locations in the city when these layers are intertwined with the location attributes in the biplex network. Four cases are evaluated and compared for different values of the parameter that modulates the importance of data in the network.
It is very important for the Japan Pancreas Society to communicate and collaborate with international and other domestic organizations with the aim of expanding the knowledge relating to studies of ...pancreatic diseases. The Japan Pancreas Society has promoted international collaboration through joint meetings with the International Association of Pancreatology (IAP) and the American Pancreatic Association (APA). Publication of official journals, Suizo and Pancreas, as well as close cooperation with Pancreatology have also contributed to international communication in the community of pancreatologists. However, international communication among young investigators at the individual level is currently hampered by the pandemic of COVID-19. Taking every opportunity including joint meetings of the Japan Pancreas Society with the IAP and APA to maintain international communication, we should help the next generation of scientists and promote international collaborative studies in the future.
•Transseasonal P fractions and phoD gene in lake sediment system were measured.•Remarkable variation of phoD gene abundance and APA occurred in varied seasons.•Low-abundance phoD-encoding gene ...bacteria is critical for seasonal Po mineralization.•Water depth rather than temperature facilitate the APA regulation and PO43− regeneration.
Excessive phosphorus (P) enrichment is the critical cause of eutrophication in the lake water. Organic P (Po) mineralization processes induced by alkaline phosphatase (APase) regulated by phoD-encoding microorganisms in the lake ecosystems was still ambiguous due to the transseasonal shift of water temperatures and depths. Different P pools in the water and sediments of Shijiuhu Lake at varied seasons were measured using chemical extraction methods and solution 31P NMR. The alkaline phosphatase activity (APA) in the sediments were assessed together with enzyme kinetic parameters. The abundances and compositions of microbial communities encoding functional gene phoD were also obtained using high-throughput sequencing. The results showed that Po concentrations remarkably increased from winter toward spring when having higher water depths due to the terrigenous input and biomass deposition. Noteworthy elevation in the PO43- concentration was observed in the interstitial water during the spring, particularly at around 5 cm sediment depth with value reaching as high as 0.43 mg/L. The degradation and mineralization of momoesters and diesters with higher concentrations in the sediments of spring aggravated the PO43- load in the interstitial water. Higher APA reaching 91.6 μg/(g·h) in spring was responsible for the mineralization of Po. Remarkably upwards increasing of absolute abundance of phoD-encoding gene in spring reaching up to 2.6 times of that in winter facilitated the generation of APA in spring. Cobetia and Calothrix followed by Aquabacterium and Mitsuaria were the most abundant phoD-encoding genera with relative abundance > 4%. Weakly positive correlation between dominant bacterial genera and APA and P fractions suggested that low-abundance genera was also involved in the APA generation and Po hydrolysis. These results indicate that spring with high water temperature and depth facilitate the mineralization of Po in the sediment and increase of labile PO43− load in the water, further provide valuable information for the management of eutrophic lakes.
Display omitted
Purpose
Vitamin D deficiency has emerged as another potential risk factor for coronavirus disease (COVID‐19) due to the immunomodulatory effects of 25 hydroxyvitamin D 25 (OH)D. Vitamin D receptor ...(VDR) gene polymorphisms such as Fok I, Bsm I, Apa I, and Taq I are also associated with different courses of viral infections. This study aimed to evaluate the association between the VDR gene polymorphism at Fok I, Taq I, Bsm I, and Apa I genotypes and the prognosis of COVID‐19 in respect to vitamin D deficiency.
Methods
Two‐hundred ninety‐seven patients with COVID‐19 were enrolled. Serum 25 (OH)D levels were measured. Four variant regions of the VDR gene, FokI, BsmI, ApaI, and TaqI were determined.
Results
Eighty‐three percent of subjects had vitamin D deficiency, and 40.7% of the whole group had severe deficiency. Median 25 (OH)D level was 11.97 ng/ml. Vitamin D levels were not related to inflammatory markers, disease severity, admission to intensive care unit (ICU), and mortality. While disease severity was related to Fok I Ff genotype, it was Taq TT genotype for ICU admission. Moreover, the ApaI aa genotype was common among the patients who were died. None of the deceased subjects had the Fok I FF genotype.
Conclusion
25 (OH)D levels were not related to the severity and mortality of COVID‐19. VDR gene polymorphisms are independently associated with the severity of COVID‐19 and the survival of patients.
Lifting of masking restrictions at key periods during the COVID-19 pandemic may have disproportionately negatively impacted the mental health of individuals with disabilities.
This study examines the ...prevalence of depression-related symptoms in individuals with and without disabilities preceding and following the US rollback of COVID-19 masking mandates.
Pandemic-era data on reported symptoms of depression from the federal Household Pulse Survey from dates surrounding two major announcements on masking relaxations were analyzed. Possible interactions between disability status and type, age grouping, educational attainment, race/Hispanic ethnicity, and sex variables were considered.
Following relaxation of major masking restrictions, people with disabilities experienced elevation in depression symptom presence while people without disabilities experienced lessening in these symptoms. Differences between people with and without disabilities were significant.
Direct causation between masking mandate relaxations and changes in symptoms of depression cannot be drawn from the available data. However, when considered with greater vulnerabilities to COVID-19 experienced by many individuals with disabilities and dismissive rhetoric surrounding masking decisions, negative feelings arising from mandate changes may have led to elevations in symptoms of depression in people with disabilities in sharp contrast to people without disabilities who may have felt relief. Findings indicate future public health decision making, even in times of crisis, should be undertaken with as much caution as possible regarding and in partnership with populations already at risk.
Normalized least mean squares (NLMS) and affine projection algorithm (APA) are two successful algorithms that improve the stability of least mean squares (LMS) by reducing the necessity to change the ...learning rate during the training process. In this paper, we extend them to multi-layer neural networks. We first prove that it is possible to consider a multi-layer neural network as a stack of adaptive filters. It opens the door to bring successful algorithms from adaptive filters to neural networks. We additionally introduce a more comprehensible interpretation than the complicated geometric interpretation in APA for a single fully-connected (FC) layer that can easily be generalized, for instance, to convolutional neural networks and mini-batch training. With this new viewpoint, we introduce a more robust algorithm by predicting and then amending the adverse consequences of some actions that take place in mini-batch backpropagation (BP), even before they happen. The proposed method is a modification to the BP that can be used alongside stochastic gradient descent (SGD) and its momentum variants like Adam and Nesterov. Our experiments show the usefulness of the proposed method in the training of deep neural networks. It is less sensitive to hyper-parameters and needs less intervention during the training process. Besides, it usually converges more smoothly and in fewer iterations. Such predictable behavior helps it to get tuned easier, be resilient during the training, and reduce or eliminate its reliance on other techniques such as momentum.
Does male age affect embryo growth or quality in couples undergoing IVF treatment?
Advanced paternal age (APA) is negatively associated with the chance of an optimal eight-cell embryo on the third ...day of development.
Literature shows that APA is associated with decreased sperm quality and fecundity. However, the effect of male age on embryo growth in an IVF setting remains inconclusive. Literature concerning male influences on IVF success is scarce and approaches used to analyse embryo outcomes differ by study.
This study was part of the longitudinal Epigenetic Legacy of Paternal Obesity (ELPO) study for which fathers and mothers were followed from pre-pregnancy until the birth of their child. Couples were recruited from April 2015 to September 2017. A total of 1057 embryos from 87 couples were studied.
Dutch-speaking couples planning to undergo an IVF treatment were recruited at the Leuven University Fertility Center in Flanders, Belgium. Anthropometrics were documented and compared to the general Flemish population. Semen characteristics, pregnancy rates and the following embryo characteristics were recorded: number of blastomeres, symmetry and percentage fragmentation. Statistical modelling was applied taking into account correlation of within-cycle outcomes and use of multiple cycles per couple.
We observed a significant inverse association between APA and a key determinant for scoring of embryo quality: older men were less likely to produce an embryo of eight blastomeres at Day 3, compared to younger fathers; odds ratio for the effect of 1 year equals 0.960 (95% CI: 0.930-0.991; P = 0.011). Our finding remained significant after adjusting for female age and male and female BMI. Degree of fragmentation and symmetry were not significantly related to male age.
Because of the study's small sample size and its monocentric nature, a larger study is warranted to confirm our results. In addition, distribution of BMI and level of education were not representative of the general Flemish population. Although we corrected for BMI status, we do not exclude that obesity may be one of the determinants of infertility in our study population. Furthermore, it is known from other European countries that a higher education eases access to fertility treatment. Hence, caution should be taken when interpreting our findings from a fertility setting to the general population.
We suggest a heightened need for future research into male age and its potential effects on embryo growth, embryo quality and ART outcomes. Clinical decision-making and preventative public health programmes would benefit from a better understanding of the role of men, carried forward by the Paternal Origins of Health and Disease (POHaD) paradigm. We hope the current finding will encourage others to examine the role of the sperm epigenome in embryo development according to paternal age.
This work was supported by a research grant from KU Leuven University (OT/14/109). The authors declare no competing financial, professional or personal interests.
KU Leuven S57378 (ML11309), B322201523225.
Display omitted
•Experimental investigation of CO2 solubility in novel solvents has been done.•KE model inclusive of gas phase non-ideality was used to correlate solubility.•Reversible ionic liquids ...formation TESA-CO2 reaction is confirmed by 13C NMR.•Bond formations/shifts studied by FTIR analysis of loaded and unloaded solvents.
The quest of energy efficient post combustion CO2 capture through an integrated process approach leads to the development of various novel solvents which can yield the necessary outputs. In line with this, the current work explores the experimental and simulation analysis of vapor liquid equilibrium of CO2 in novel aqueous 3-aminoproyl triethoxysilane (TESA) solvent blends enhanced by amine activators. Specific amine activators, viz. 1-(2-aminoethyl) piperazine (AEP) and bis (3-aminopropyl) amine (APA) were considered. The experiments were carried out over the temperature range of (303.2–323.2) K and pressure of (4–350) kPa. In order to realize the effect of activator, AEP/ APA concentration was gradually increased from 0.5 to 1.0 mol/kg with a total solvent concentration of ≈3 mol/kg. Along with this, qualitative 13C NMR and FTIR analysis were also performed to assess the proposed reaction scheme. The experimental vapour liquid equilibrium data (VLE) were correlated by modified Kent-Eisenberg equilibrium model considering gas phase non-ideality as well as non-rigorous statistical non-linear model. The equilibrium constants associated to deprotonation of protonated TESA, AEP and APA as well as carbamate formation reactions of these amines with CO2 are function of solvent concentration, temperature and CO2 partial pressure. These are regressed to fit the experimental VLE data. The modified KE model is further prolonged to estimate the concentration profiles of various molecular and ionic species involved in the reactive system.
PDF
