General Discussion. Except in rare instances of 100% participation, each peer nomina- tion study will require a decision regarding the treatment of non- participants. Whether to include or exclude nonparticipants as nominees may seem a minor methodological decision but has not been studied before. Historically, inclusion of nonparticipants has been the default decision and a fundamental requirement for valid peer nomination measures (Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx, 1943; Xxxxxx, 1934). Unfortunately, inclusion of nonparticipants raises ethical concerns (see Mayeux, Underwood, & Xxxxxx, 2007). We investigated two separate datasets, showing that the choice of including or excluding nonparticipants as nominees can affect psychometric properties of peer nominations. The effects varied between studies; differences between inclusion and exclusion were greater for certain types of missingness in Study 1 and greater in one school versus another in Study 2. Study 1 also indicated that, when the inclusion and exclusion conditions differed noticeably, exclusion consistently yielded lower reliability and different corre- lations than inclusion. From a psychometric perspective, our results indicate that non- participants should be included as potential nominees. Although exclusion of nonparticipants did not always detract from data qual- ity, it was likely to do so under conditions that are most probable in real-world situations; that is, when nonparticipants differ in status and peer preference from participants (Xxxx et al., 1997). Excluding nonparticipants as potential nominees removes the ability to test for systematic differences between participants and nonparticipants. Even if nonparticipants can be excluded as nominees without con- sequence when nonparticipation is completely random, the very exclusion of nonparticipants as nominees makes it impossible to demonstrate that nonparticipation is random. If our findings are representative of the research literature more generally, the fact that excluding low-status peers as nominees resulted in the greatest reduction in reliability and change in inter- correlations is concerning. Many peer relationships studies focus on youths who are rejected or unpopular, and they are least likely to participate in school-based research. Our findings highlight the importance of properly representing low-status or marginalized youths and, more generally, in maximizing participation rates with peer nominations. Our study used two large samples and investi- gated relat...
General Discussion. A Local Agency Agreement is an agreement between a local agency and the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT). An agreement is prepared for each federal aid project, and it covers all phases of work involved in the project (preliminary engineering, right of way acquisition, construction). Its purpose is to ensure that the federal funds in the agreed-upon amount are spent in accordance with all applicable state and federal laws and regulations. The agreement also specifies the procedure for payment and reimbursement on the project. If the federal aid participation ratio entered in the agreement is not the maximum rate allowed by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), then the participation ratio entered becomes the maximum rate allowed. No costs are eligible for federal aid reimbursement until authorized in writing by WSDOT. This authorization is separate from the agreement. The total cost of a project (including federal, state, agency, and private funds) must be shown on the Local Agency Agreement for each phase of work that includes federal or state funds. At the time of each phase authorization, all funds necessary to complete the scope of work for that phase must be secured.
General Discussion. Colorectal cancer is the cancer with the second highest cancer incidence in Europe.1 Roughly, one out of three patients with a colorectal malignancy has a rectal carcinoma. Surgery is the cornerstone in the curative treatment of rectal cancer. In the 1980s with conventional surgery, the 5-year local recurrence rate was over 20% and the 5-year over- all survival rate around 50%.2,3 In the Swedish Rectal Cancer trial in which 1168 patients were included, preoperative radiotherapy in addition to conventional surgery resulted in a reduction of more than 50% in the 5-year local recurrence rate in comparison to conventional surgery alone (11% versus 27%; P < 0.001).2 Besides, the 5-year overall survival rate improved from 48% to 58% if patients were treated with preoperative radiotherapy in addition to conventional surgery (P = 0.004).2 With the total mesorectal excision (TME), by which the rectum with its mesorectum and visceral fascia are dissect- ed sharply and under direct vision,4 local recurrence rates dropped and overall survival improved.5,6 In the Dutch TME trial, 5 x 5 Gy preoperative radiotherapy in combination with TME surgery was compared to TME surgery alone (1861 patients). In this trial, the 5-year local recurrence rate for patients treated with TME surgery alone was similar to patients treated in the Swedish Rectal Cancer trial with blunt dissection in combination with preoperative 5 x 5 Gy radiotherapy (11%)2,7 If preoperative radiotherapy was added to TME surgery, 5-year local recurrence rate was reduced to 5.6%7 The overall survival rate at 5 year was 64% for both patients treated with TME surgery alone and patients treated with preoperative radiotherapy followed by TME surgery,7 compared to 48% for patients treated with blunt dissection alone in the previously mentioned Swedish trial.2 TME surgery is now considered the standard surgical procedure for rectal cancer.4 However, even if TME surgery is performed, surgical quality varies.8,9 First, these results indicate that improvements in the surgical procedure itself can result in major progress regarding long-term oncological outcome such as decreased local recurrence rates and improved overall survival. Second, it illustrates that variation in surgical quality could lead to large differences in outcome. Recently, it was shown that surgical variation is not only important for patients with rectal cancer, but also plays an important role for the outcome of patients with colon cancer.10,11
General Discussion. Our results for British and American collective agreement suggest that lexically controlled features are responsible for the differences in plural agreement between the varieties. In spontaneous speaking, specifications of plurality for particular collectives and not dynamic variations in underlying conceptualization create the differences. This is consistent with the third of the three hypotheses we tested, the one that attributes the differences between the dialects to differences in lexically specified number among collective nouns. The lexicons of individual speakers of a dialect may differ as to which collectives are specified as plural, for reasons that may be tracedto differences in linguistic experience but in any case are typical of most types of lexical variation. Across speakers, there will be variability in which collectives are treated as plurals, but lexical rather than notional variability drives the patterns of usage that we found in both experimental elicitation and corpus distribution. Normal usage of the word data among research psychologists offers a case in point. The singular datum being virtually obsolete, the natural, untutoredinclination is to treat data as a mass noun, therefore singular. Against this inclination, American graduate students in psychology, and even undergraduates in elite research-oriented programs, are heavily schooled to treat the word data as plural (see the Publication manual of the American Psychological Association, 2001, p. 89). Public utterances such as the data is and this data are unlikely to pass a faculty audience without loud correction (the data ARE; THESE data), and few written occurrences escape the red pen or the copy editor. So, graduate training imposes plural verb use on what for many is a natively singular noun, one with the conceptual features normally associated with mass nouns. When successful, the product of this training is a conceptually unsupported, lexically controlled plural specification for data. The effects of this regimen nicely illustrate our hypothesis about the lexical source of the differences between collective agreement in British and American English. In particular, observations of data attraction and agreement among well-trained speakers of the plural-data dialect suggest that these speakers indeed have a plural lexical specifi- cation for data.
General Discussion. Chapter 9 General discussion
General Discussion. The XXXXxX study has provided an invaluable amount of obstetric epidemiologic data. The headlines are described in this thesis, and there are still many more publications to follow within the next years. Until now, data on the incidence of severe acute maternal morbidity (SAMM) in the Netherlands were scarcely available. Although the Netherlands has an excellent reputation regarding assessment of maternal mortality, the small numbers involved will not likely change clinical practice much on the short term. In order to improve care and make pregnancy even safer, there is a clear need in the Netherlands and other high income countries to extend routine data collection to also include the severest forms of SAMM. International comparison Data on SAMM in high income countries are increasingly published in the literature.1-10 We recently published an overview of the various aspects of it.11 Population-based studies till date are summarised in table 1.
General Discussion. DRD mice: contribution to the field 000 Xxxxxxxx vs. parkinsonism 117 DA receptor mechanisms specific to dystonia 120 Future directions 121 References 123 List of Figures
General Discussion. The results of the second study were in accordance with our predictions, and consistent with the results of our first study. Participants who had received high or average respect for their behavioral descriptions, perceived themselves as respected and showed higher feelings of affective commitment in comparison with participants who perceived themselves as disrespected (see also Branscombe et al., 2002; Xx Xxxxxx, 2002, 2003; Xx Xxxxxx & Xxxxx, 2003; Ellemers et al., 2004; Xxxx & Xxxxx, 1988; Xxxxx and Xxxxxxx, 2003; Xxxxx & Xxxx, 1992; Xxxxx & Xxxxxx, 2000, 2003). Additionally, in contrast with the respected participants, those who were disrespected showed higher levels of situational group attachment an>iety and indicated more psychological disengagement as e>pressed in intentions to leave the group. When focusing on the motivational basis of the engagement participants displayed on the discretionary group efforts measure, we found that the e>tra behavioral efforts that contribute to the group are indeed activated by two different motives. This confirms the validity of our argument that different underlying motives can evoke outwardly similar behavioral displays: Whereas respected participants were stimulated to e>ert more discretionary group efforts to the e>tent that they e>perienced more feelings of affective commitment with the task-group (the carrot), disrespected people showed enhanced behavioral engagement in discretionary group efforts when they felt more situational group attachment an>iety (the stick; see also Xxxxxxx & Ellemers, 2000). Thus, in E>periment 4, we successfully replicated the effect on actual discretionary group efforts. As predicted, and similar to E>periment 3, compared to average respected group members both high and low respected participants showed enhanced effort e>ertion on discretionary group efforts, but only when they perceived the respect received as diagnostic and related to their position within the group (cf. De Cremer, 2002; Xxxxxx et al., 2002, 2003; Xxxx et al., 1995). In the non-diagnostic condition, where it was made clear to participants that the respect received was not predictive of their ingroup position and could be regarded as occasional feedback, the effect on e>tra effort did not appear as predicted. The results of the present contribution uncover new directions in research on intra-group dynamics. Specifically, by e>amining the operation of a collective motive, enhanced by higher levels of affective com...
General Discussion. General Discussion The studies presented in this thesis aimed at developing and evaluating a new technique to make transgene products used in gene-therapy applications “invisible” (i.e. stealthed) to the immune system. To this end we used the Gly-Ala repeat (GAr) domain of the Xxxxxxx-Xxxx virus nuclear antigen-1 (EBNA-1). We provided four examples of fusions with the GAr that did not impede the function of the reporter, i.e. the E.coli-derived β-galactosidase, herpes simplex virus-derived thymidine kinase (HSV-TK), firefly luciferase, and jellyfish green fluorescent protein (GFP). We showed that the GAr does not affect induction of transgene directed CTL activity upon adenovirus-mediated transfer and expression of a GAr-LacZ fusion gene. However, recognition of transgene-expressing cells by antigen-specific CTL is abolished sufficiently to prevent cytolysis by β-galactosidase-specific CTL. The observation that the GAr does not inhibit priming of CTL is important and consistent with reports describing the presence of EBNA-1 specific-CTL in EBV-seropositive individuals (Xxxxx et al., 1997; Xxxxx et al., 2000; Xxxxxxxxx and Xxxx, 1997). This inability of completely preventing the generation and presentation of antigenic peptides, may be attributed to the fact that the GAr seems not entirely prevent formation of defective ribosomal products (DRiPs) (Xxx et al., 2004; Xxxxxx et al., 2004; Xxx et al., 2004). These DRiPs play an important role in antigenic peptide generation (Xxxxxxx et al., 1996; Xxxxxxxx et al., 2000; Xxxxx et al., 2000) and are actually the main source of antigenic peptides for long-lived proteins (Xxxx et al., 2001). However, there are marked differences between our studies and the DRiPs study of Xxxxxx and collaborators. They studied the full length EBNA-1 in human B-cells and lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCLs). Whereas specific lysis is observed in the GAr-containing EBNA-1, more efficient lysis could be obtained when the GAr was deleted from EBNA-1, confirming a stealthing effect of the GAr in the natural context. This is in accordance with the data from Xxx et al., who also noted a partial protective effect of GAr in its natural context. Furthermore, deletion of the GAr greatly reduces the half-life of EBNA-1 in B cells. This is consistent with a negative effect of the GAr on the efficiency of proteasomal degradation (Xxxxxxxxxx et al., 1995). In addition, we have studied the effect of the GAr with rather stable proteins and therefore they...
General Discussion. The aim of the two experiments in this study was to examine upper elementary school children’s comprehension of the temporal relations between two events while reading two-clause sentences. As expected, sentence comprehension was relatively good for these 9-12-year-old children in both experiments. Even though our main results did not replicate previous findings that sentence chronology is an important factor influencing comprehension, our results are consistent with a memory capacity-constrained account of processing of these types of sentences in children (Xxxxxxxx & Xxxx, 2016; Xxxxxxxx, Xxxxxx & Xxxx, 2015) and adults (Xxxxx, Xxxxxxx, & Xxxxx, 1998; Xx et al., 2012a, 2012b). More specifically, we found that text factors that facilitate processing by reducing the demands on WM resources resulted in better comprehension. Interestingly, WM updating and WM capacity contributed differently to task performance. The subtle differences in ac- curacy between the two experiments, together with the finding in Experiment 2 that children with relatively poor WM updating abilities were most sensitive to task effects underline the importance of examining the interaction between textual factors and reader characteristics that influence comprehension in older children. In addition, our findings suggest that in upper elementary school comprehension of temporal relations in complex sentences is still not fully proficient, which fits with the results reported by Xxxxxxxxx and Järvikivi (2012). Children’s comprehension of temporal connectives in our experiments was best explained by the effect of clause salience and the recency of the information that was the correct answer to the question in each task. Information in the subordinate clause proved to be especially difficult for children to comprehend. This finding is in line with previous studies in both adults (x.x. Xxxxx & Xxxxxx, 1987) and CHAPTER 4 children (Xxxxxx & Xxxxx, 1977; Xxxxxxxx, 1982), and could suggest that this syntactic factor contributes to comprehension in older children. However, it could also be interpreted in light of the demands these different types of sentences make on WM resources. In the current study the subordinate clause always starts with a temporal connective. As argued above, processing temporal relations and temporal connectives is an essential aspect of creating a coherent representation of a text (x.x. Xxxxx & Xxxxxx, 2006; Xxxx & Xxxxxxxx, 1986; xxx xxx Xxxxx, 1990; Xxx Xxxxxxxx et al....
