bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
High-Resolution Electron Diffraction: Accounting for Radially and Angularly Invariant Distortions
Authors: Carvalho Daniel , Morales Francisco M. 
Published: May 2012

AbstractThe distortions present in an electron diffraction pattern can be classified into two categories: one is radially invariant and the other is angularly invariant. We report a method to compensate these displacements undergone by diffraction features promoted by any kind of artifacts generated in parallel beam electron diffraction conditions. This approach is not aimed at quantifying these distortions but only intends to aid in the measurement of lattice parameters of crystals with a significant increase of accuracy and precision as compared to previous approaches. It is based on statistical estimations of the relative positions between diffraction rings and/or spots after performing a transformation of the digitalized patterns to polar coordinates. The analytical method is based on fitting a Gaussian type profile to intensity distributions. This makes it possible to determine the lattice parameters of a polycrystal or single crystal with relative errors smaller than 0.1% for diffractograms acquired in photographic films and below 0.01% for those collected in imaging plates.
The role of cooperative business models for the success of smallholder coffee certification in Nicaragua: A comparison of conventional, organic and Organic-Fairtrade certified cooperatives
Authors: Beuchelt Tina D. , Zeller Manfred 
Published: May 2012

AbstractSupported by policy-makers and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), coffee farmer organizations obtain organic and Fairtrade certifications to upgrade their coffee and, thus, increase returns to their members. Whether this and other upgrading strategies fit into the business model of the cooperative and lead to success are often not considered. This research aims to identify similarities and differences between conventional and certified cooperatives and the resultant impact on farmers' incomes. We analyze the business models, upgrading strategies, and strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) of seven conventional, organic and Organic-Fairtrade certified coffee cooperatives and link these to members' coffee gross margins. We use data from over 100 in-depth qualitative interviews and a household survey of 327 cooperative members in northern Nicaragua. Results indicate that cooperatives often apply the same upgrading strategies despite very different business models and SWOT. There are also many commonalities of SWOT among cooperatives but no clear-cut differences between conventional, organic and Organic-Fairtrade certified cooperatives. The qualitative comparison of coffee gross margins among the cooperatives shows no clear income effect from participating in certified coffee production and certified cooperatives. It indicates, rather, dependence of gross margins on yield levels, the business model and upgrading strategies of the cooperatives. Upgrading through certification seems only successful with a suitable business model and other upgrading strategies. Policies should focus on (i) increasing as well as stabilizing coffee yields, and (ii) on the institutional framework of cooperatives by offering strategic support, credit access, external auditing of cooperatives and the establishment of a functional national coffee institute.
The Effect of Feedback and Practice on the Acquisition of Novel Speech Behaviors
Authors: Kim In-sop , LaPointe Leonard L. , Stierwalt Julie A. G. 
Published: May 2012

Purpose
This study examined the effect of manipulating several parameters of motor learning theory on participants' phonetic acquisition and retention of utterances in a foreign language (Korean).

Method
Thirty-two native English-speaking participants naïve to the Korean language were each given 10 Korean sentences to practice and learn. The independent variables in the study were the number of practice trials and the feedback schedule. The participants listened to sentences delivered by a native speaker and received feedback according to the schedule. Participant responses were then judged by a panel of native Korean speakers in terms of their intelligibility, naturalness, and precision.

Results
The combination of 20% feedback and 100 practice trials was more effective than other combinations of feedback and practice trial schedule for the retention of novel phonetic productions of Korean phrases both 1 day after training and 1 week later.

Conclusions
These findings are in agreement with previously reported applications of motor learning–guided principles on the acquisition of motoric skills. These findings may have direct implications for both second-language learning and the treatment of neuromotor speech disorders such as apraxia of speech.
Acquired Apraxia of Speech: The Effects of Repeated Practice and Rate/Rhythm Control Treatments on Sound Production Accuracy
Authors: Wambaugh Julie L. , Nessler Christina , Cameron Rosalea , Mauszycki Shannon C. 
Published: May 2012

Purpose
This investigation was designed to elucidate the effects of repeated practice treatment on sound production accuracy in individuals with apraxia of speech (AOS) and aphasia. A secondary purpose was to determine if the addition of rate/rhythm control to treatment provided further benefits beyond those achieved with repeated practice.

Method
A single-subject design was employed with 10 speakers with chronic AOS and aphasia. Articulation accuracy served as the dependent measure. Participants received repeated practice treatment until a plateau in performance was observed or high levels of accuracy were achieved. If performance criterion was not reached, rate/rhythm control was added to the treatment to determine if additional gains would be made.

Results
For 8 of the participants, improvements were evident for all applications of repeated practice treatment, and positive response generalization was observed in most cases. When rate/rhythm control treatment was applied, modest additional gains were apparent for the majority of the applications. The 2 participants who did not benefit from repeated practice treatment also did not show improvements with rate/rhythm control treatment.

Conclusions
Repeated practice treatment resulted in improved articulation for the majority of participants. The amount of improvement varied within and across participants. Rate/rhythm control appeared to have limited additional benefits for some participants.

Supplemental Material

https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.6170201
The Feasibility of a Structured Cognitive Training Protocol to Address Progressive Cognitive Decline in Individuals With Vascular Dementia
Authors: Mayer Jamie F. , Bishop Lilli A. , Murray Laura L. 
Published: May 2012

PurposeCerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy, better known as CADASIL, is a rare, genetic form of early-onset vascular dementia. The purpose of this study was to use a modified version of Attention Process Training—II (APT–II; Sohlberg, Johnson, Paule, Raskin, & Mateer, 2001) with an individual with early-stage CADASIL.MethodAPT–II, modified to include strategy training, was applied in an A-B, multiple-probe design for an individual who had been diagnosed with early-stage CADASIL. Outcome measures included pre–post neuropsychological testing of attention, memory, and executive function; within-treatment probes of visual and auditory attention; and a measure of subjective experience of cognitive functioning in daily living.ResultsThe participant demonstrated nominal gains on visual and auditory attention probes but improved performance on several posttreatment measures of processing speed and executive function. The participant also reported substantially improved functional outcomes following the intervention protocol.ConclusionThis case illustrates the potential utility of behavioral intervention for individuals with CADASIL and highlights issues for speech-language pathologists to consider when using structured cognitive training protocols in the setting of progressive cognitive decline. These data suggest that further controlled studies for treating this population are warranted.
Attention and Other Cognitive Deficits in Aphasia: Presence and Relation to Language and Communication Measures
Authors: Murray Laura L. 
Published: May 2012

Purpose
This study was designed to further elucidate the relationship between cognition and aphasia, with a focus on attention. It was hypothesized that individuals with aphasia would display variable deficit patterns on tests of attention and other cognitive functions and that their attention deficits, particularly those of complex attention functions, would be related to their language and communication status.

Method
A group of individuals with varying types and severity of aphasia and a group of age- and education-matched adults with no brain damage completed tests of attention, short-term and working memory, and executive functioning.

Results
Overall, the group with aphasia performed significantly more poorly than the control group on the cognitive measures but displayed variability in the presence, types, and severity of their attention and other cognitive deficits. Correlational and regression analyses yielded significant relations between participants' attention deficits and their language and communication status.

Conclusion
The findings accorded well with prior research identifying (a) attention and other cognitive deficits in most but not all individuals with aphasia; (b) heterogeneity in the types and severity of attention and other cognitive symptoms among individuals with cognitive impairments; and (c) potent associations among attention, language, and other cognitive domains. Implications for clinical practice and future research are discussed.
Effects of Word Frequency and Modality on Sentence Comprehension Impairments in People With Aphasia
Authors: DeDe Gayle 
Published: May 2012

Purpose
It is well known that people with aphasia have sentence comprehension impairments. The present study investigated whether lexical factors contribute to sentence comprehension impairments in both the auditory and written modalities using online measures of sentence processing.

Method

People with aphasia and non brain–damaged controls participated in the experiment (
n
= 8 per group). Twenty-one sentence pairs containing high- and low-frequency words were presented in self-paced listening and reading tasks. The sentences were syntactically simple and differed only in the critical words. The dependent variables were response times for critical segments of the sentence and accuracy on the comprehension questions.

Results
The results showed that word frequency influences performance on measures of sentence comprehension in people with aphasia. The accuracy data on the comprehension questions suggested that people with aphasia have more difficulty understanding sentences containing low-frequency words in the written compared to auditory modality. Both group and single-case analyses of the response time data also indicated that people with aphasia experience more difficulty with reading than listening.

Conclusion
Sentence comprehension in people with aphasia is influenced by word frequency and presentation modality.
Short-Form Philadelphia Naming Test: Rationale and Empirical Evaluation
Authors: Walker Grant M. , Schwartz Myrna F. 
Published: May 2012

PurposeTo create two matched short forms of the Philadelphia Naming Test (PNT; Roach, Schwartz, Martin, Grewal, & Brecher, 1996) that yield similar results to the PNT for measuring anomia.MethodIn Study 1, archived naming data from 94 individuals with aphasia were used to identify which PNT items should be included in the short forms. The 2 constructed sets of 30 items, PNT30-A and PNT30-B, were validated using archived data from a separate group of 56 individuals with aphasia. In Study 2, the reliability of the PNT, PNT30-A, and PNT30-B across independent test administrations was evaluated with a new group of 25 individuals with aphasia who were selected to represent the full range of naming impairment.ResultsIn Study 1, PNT30-A and PNT30-B were found to be internally consistent, and accuracy scores on these subsets of items were highly correlated with the full PNT. In Study 2, PNT accuracy was extremely reliable over the span of 1 week, and independent administrations of PNT30-A and PNT30-B produced similar results to the PNT and to each other.ConclusionThe short forms of the PNT can be used to reliably estimate PNT performance, and the results can be compared to the provided norms. The 2 matched tests allow for the measurement of change in an individual’s naming ability.
Development of a Theoretically Based Treatment for Sentence Comprehension Deficits in Individuals With Aphasia
Authors: Kiran Swathi , Caplan David , Sandberg Chaleece , Levy Joshua , Berardino Alex , Ascenso Elsa , Villard Sarah , Tripodis Yorghos 
Published: May 2012

Purpose
Two new treatments, 1 based on sentence to picture matching (SPM) and the other on object manipulation (OM), that train participants on the thematic roles of sentences using pictures or by manipulating objects were piloted.

Method
Using a single-subject multiple-baseline design, sentence comprehension was trained on the affected sentence type in 1 task-related protocol in 15 participants with aphasia. The 2 tasks were SPM and OM; the treatment stimuli were object relatives, object clefts, passives, and unaccusatives, as well as two control structures—object relatives with a complex noun phrase (NP) and active sentences with three NPs.

Results
The criteria for efficacious treatment was an increase in the level of performance from the pretreatment probes to the posttreatment probes for the treated structure such that accuracy rose from at or below chance to above chance and either (a) accuracy rose by 33% or (b) the effect size was 2.6. Based on these criteria, the success rate for training the target structure was 2/6 participants in the SPM condition and 4/7 participants in the OM condition.

Conclusion
The outcome of this study illustrates the utility of this theoretically motivated and efficacious treatment for sentence comprehension deficits in individuals with aphasia.
The Time-Course of Lexical Activation During Sentence Comprehension in People With Aphasia
Authors: Ferrill Michelle , Love Tracy , Walenski Matthew , Shapiro Lewis P. 
Published: May 2012

Purpose
To investigate the time-course of processing of lexical items in auditorily presented canonical (subject–verb–object) constructions in young, neurologically unimpaired control participants and participants with left-hemisphere damage and agrammatic aphasia.

Method
A cross modal picture priming (CMPP) paradigm was used to test 114 control participants and 8 participants with agrammatic aphasia for priming of a lexical item (direct object noun) immediately after it is initially encountered in the ongoing auditory stream and at 3 additional time points at 400-ms intervals.

Results
The control participants demonstrated immediate activation of the lexical item, followed by a rapid loss (decay). The participants with aphasia demonstrated delayed activation of the lexical item.

Conclusion
This evidence supports the hypothesis of a delay in lexical activation in people with agrammatic aphasia. The delay in lexical activation feeds syntactic processing too slowly, contributing to comprehension deficits in people with agrammatic aphasia.
Developmental Trajectories of Verbal and Nonverbal Skills in Individuals With a History of Specific Language Impairment: From Childhood to Adolescence
Authors: Conti-Ramsden Gina , St Clair Michelle C. , Pickles Andrew , Durkin Kevin 
Published: May 2012

Purpose
To investigate the longitudinal trajectories of verbal and nonverbal skills in individuals with a history of specific language impairment (SLI) from childhood to adolescence. This study focuses on SLI only and investigates within-participant measures across abilities.

Method
Verbal and nonverbal skills were assessed in 242 children with a history of SLI at ages 7, 8, 11, 14, 16, and 17. Discrete factor growth modeling was used to examine developmental trajectories for the whole group and to identify subgroups on the basis of a novel, developmental, multidimensional approach.

Results
When expressive language, receptive language, and nonverbal skills were scaled to a common metric, the group of individuals with a history of SLI as a whole had stable skills growth throughout the 10-year time frame. Seven language subgroups were identified, but these differed only in severity and did not display mutually distinctive patterns of growth development. In contrast, 6 nonverbal skills subgroups were identified, and their trajectories did differ significantly, with evidence of deceleration in around one third of the sample.

Conclusion
Individuals with a history of SLI show steady language growth from age 7. However, different patterns of growth of nonverbal skills are observed from childhood to adolescence.
The Effects of Concurrent Cognitive Load on Phonological Processing in Adults Who Stutter
Authors: Jones Robin M. , Fox Robert A. , Jacewicz Ewa 
Published: May 2012

Purpose
To determine whether phonological processing in adults who stutter (AWS) is disrupted by increased amounts of cognitive load in a concurrent attention-demanding task.

Method
Nine AWS and 9 adults who do not stutter (AWNS) participated. Using a dual-task paradigm, the authors presented word pairs for rhyme judgments and, concurrently, letter strings for memory recall. The rhyme judgment task manipulated rhyming type (rhyming/nonrhyming) and orthographic representation (similar/dissimilar). The memory recall task varied stimulus complexity (no letters, 3 letters, 5 letters). Rhyme judgment accuracy and reaction time (RT) were used to assess phonological processing, and letter recall accuracy was used to measure memory recall.

Results
For rhyme judgments, AWS were as accurate as AWNS, and the increase in the cognitive load did not affect rhyme judgment accuracy of either group. Significant group differences were found in RTs (delays by AWS were 241 ms greater). RTs of AWS were also slower in the most demanding rhyme condition and varied with the complexity of the memory task. Accuracy of letter recall of AWS was comparatively worse in the most demanding 5-letter condition.

Conclusion
Phonological and cognitive processing of AWS is more vulnerable to disruptions caused by increased amounts of cognitive load in concurrent attention-demanding tasks.
Joint Bayesian inference of condition-specific miRNA and transcription factor activities from combined gene and microRNA expression data
Authors: Zacher Benedikt , Abnaof Khalid , Gade Stephan , Younesi Erfan , Tresch Achim , Fröhlich Holger 
Published: May 2012

Abstract
Motivation: There have been many successful experimental and bioinformatics efforts to elucidate transcription factor (TF)-target networks in several organisms. For many organisms, these annotations are complemented by miRNA-target networks of good quality. Attempts that use these networks in combination with gene expression data to draw conclusions on TF or miRNA activity are, however, still relatively sparse.
Results: In this study, we propose Bayesian inference of regulation of transcriptional activity (BIRTA) as a novel approach to infer both, TF and miRNA activities, from combined miRNA and mRNA expression data in a condition specific way. That means our model explains mRNA and miRNA expression for a specific experimental condition by the activities of certain miRNAs and TFs, hence allowing for differentiating between switches from active to inactive (negative switch) and inactive to active (positive switch) forms. Extensive simulations of our model reveal its good prediction performance in comparison to other approaches. Furthermore, the utility of BIRTA is demonstrated at the example of Escherichia coli data comparing aerobic and anaerobic growth conditions, and by human expression data from pancreas and ovarian cancer.
Availability and implementation: The method is implemented in the R package birta, which is freely available for Bio-conductor (&gt;=2.10) on http://www.bioconductor.org/packages/release/bioc/html/birta.html.
Contact: frohlich@bit.uni-bonn.de
Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
BRAT-BW: efficient and accurate mapping of bisulfite-treated reads
Authors: Harris Elena Y. , Ponts Nadia , Le Roch Karine G. , Lonardi Stefano 
Published: May 2012

Abstract
Summary: We introduce BRAT-BW, a fast, accurate and memory-efficient tool that maps bisulfite-treated short reads (BS-seq) to a reference genome using the FM-index (Burrows–Wheeler transform). BRAT-BW is significantly more memory efficient and faster on longer reads than current state-of-the-art tools for BS-seq data, without compromising on accuracy. BRAT-BW is a part of a software suite for genome-wide single base-resolution methylation data analysis that supports single and paired-end reads and includes a tool for estimation of methylation level at each cytosine.
Availability: The software is available in the public domain at http://compbio.cs.ucr.edu/brat/.
Contact: elenah@cs.ucr.edu
Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
The Oregon Health Insurance Experiment: Evidence from the First Year*
Authors: Finkelstein Amy , Taubman Sarah , Wright Bill , Bernstein Mira , Gruber Jonathan , Newhouse Joseph P. , Allen Heidi , Baicker Katherine ,   Oregon Health Study Group
Published: May 2012

AbstractIn 2008, a group of uninsured low-income adults in Oregon was selected by lottery to be given the chance to apply for Medicaid. This lottery provides an opportunity to gauge the effects of expanding access to public health insurance on the health care use, financial strain, and health of low-income adults using a randomized controlled design. In the year after random assignment, the treatment group selected by the lottery was about 25 percentage points more likely to have insurance than the control group that was not selected. We find that in this first year, the treatment group had substantively and statistically significantly higher health care utilization (including primary and preventive care as well as hospitalizations), lower out-of-pocket medical expenditures and medical debt (including fewer bills sent to collection), and better self-reported physical and mental health than the control group.