Information extraction in emergency management missions: an adaptive multi-agent approach

With increasing demands for autonomous agents to work alongside humans in emergency management response (EMR), considerations of translations of human to machine language (and the converse) are timely. We present a prototype where the translation is dealt with by restricting communications to occur through a form of controlled natural language (CNL) (Fuchs and Schwitter, 1995). The prototype is new in that it allows for communications between both physical and virtual autonomous agents, agents are assigned different levels of autonomy, and it includes a level of information hiding that allows for information to be passed to relevant agents, whilst keeping those (humans) involved anonymous. A real-life mission is then used to exemplify how information is retrieved and communicated in the prototype. Finally, some usability experimental results are presented

Exponential Mixing for a Stochastic PDE Driven by Degenerate Noise

We study stochastic partial differential equations of the reaction-diffusion type. We show that, even if the forcing is very degenerate (i.e. has not full rank), one has exponential convergence towards the invariant measure. The convergence takes place in the topology induced by a weighted variation norm and uses a kind of (uniform) Doeblin condition.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figur

Evaluation of Selected Medicinal Plants Extracted in Different Ethanol Concentrations for Antibacterial Activity against Human Pathogens

Medicinal plant extracts prepared with selected ethanol concentrations from eight species, Peumus boldus (boldo leaf), Agathosma betulina (buchu leaf), Echinacea angustifolia (echinacea root), Humulus lupulus (hops strobile), Glycyrrhiza glabra (licorice root), Mahonia aquifolium (Oregon grape root), Usnea barbata (usnea lichen), and Anemopsis californica (yerba mansa root), were screened for antibacterial activity against four Gram-positive and four Gram-negative pathogens. The antibacterial activity of the extracts (50, 70, and 90% ethanol) was evaluated using a standard well assay and microbroth dilution method. Minimum bactericidal concentrations (MBCs) were also determined for each extract. Plant extracts showed strong antibacterial action against Gram-positive bacteria, Staphylococcus aureus, methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Staphylococcus epidermidis and Streptococcus pyogenes, while negligible to no inhibitory activity against Gram-negative bacteria; Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Salmonella enteritidis was observed. Among the plant extracts, the boldo, hops, licorice and yerba mansa exhibited a strong antibacterial action at all three ethanol concentrations. Of these four, hops showed the strongest activity at 90% ethanol. Echinacea angustifolia extracts did not show any considerable antibacterial activity, while usnea showed strong activity only at 90% against S. epidermis. Except Echinacea angustifolia and usnea, the plant extracts were strongly inhibitory towards the MRSA strain. Buchu, yerba mansa and Oregon grape showed higher activity at 50% or 70% on MRSA. MBCs varied from 1/4 to \u3e1/256 dilution levels and were in agreement with well assay results. The results suggest that the extracts of boldo, hops, licorice and yerba mansa could be considered as potentially effective antibacterial agents against Gram-positive bacteria including MRSA. For hops, buchu, Oregon grape and usnea, the activity is dependent on the concentration of ethanol used in the extraction procedure. The ratio of ethanol/water mixture used for extraction of medicinal plants is an important factor to obtain optimum antibacterial activity

Therapists' techniques in the treatment of adolescent depression

When comparing the relative effectiveness of different psychological treatment approaches using clinical trials, it is essential to establish fidelity to each manualized therapy, and differentiation between the treatment arms. Yet few psychological therapy trials include details about the assessment of treatment integrity and little is known about the specific techniques used by therapists, or to what degree these techniques are shared or distinct across different therapeutic approaches. The aims of this study were to (a) establish the fidelity of two established psychological therapies, cognitive- behavior therapy (CBT) and short-term psychoanalytic psychotherapy (STPP), in the treatment of adolescent depression; and (b) examine whether they were delivered with adherence to their respective treatment modalities, and if they could be differentiated from each other and from a reference treatment (a brief psychosocial intervention; BPI). The study also aimed to identify shared and distinct techniques used within and across the three treatments. Audiotapes (N = 230) of therapy sessions collected as part of a trial were blind double-rated using the Comparative Psychotherapy Process Scale (Hilsenroth, Ackerman, Blagys, Baity, & Mooney, 2003; Hilsenroth, Defife, Blake, & Cromer, 2007), which includes subscales for Cognitive-Behavioral and Psychodynamic- Interpersonal techniques. The treatments were delivered with reasonable fidelity and there was clear differentiation in the use of CBT and STPP, and between these two established psychological therapies and BPI. An item-level analysis identified techniques used across all three treatments, techniques that were shared between BPI and CBT, and techniques that were unique to CBT and STPP

El crecimiento urbano industrial ilegal y su relación con el deterioro de los recursos naturales de Lurín - 2021. Caso de estudio: Urb. Huertos de Villena

La presente investigación tuvo como objetivo general determinar la relación que existe sobre el crecimiento urbano industrial ilegal y el deterioro de los recursos naturales de Lurín - 2021. El trabajo de investigación tiene como enfoque mixto, método hipotético deductivo, de tipo básico, diseño no experimental, con nivel correlacional. La muestra total fue de 53 pobladores. Para la recolección de datos, fue como técnicas de instrumentos el cuestionario aplicado a trabajadores industriales y pobladores; para luego ser procesado en el programa SPSS; y el instrumento de la entrevista a expertos; para reforzar la investigación y tener más conocimiento de las variables. Además, la herramienta del resultado fue la estadística inferencial y descriptiva, para luego interpretar las respuestas de los entrevistados con Atlas.Ti y finalizar con la triangulación; así mismo como resultado obtenido sobre el crecimiento urbano industrial ilegal con el deterioro de los recursos naturales, según los trabajadores de las industrias y pobladores. El resultado según Rho de Spearman es de 0,423 siendo un nivel de correlación: positiva moderada. Se concluye, que el crecimiento urbano industrial ilegal se manifiesta cuando la parte municipal no cumple con los marcos institucionales ambientales o no les proporcionan dichos argumentos a las empresas industriales