Surrogate endpoints are a common application of biomarkers to estimate clinical benefit in clinical trials, despite questions about reliability. This article discusses ongoing opportunities for their validation, in the context of a regulatory environment in which they are increasingly championed.

The purpose of this study was to empirically investigate the interrelationships between push and pull factors associated with the consumption of women’s professional basketball games. Multiple factors pertaining to sport consumers’ internal needs, identified as “push” factors, contain various intangible socio-psychological motivations representing an individual’s intrinsic desires that drive consumers toward certain goal-driven behaviors. On the other hand, “pull” factors, related to the supply side, refer to the different aspects of sport products the management of sport teams provides. It is (...) imperative to obtain a better understanding of the push–pull interaction so that sport marketers can design their products to satisfy spectators’ expectations with different needs. Spectators attending WNBA games responded to an on-site survey. CFA was conducted to ensure the psychometric properties of the scales, which showed that the overall model fit the data well. A canonical correlation analysis was performed, and two significant functions were revealed by the dimension reduction analysis. The first function [F = 4.49, p < 0.001]: I-Want-Everything-Consumer suggests that the market segment comprises individuals with multiple needs and expectations, both of which need to be met simultaneously. Thus, sports marketers can satisfy WNBA consumers’ needs by enhancing the quality of tangible pull factors. The second function [F = 2.38, p < 0.001]: Achievement-Seekers revealed that the consumers motivated by vicarious achievement expect game promotion rather than the quality of the opposing team, indicating that sport marketers should provide tailored promotional strategies to satisfy this segment of consumers. Specifically, the findings of this study can be used to segment consumers based upon fan motives and position products accordingly by managing the controllable aspects of sport products. This study provides empirical evidence of the relationship between WNBA consumers’ multiple needs and attributes associated with the WNBA core product. (shrink)

The consistency of a second-order version of Morley’s Theorem on the number of countable models was proved in [EHMT23] with the aid of large cardinals. We here dispense with them.

The study's purpose was to estimate the variety of foods consumed within standard and ethnic food categories by three groups of women between 18 and 35 years of age. Foreign-born Chinese women [N = 21], Chinese-American women [N = 20] and white American women [N = 23] kept 4-day food records, after instruction. Analysis of variance showed that the mean number of different foods consumed by the foreign-born Chinese was significantly [p < 0.05] lower than those eaten by the other (...) two groups for breads/cereals, dairy products, ethnic foods, fats, meats, sweets/sugars, and vegetable categories. White American women consumed significantly more dairy products and legumes/nuts than either of the groups of Chinese women. Diets of the Chinese-American women were more nutrient dense than those of the women in the other groups, containing significantly more energy, riboflavin, iron, folacin, and calcium than those of the foreign-born Chinese women. The percentage of kilocalories derived from fat [33–34%] did not differ among groups. 95% of foreign-born and 85% of Chinese-American women affirmed their ethnic identification by consuming foods belonging to Chinese cuisine; whereas, the percentage [30%] of white American women selecting Chinese food was significantly lower. Mexican and Italian foods were selected by significantly more white and Chinese-American women than by foreign-born Chinese women. Approximately 20% of both groups of Chinese women, but 49% of white American subjects, ate Japanese food. Chinese-American women retained a preference for Chinese food, similar to that of the foreign-born Chinese women. However, the Chinese-American women consumed cheeses, legumes, raw vegetables in salads, and foods from Italian and Mexican cuisines, indicating their acceptance of foods commonly consumed by white American women. Dietary acculturation among the Chinese-American women improved their diets over those of the foreign-born Chinese women and these results support the theory that consumption of a greater variety of foods increases nutrient density of diets. (shrink)

A central theme in western philosophy was to find formal methods that can reliably discover empirical relationships and their explanations from data assembled from experience. As a philosophical project, that ambition was abandoned in the 20th century and generally dismissed as impossible. It was replaced in philosophy by neo-Kantian efforts at reconstruction and justification, and in professional statistics by the more limited ambition to estimate a small number of parameters in pre-specified hypotheses. The influx of “big data” from climate science, (...) neuropsychology, biology, astronomy and elsewhere implicitly called for a revival of the grander philosophical ambition. Search algorithms are meeting that call, but they pose a problem: how are their accuracies to be assessed in domains where experimentation is limited or impossible? Increasingly, the answer is through simulation of data from models of the kind of process in the domain. In some cases, these innovations require rethinking how the accuracy and informativeness of inference methods can be assessed. Focusing on causal inference, we give an example from neuroscience, but to show that the model/simulation strategy is not confined to causal inference, we also consider two classification problems from astrophysics: identifying exoplanets and identifying dark matter concentrations. (shrink)

Megastable chaotic systems are somehow the newest in the family of special chaotic systems. In this paper, a new megastable two-dimensional system is proposed. In this system, coexisting attractors are in some islands, interestingly covered by megalimit cycles. The introduced two-dimensional system has no defined equilibrium point. However, it seems that the origin plays the role of an unstable equilibrium point. Therefore, the attractors are determined as hidden attractors. Adding a forcing term to the system, we can obtain chaotic solutions (...) and coexisting strange attractors. Moreover, the effect of three different values of the forcing term’s amplitude is studied. The dynamical properties of the designed system are investigated using attractor plots, bifurcation diagrams, and Lyapunov Exponents diagram. Phase portraits of the novel megastable oscillator are presented by FPGA design. Xilinx system generator block diagrams of the proposed system and trigonometric functions are also presented. (shrink)

Diffusion models are widely-used and successful accounts of the time course of two-choice decision making. Most diffusion models assume constant boundaries, which are the threshold levels of evidence that must be sampled from a stimulus to reach a decision. We summarize theoretical results from statistics that relate distributions of decisions and response times to diffusion models with time-varying boundaries. We then develop a computational method for finding time-varying boundaries from empirical data, and apply our new method to two problems. The (...) first problem involves finding the time-varying boundaries that make diffusion models equivalent to the alternative sequential sampling class of accumulator models. The second problem involves finding the time-varying boundaries, at the individual level, that best fit empirical data for perceptual stimuli that provide equal evidence for both decision alternatives. We discuss the theoretical and modeling implications of using time-varying boundaries in diffusion models, as well as the limitations and potential of our approach to their inference. (shrink)

This study aimed to provide evidence of validity and reliability for the Perceived Mattering Questionnaire-Physical Education developed by Richards et al. for the Chinese physical education teachers. The PMQ-PE consisted of two factors with four items in each, measuring four dimensions. PMQ-PE in Chinese was validated among 1,278 elementary and secondary school PE teachers in China, of whom 59.0% were secondary PE teachers and 70.2% were males. Confirmatory factor analysis with the entire sample found a poor model fit. Then exploratory (...) factor analysis using half of the sample indicated there was only one factor in PMQ-PEC. CFA of the other half of the sample suggested a one-factor model with the elimination of three unfitted items showed a better fitness to the data. Cronbach's alpha value was also acceptable. The final version of PMQ-PEC included five items with one factor that demonstrated acceptable validity and reliability and was deemed acceptable among Chinese PE teachers after the above modifications were made. (shrink)

Alcohol displays on Facebook are ever present and can be socially desirable for college students. Because problematic drinking is a concern for college students, this research sought to understand how different types of information on a Facebook page influence first year college student likelihood to drink. Telephone interviews were conducted with 338 incoming college freshmen from two large national universities. Data were obtained from a vignette prompt that presented a scenario in which a senior college student’s Facebook profile displayed wall (...) posts, pictures, and status updates that were drinking related or prosocial in nature. Participants were asked to report intention to drink alcohol with that student if they were together at a party. Findings supported the following hypotheses: Wall posts were most influential (the stickiest), followed by pictures, followed by status updates. Findings provide additional empirical support for established online impression formation patterns, and also provide evidence that virtual cues are being ingrained as schemas in interpersonal communication. These results are discussed in relation to the concept of sticky cues in impression formation. (shrink)

Publications by Chinese researchers in scientific journals have dramatically increased over the past decade; however, academic misconduct also becomes more prevalent in the country. The aim of this prospective study was to understand the perceptions of Chinese biomedical researchers towards academic misconduct and the trend from 2010 to 2015. A questionnaire comprising 10 questions was designed and then validated by ten biomedical researchers in China. In the years 2010 and 2015, respectively, the questionnaire was sent as a survey to biomedical (...) researchers at teaching hospitals, universities, and medical institutes in mainland China. Data were analyzed by the Chi squared test, one-way analysis of variance with the Tukey post hoc test, or Spearman’s rank correlation method, where appropriate. The overall response rates in 2010 and 2015 were 4.5% and 5.5%, respectively. Data from 15 participants in 2010 were invalid, and analysis was thus performed for 1263 participants. Among the participants, 54.7% thought that academic misconduct was serious-to-extremely serious, and 71.2% believed that the Chinese authorities paid no or little attention to the academic misconduct. Moreover, 70.2 and 65.2% of participants considered that the punishment for academic misconduct at the authority and institution levels, respectively, was not appropriate or severe enough. Inappropriate authorship and plagiarism were the most common forms of academic misconduct. The most important factor underlying academic misconduct was the academic assessment system, as judged by 50.7% of the participants. Participants estimated that 40.1% of published scientific articles were associated with some form of academic misconduct. Their perceptions towards academic misconduct had not significantly changed over the 5 years. Reform of the academic assessment system should be the fundamental approach to tackling this problem in China. (shrink)

Cet article d'histoire éditoriale fait le point sur les neuf éditions de l'anthologie titrée Cantiques de Maisonfleur, de 1580 à 1613, son expansion et ses recompositions, et sur son éclatement dans d'autres recueils de 1591 à 1621. La coprésence de poèmes dus à des auteurs de cour connus comme catholiques et à des poèmes de spiritualité réformée ou écrits par des poètes réformés (pasteurs) fait l'objet d'un examen sous l'angle de la construction éditoriale. Selon notre hypothèse, le recueil essaie moins (...) d'unir les deux confessions qu'il ne tente de concilier le statut de sujet du roi de France, attaché à la monarchie des Valois, et de fidèle réformé. Poètes présents dans l'anthologie : Jérôme de Maisonfleur, Valagre, T. de Sautemont, Marin Le Saulx, Yves Rouspeau, A. de La Roche-Chandieu, Belleau, Du Bellay, Ronsard, Desportes, Malherbe, Bertaud, Du Perron, Pibrac, A. Favre, et autres. (shrink)

La traduction, à partir de 1840, des Cours d’esthétique de Hegel par Charles Bénard joue un rôle de premier plan dans l’introduction de l’esthétique et, plus généralement, de la philosophie allemande en France. Pour éclairer le sens et la portée de ce transfert linguistique et théorique, on prêtera attention aux écrits de Bénard dans lesquels il expose quels sont, selon lui, les indispensables apports et aussi les limites de l’approche hégélienne du point de vue de l’esthétique métaphysique française. On s’intéressera (...) également à ses choix de traduction qui, parce qu’ils sont en même temps des choix théoriques, concernent directement la réception de la philosophie hégélienne de l’art et sa compréhension par le cercle de Victor Cousin. (shrink)

The Protein Ontology (PRO) provides a formal, logically-based classification of specific protein classes including structured representations of protein isoforms, variants and modified forms. Initially focused on proteins found in human, mouse and Escherichia coli, PRO now includes representations of protein complexes. The PRO Consortium works in concert with the developers of other biomedical ontologies and protein knowledge bases to provide the ability to formally organize and integrate representations of precise protein forms so as to enhance accessibility to results of protein (...) research. PRO (http://pir.georgetown.edu/pro) is part of the Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry. (shrink)