bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Two languages, one developing brain: event‐related potentials to words in bilingual toddlers
Authors: Conboy Barbara T. , Mills Debra L. 
Published: December 2005

Abstract Infant bilingualism offers a unique opportunity to study the relative effects of language experience and maturation on brain development, with each child serving as his or her own control. Event‐related potentials (ERPs) to words were examined in 19‐ to 22‐month‐old English‐Spanish bilingual toddlers. The children's dominant vs. nondominant languages elicited different patterns of neural activity in the lateral asymmetry of an early positive component (P100), and the latencies and distributions of ERP differences to known vs. unknown words from 200–400 and 400–600 ms. ERP effects also differed for ‘high’ and ‘low’ vocabulary groups based on total conceptual vocabulary scores. The results indicate that the organization of language‐relevant brain activity is linked to experience with language rather than brain maturation.
Event‐related potential (ERP) indices of infants’ recognition of familiar and unfamiliar objects in two and three dimensions
Authors: Carver Leslie J. , Meltzoff Andrew N. , Dawson Geraldine 
Published: December 2005

Abstract We measured infants’ recognition of familiar and unfamiliar 3‐D objects and their 2‐D representations using event‐related potentials (ERPs). Infants differentiated familiar from unfamiliar objects when viewing them in both two and three dimensions. However, differentiation between the familiar and novel objects occurred more quickly when infants viewed the object in 3‐D than when they viewed 2‐D representations. The results are discussed with respect to infants’ recognition abilities and their understanding of real objects and representations. This is the first study using 3‐D objects in conjunction with ERPs in infants, and it introduces an interesting new methodology for assessing infants’ electrophysiological responses to real objects.
Object boundaries influence toddlers’ performance in a search task
Authors: Shutts Kristin , Keen Rachel , Spelke Elizabeth S. 
Published: December 2005

Abstract Previous research has shown that young children have difficulty searching for a hidden object whose location depends on the position of a partly visible physical barrier. Across four experiments, we tested whether children's search errors are affected by two variables that influence adults’ object‐directed attention: object boundaries and proximity relations. Toddlers searched for a car that rolled down a ramp behind an occluding panel and stopped on contact with a barrier. The car's location on each trial depended on the placement of the barrier behind one of two doors in the panel. In Experiment 1, when a part of the car (a pompom on an antenna) was visible at the same distance from the object as the barrier wall in past research, search performance was above chance but below ceiling. In Experiments 2 and 3, when the visible part was close to the hidden body of the car and could be seen through one of two windows in the doors of the occluding panel, performance was near ceiling. In Experiment 4, when only the barrier was visible through one of the same windows, performance was at chance. Toddlers’ search for a hidden object therefore is affected by the proximity of a visible part of the object, though not by the proximity of a separate visible landmark. These findings suggest a parallel between the object representations of young children and those of adults, whose attention is directed to objects and spreads in a gradient‐like fashion within an object.
A THERMODYNAMIC THEORY OF THE ORIGIN AND HIERARCHICAL EVOLUTION OF LIVING SYSTEMS
Authors: Hamilton H. J. 
Published: December 2005

Abstract.Growing interest in the origin of life, the physical foundations of biological theory, and the evolution of animal social systems has led to increasing efforts to understand the processes by which elements or living systems at one level of organizational complexity combine to form stable systems of higher order. J. Bronowski saw the need to extend or reformulate evolutionary theory to deal with the hierarchy problem and to account for the evolution of systems of “stratified stability.” The hierarchy problem has become a matter of great interest also in nonequilibrium thermodynamic theory.An effort is made here to develop an abstract, phenomenological model, based on the laws of thermodynamics, to account for the origin and hierarchical evolution of living systems. It is argued that the principle of minimum entropy production, developed by I. Prigogine, applies generally to all thermodynamic systems and processes and is implicit in an extended and more complete formulation of the second law of thermodynamics. From this are derived a thermodynamic criterion and a principle of thermodynamic selection governing the formation of stable systems of “elements” of various levels of organization. Thermodynamic selection gives rise to the creation of “elements” having increasingly “open” characteristic structures which may combine spontaneously to form “social” or crystalline systems capable of growing and reproducing themselves through processes of fissioning or budding. Such simple, self‐reproducing systems are capable of evolving by natural selection, which is seen to be a special case of the more general process of thermodynamic selection. The principle of natural selection, thus formulated, has the character of a fundamental physical law. Self‐reproducing systems with suitably open hereditary programs may combine to form stable social systems, which may grow and reproduce as a unit. In this way self‐reproducing systems of increasing hierarchical order, size, and organizational complexity may evolve through processes of thermodynamic (natural) selection. Some implications of this open‐ended model and opportunities for testing its empirical and theoretical utility are explored.
INDIVIDUAL NEEDS AND SOCIAL CONSENSUS
Authors: Ferkiss Victor 
Published: December 2005

Abstract.The United States today is faced with a crisis of the liberal system stemming from a shortage of resources and ideas. Liberalism assumes that there will always be enough resources to meet all needs and that politics consists of the struggle of interest groups for resources to meet their particular needs. Liberalism is wrong on both counts: there are not enough resources and there is a common good which includes all particular needs properly understood. We must now revise our ideas and institutions in order to make the common good attainable. Various changes in ideas and institutions toward that end are suggested.
RATIONALITY IN POLITICS
Authors: Wavell Bruce B. 
Published: December 2005

Abstract.This essay examines current decision‐making procedures in politics, especially those employed in parliamentary procedure, with a view to determining the extent to which they contribute to the making of rational political decisions. It concludes that political decision‐making procedures are, on the whole, inferior to court‐trial procedures, and proceeds to exploit this conclusion by describing a new method of political decision‐making based on the concept of a political jury. This method, it is claimed, is more likely than present methods to produce sound legislation.
DISCRIMINATING ALTRUISMS
Authors: Hardin Garrett 
Published: December 2005

Abstract.Reliable Darwinian theory shows that pure altruism cannot persist and expand over time. All higher organisms show inheritable patterns of caring and discrimination. The principal forms of discriminating altruisms among human beings are individualism (different from egoism), familialism, cronyism, tribalism, and patriotism. The promiscuous altruism called “universalism” cannot endure in the face of inescapable competition. Information can be promiscuously shared, but not so matter and energy without evoking the tragedy of the commons. Universalism is not recommendable even as an ideal. Survival now requires the creation of an intellectual base for a new patriotism.
FROM GOD TO INFINITY, OR HOW SCIENCE RAIDED RELIGION'S PATENT ON MYSTERY
Authors: Raschke Carl 
Published: December 2005

Abstract.The efforts of theologians in the last few decades to adapt their discipline to the methodological constraints of the “empirical sciences” have become obsolete. Just as many theologians have reached a tentative rapproachment with the “secular” mentality, the elements of mystery hitherto shepherded by religious thinkers have been appropriated in the cosmological models of the “new physics.”The paper explores revolutionary developments over the last ten years within quantum physics. It points to an imminent convergence between scientific and religious concepts within a larger framework of speculation termed synholism (from Friedrich von Weizsácher), and examines theoretical implications of such hypotheses in high‐energy physics as a “cosmic consciousness” and “multiple universes.”
EVOLUTION, HUMAN VALUES AND RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE: A PROCESS PERSPECTIVE
Authors: Schroeder W. Widick 
Published: December 2005

Abstract.This essay sketches an interpretation of human experience utilizing the perspective of’ process philosophy. Beauty is a key notion, and emergent evolution is a central theme. The following topics are addressed: the emergence of modern evolutionary thinking and alternative responses to it; the nature of human nature in a process perspective; the place of humans in nature; the immanence of laws; emergent evolution on this planet; some implications of the hierarchy of nature for the interpretation of human life, human morality, and human values; and human religious experience.
A NATURALISTIC THEORY OF ARCHAIC MORAL ORDERS
Authors: Campbell Donald T. 
Published: December 2005

Abstract. Cultural evolution, producing group‐level adaptations, is more problematic than the cultural evolution of individually confirmable skills, but it probably has occurred. The “conformist transmission,” described by Boyd and Richerson (1985), leads local social units to become homogeneous in anadaptive, as well as adaptive, beliefs. The resulting intragroup homogeneity and inter‐group heterogeneity makes possible a cultural selection of adaptive group ideologies.All archaic urban, division‐of‐labor social organizations had to overcome aspects of human nature produced by biological evolution, due to the predicament of genetic competition among the cooperators. The universal norms found in archaic moral systems are seen as curbs to this human nature, reinforced by beliefs in invisible sanction systems and rewarding and punishing afterlives (as in heaven or reincarnation). Perhaps the ubiquity of lavishly wasteful royal funerals is to be explained as contributing to this function.
TIME, THERMODYNAMICS, AND THEOLOGY
Authors: Murphy George L. 
Published: December 2005

Keywords: A theological approach to understanding time and change in a modern way must consider the relationships between thermal physics and time as elucidated during the past century and a half. The fact of temporal change, including death and decay, has been a religious problem since antiquity, so that some traditions have simply attempted to transcend the world of change. However, a major current of the Christian tradition has seen change as a fundamental aspect of God's creation, and one with which God becomes identified in the Incarnation. This implies approval of history, as having an ultimate value, rather than transcendence of it.We examine thermodynamics, and especially its Second Law, in order to understand more precisely the issues of temporal change. The Second Law states a universal tendency toward increasing disorder, and several implications of this law are discussed. Of particular significance, however, is the work of Prigogine and others on nonequilibrium thermodynamics, drawing attention to such phenomena as the enhancement of chemical reaction rates and the formation of “dissipative structures” in nonequilibrium situations. Such possibilities may be of considerable importance for understanding chemical and biological evolution.These ideas can be included in an evolutionary picture in which, following Teilhard de Chardin, the Body of Christ is seen as the future of evolution‐an “ultimate dissipative structure” in which the world of time and change is united with God. Suffering, death, and decay receive their meaning from the future. Within this framework it is therefore possible to believe that the material world of history may be part of the eschatological future and that science provides hints, though not predictions, of how that may happen.
WOMEN: A MORE BALANCED BRAIN?
Authors: MucLeun Paul D. 
Published: December 2005

Abstract. On the basis of knowledge prior to 1988, Ashbrook pointed out that whereas most men are primarily dependent on the left cerebral hemisphere (“dominant hemisphere”) for verbally related functions, women show a greater hemispheric balance in this respect. For men, he argues, their possession of a “speaking” and a “non‐speaking hemisphere” results in a positive‐negative, bipolar way of thinking that may be characterized as dualistic and dialectically hierarchical. In contrast, the greater balance of hemispheric function in women appears to promote greater generalization and synthesis in their thinking.In this article I cite more recent neuroanatomical and brain imaging studies that provide further evidence of disparities in structure and function of the brains of men and women. As background for an attempt to explain these differences, I give a brief review of the triune evolution of the mammalian brain leading up to the human cerebrum. It is of major significance that the female has played a central role in mammalian evolution for more than 180 million years and that the evolutionary transition from reptilian therapsids to mammals is characterized by the develoment of (1) nursing conjoined with maternal care; (2) audiovocal communication or aiding mother‐offspring contact; and (3) play. In human beings, the infant‐carrying hypothesis suggests one means by which, over generations, certain parts of a woman's right hemisphere could undergo functional and eventual anatomical expansion. The mother‐infant communication of basic mammalian sounds with vowel and consonant components suggests a basis for the origination of speech.Finally, in an expansion of Ashbrook's original thesis, we arrive at the rovocative consideration that, unlike men, with their dialectical reasoning, women, with their more balanced brain, are provided with a trialectial ladder for climbing to achieve knowledge. In terms of quantum mechanics, the particle and wave would correspond to the substance and strength of the sides of the ladder, and the derived psychic information (which is neither matter nor energy) would compare to the rungs in between.
Estimating Numbers of Infectious Units from Serial Dilution Assays
Authors: Stallard Nigel , Gravenor Mike B. , Curnow Robert N. 
Published: December 2005

Summary
The paper concerns the design and analysis of serial dilution assays to estimate the infectivity of a sample of tissue when it is assumed that the sample contains a finite number of indivisible infectious units such that a subsample will be infectious if it contains one or more of these units. The aim of the study is to estimate the number of infectious units in the original sample. The standard approach to the analysis of data from such a study is based on the assumption of independence of aliquots both at the same dilution level and at different dilution levels, so that the numbers of infectious units in the aliquots follow independent Poisson distributions. An alternative approach is based on calculation of the expected value of the total number of samples tested that are not infectious. We derive the likelihood for the data on the basis of the discrete number of infectious units, enabling calculation of the maximum likelihood estimate and likelihood-based confidence intervals. We use the exact probabilities that are obtained to compare the maximum likelihood estimate with those given by the other methods in terms of bias and standard error and to compare the coverage of the confidence intervals. We show that the methods have very similar properties and conclude that for practical use the method that is based on the Poisson assumption is to be recommended, since it can be implemented by using standard statistical software. Finally we consider the design of serial dilution assays, concluding that it is important that neither the dilution factor nor the number of samples that remain untested should be too large.
Psychopathy, startle blink modulation, and electrodermal reactivity in twin men
Authors: Benning Stephen D. , Patrick Christopher J. , Iacono William G. 
Published: December 2005

AbstractPsychopathy is a personality disorder with interpersonal–emotional and antisocial deviance facets. This study investigated these facets of psychopathy prospectively using normal‐range personality traits in a community sample of young adult men who completed a picture‐viewing task that included startle blink and skin conductance measures, like tasks used to study psychopathy in incarcerated men. Consistent with prior research, scores on the interpersonal–emotional facet of psychopathy (“fearless dominance”) were associated with deficient fear‐potentiated startle. Conversely, scores on the social deviance facet of psychopathy (“impulsive antisociality”) were associated with smaller overall skin conductance magnitudes. Participants high in fearless dominance also exhibited deficient skin conductance magnitudes specifically to aversive pictures. Findings encourage further investigation of psychopathy and its etiology in community samples.
Effects of aging and working memory demands on prospective memory
Authors: West Robert , Bowry Ritvij 
Published: December 2005

AbstractThe current study used event‐related brain potentials (ERPs) to examine the effects of aging, increasing the working memory demands of the ongoing activity, and a prospective memory load on the neural correlates of prospective remembering and target recognition. The behavioral data revealed that the success of prospective memory was sensitive to working memory load in younger, but not older, adults and that a prospective memory load had a greater effect on the performance of older adults than that of younger adults. The ERP data revealed age‐related differences in the neural correlates of the detection of prospective cues, post‐retrieval processes that support prospective memory, and target recognition. Our results support the hypothesis that there are age‐related differences in the ability to recruit preparatory attentional processes that underlie prospective memory, and demonstrate that younger and older adults may recruit somewhat different neural generators to support prospective memory and working memory.
Differentiation between protective reflexes: Cardiac defense and startle
Authors: Ramírez Isabel , Sánchez María B. , Fernández María Carmen , Lipp Ottmar V. , Vila Jaime 
Published: December 2005

AbstractRise time and duration are two parametric characteristics of the eliciting stimulus frequently used to differentiate among psychophysiological reflexes. The present research varied the duration (study 1) and rise time (study 2) of an intense acoustic stimulus to dissociate cardiac defense and cardiac startle using the eyeblink response as the external criterion of startle. In each study, 100 participants were presented with five white noise stimuli of 105 dB under one of five duration (50, 100, 250, 500, and 1000 ms) or rise time (0, 24, 48, 96, and 240 ms) conditions. Cardiac defense was affected by stimulus duration, present only in the 500‐ and 1000‐ms conditions, but not by stimulus rise time, present in all rise time conditions. Rise time affected blink startle, but did not selectively alter the short latency accelerative component of the heart rate response, thus questioning whether it reflects startle.
The relationship between hepatic immunoglobulin production and CD154 expression in chronic liver diseases
Authors: Mayo Marlyn J. , Mosby James M. , Jeyarajah Rohan , Combes Burton , Khilnani Smina , Al‐halimi Maha , Handem Iorna , Grammer Amrie C. , Lipsky Peter E. 
Published: December 2005

Abstract: Background: CD40–CD154 is a receptor–ligand pair that provides key communication signals between cells of the adaptive immune system in states of inflammation and autoimmunity. The CD40 receptor is expressed constitutively on B lymphocytes, for which it provides important signals regulating clonal expansion and antibody production. CD154 is a member of the tumor necrosis factor superfamily, which is primarily expressed by activated T cells.Methods: Because many chronic liver diseases are characterized by lymphocytic infiltration of the liver and several have increased immunoglobulin (Ig) production, the role of CD40–CD154 in hepatic Ig production was investigated in patients with primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC), primary sclerosing cholangitis, autoimmune hepatitis (AIH), hepatitis C, hepatitis B, alcoholic and non‐alcoholic steatohepatitis, as well as normal controls.Results: Soluble CD154 levels in the serum were found to be no different in chronic liver diseases vs normal controls. Likewise, CD154 mRNA levels in peripheral blood mononuclear cells did not differ. However, mRNA for CD154 was significantly increased in the liver of individuals with PBC and AIH as compared with the other groups. The quantity of CD154 mRNA in the liver correlated positively with the quantity of mRNA for secretory Ig.Conclusion: These findings suggest that CD40–CD154 signals may be involved in Ig production within the liver of autoimmune liver diseases.
Reduced heart rate variability and baroreflex sensitivity in primary biliary cirrhosis
Authors: Newton Julia L. , Allen John , Kerr Simon , Jones David E. J. 
Published: December 2005

Abstract: Background: Standardized mortality ratio for primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) is 2.87. Even after accounting for liver and cancer‐related deaths there is an unexplained excess mortality associated with PBC. We have assessed heart rate variability (HRV) and baroreflex sensitivity (BRS) risk factors associated with cardiovascular mortality, in 57 PBC patients and age‐ and sex‐matched normal controls.Methods: HRV and BRS were measured non‐invasively in subjects and controls. Beat to beat RR interval and ‘Portapres’ blood pressure data were processed using power spectral analysis. Power was calculated in very low frequency (VLF), low‐frequency (LF) and high‐frequency (HF) bands according to international guidelines. BRS (α) was computed using cross‐spectrum analysis. Patients also underwent fatigue severity assessment using a measure validated for use in PBC.Results: PBC patients had significantly lower total HRV compared with controls (P=0.02), with the reduction occurring predominantly in the LF domain (P=0.03). BRS was also significantly reduced compared with controls (P=0.02). There were no significant differences in HRV or BRS between cirrhotic and non‐cirrhotic patients. Within the PBC patient group HRV was significantly lower in fatigued than in non‐fatigued patients (P<0.05).Conclusion: Abnormalities of HRV and BRS in PBC are not specific to advanced disease but are associated with fatigue severity. Abnormalities could be associated with increased risk of sudden cardiac death, potentially contributing to the excess mortality seen in PBC.