Natural-language user profiles have recently attracted attention not only for improved interpretability, but also for their potential to make recommender systems more steerable. By enabling direct editing, natural-language profiles allow users to explicitly articulate preferences that may be difficult to infer from past behavior. However, it remains unclear whether current natural-language-based recommendation methods can follow such steering commands. While existing steerability evaluations have shown some success for well-recognized item attributes (e.g., movie genres), we argue that these benchmarks fail to capture the richer forms of user control that motivate steerable recommendations. To address this gap, we introduce SteerEval, an evaluation framework designed to measure more nuanced and diverse forms of steerability by using interventions that range from genres to content-warning for movies. We assess the steerability of a family of pretrained natural-language recommenders, examine the potential and limitations of steering on relatively niche topics, and compare how different profile and recommendation interventions impact steering effectiveness. Finally, we offer practical design suggestions informed by our findings and discuss future steps in steerable recommender design.
Within the institutional setting of collegiate athletics in the United States, wearable technology devices are regularly issued to competing college athletes for the purpose of harvesting their personal biometric performance data. Although data harvested from college athletes by institutionally issued wearable technologies are of potential value from a performance standpoint, a robust third-party marketplace also exists for athletes' biometric performance data. At present, and in accordance with intensifying financial demands in collegiate athletics, the National Collegiate Athletic Association permits the unilateral harvest and sale of college athletes' personal biometric data. Accordingly, the present study sought to explore current college athletes' perceptions of the proprietary usage and sale of their personal biometric data. Findings illuminate both the necessity of informed governance with regard to protecting athletes' privacy amid novel technological integration and legal and financial considerations given college athletes' ability to monetize their name, image, and likeness.
Glutaminase variants associated with neurological diseaseGlutaminase (GLS) catalyzes the hydrolysis of glutamine to produce glutamate, the brain's principal excitatory neurotransmitter. Two de novo gain-of-function mutations in GLS, S482C and H461L, were recently identified in patients with developmental delay, epilepsy, and infantile cataract. These patients exhibited high glutamate and low glutamine concentrations in the brain, suggesting that the GLS variants have abnormal enzymology. Here, we examined the enzymatic properties of the mutant enzymes and found that they no longer require the anionic activator phosphate to stimulate enzymatic activity or induce filament formation. The mutant enzymes also exhibit a total (S482C) or partial (H461L) loss of glutamate product inhibition, lifting this restriction on glutamate accumulation. Structural analysis of the S482C variant shows the mutation shifts the key catalytic residue Y466 into its catalytically active configuration and disrupts a key hydrogen bond between Y466 and the glutamate product, explaining how the S482C variant has enzymatic activity in the absence of phosphate and is insensitive to glutamate product inhibition. These results shed new light on the mechanism of phosphate activation and glutamate product inhibition of GLS and show that loss of these enzymatic properties disrupts glutamate homeostasis in the brain and causes neurological disease.
The aim of the current study was to determine the efficacy of unilateral conditioning exercises on post activation performance enhancement (PAPE) during a bilateral task, with particular reference to leg dominance. Over three days, 22 young adult male and female subjects were tested on unilateral and bilateral leg power and balance measurements, examined for footedness using a footedness questionnaire, and performed left and right reactive lateral leaps before and after unilateral conditioning exercise treatments. Response time of the step leg and leap distance from the push-off leg were evaluated with repeated measures ANOVA and ANCOVA with a p-level of .05. Results revealed no effects attributable to ipsilateral or contralateral PAPE effects and no differences in left versus right leaping distance or response time. However, when footedness (right, mixed) effects were examined, differences in performance consequent to conditioning exercises were found. Mixed footed subjects responded slower and leaped further on posttests following CE, but these results were not based on which leg was conditioned. Mixed footers, and not right footers, may have adopted a leaping strategy following conditioning strategies. These findings question the usefulness of unidimensional assessments of leg dominance and laterality in evaluating characteristics of sport and exercise performance.
