The transmission of trauma in refugee families: associations between intra-family trauma communication style, children’s attachment security and psychosocial adjustment

This study explores the transmission of trauma in 30 Middle Eastern refugee families in Denmark, where one or both parents were referred for treatment of PTSD symptoms and had non-traumatized children aged 4–9 years. The aim of the study was to explore potential risk and protective factors by examining the association between intra-family communication style regarding the parents’ traumatic experiences from the past, children’s psychosocial adjustment and attachment security. A negative impact of parental trauma on children might be indicated, as children’s Total Difficulties Scores on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) were significantly higher than the Danish norms. A negative association between children’s attachment security as measured by the Attachment and Traumatization Story Task and higher scores on the SDQ Total Difficulties Scale approached significance, suggesting that the transmission of trauma may be associated with disruptions in children’s attachment representations. Furthermore a significant association between parental trauma communication and children’s attachment style was found

Acquired constriction ring syndrome as a cause of inconsolable cry in a child: a case report

Acute constriction ring syndrome (ACRS) is a rare clinical condition characterized by formation of a circumferential constriction ring around an appendage or genitalia. Cases are mostly reported in infants and young children. Early recognition and a definitive treatment are of paramount importance in order to avoid irreversible ischemia and possible auto-amputation. We describe a case of a 14-month-old child presented to casualty with a history of refusal to feed and inconsolable cry. Parents noticed a recent swelling of left third toe. On careful examination the child was found to have an acquired constriction ring secondary to a tightly wrapped hair around left third toe. An urgent surgical decompression was done by the orthopaedic team with complete resolution of symptoms. We summarized the pathophysiology of ACRS underlining the need of awareness in treating physicians. The possible medico legal implications should be kept in mind bearing a suggested link with non-accidental injury

Regularized Frequency Domain Equalization Algorithm and its VLSI Implementation

Abstract — Approximation of Toeplitz matrices with circulant matrices is a well-known approach to reduce the computational complexity of linear equalizers. This paper presents a novel technique to compute linear equalizer coefficients in the frequency domain. It is shown how a regularization term can help to reduce the error caused by the frequency domain approximation. A corresponding VLSI implementation provides reference for the true silicon complexity and for the complexity increase associated with the proposed algorithm. I

Regularized frequency domain equalization algorithm and its VLSI implementation

Approximation of Toeplitz matrices with circulant matrices is a well-known approach to reduce the computational complexity of linear equalizers. This paper presents a novel technique to compute linear equalizer coefficients in the frequency domain. It is shown how a regularization term can help to reduce the error caused by the frequency domain approximation. A corresponding VLSI implementation provides reference for the true silicon complexity and for the complexity increase associated with the proposed algorithm

Performance of MIMO-extended UMTS-FDD downlink comparing space-time RAKE and linear equalizer

The paper discusses the performance of a MIMO-extended UMTS-FDD downlink with a 2x2 and a 4x4 antenna configuration. An analytical expression for the average signal to interference ratio (SIR) of a space-time (ST) RAKE receiver in an interference dominated environment is derived. Simulations are used to assess the BER performance with the number of concurrent users as a parameter. The results are compared to a single antenna link with equivalent data rate. In addition to that, a linear zero forcing (ZF) and an MMSE MIMO equalizer receiver is evaluated and compared to the ST-RAKE. It is shown that both methods can successfully mitigate the significant performance Imitation due to self interference (SI) and multiple access interference (MAI)

A frame-start detector for a 4x4 MIMO-OFDM system

Future wireless LANs will increase the peak data rate by employing multiple antennas at both transmitter and receiver

Silicon implementation of an MMSE-based soft demapper for MIMO-BICM

The performance of systems employing bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM) critically depends on the availability of soft information. In the multi-antenna case, the extraction of optimum bit-metrics becomes prohibitively complex, so that suboptimal solutions need to be adopted for practical implementation. Instead of considering all the spatially multiplexed streams jointly, the implementation presented in this paper computes the soft information on each data stream separately, based on the output of an MMSE equalizer