Group psychotherapy for male spousal abusers: A program evaluation.

The study had a single specific purpose. That purpose was to assess the short-term effectiveness of an integrated group intervention program in promoting change to the belief systems of men who were physically abusive toward their female partners. The results of the study revealed that the assessment and the fourteen week, two phase treatment program, and the continuing three phase treatment program was significantly more effective in reducing the physical violence, than was a no-treatment situation. The study also revealed that although the violence decreased substantially or as in most cases totally, the level of psychological abuse decreased but not proportionally to the level of violence. The study addressed the demographic variables of the violent male and determined that the average age for male batterers of this study was 34 years of age. The demographic variables of physical punishment as a child and psychologically and physically abused as a child appear to be the most consistent variables with adult males who had been violent to their spouse or intimate.Dept. of History, Philosophy, and Political Science. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis1996 .C69. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 37-01, page: 0125. Adviser: S. Brooks. Thesis (M.A.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 1996

An Overview of the Administration's Strengthening America's Communities Initiative

This report discusses administration’s proposed base program called strengthening America’s communities initiative intended to award funds in support of job creation and economic development

Pattern Specification and Immune Response Transcriptional Signatures of Pericardial and Subcutaneous Adipose Tissue

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States. Recent studies suggest that pericardial adipose tissue (PCAT) secretes inflammatory factors that contribute to the development of CVD. To better characterize the role of PCAT in the pathogenesis of disease, we performed a large-scale unbiased analysis of the transcriptional differences between PCAT and subcutaneous adipose tissue, analysing 53 microarrays across 19 individuals. As it was unknown whether PCAT-secreted factors are produced by adipocytes or cells in the supporting stromal fraction, we also sought to identify differentially expressed genes in isolated pericardial adipocytes vs. isolated subcutaneous adipocytes. Using microarray analysis, we found that: 1) pericardial adipose tissue and isolated pericardial adipocytes both overexpress atherosclerosis-promoting chemokines and 2) pericardial and subcutaneous fat depots, as well as isolated pericardial adipocytes and subcutaneous adipocytes, express specific patterns of homeobox genes. In contrast, a core set of lipid processing genes showed no significant overlap with differentially expressed transcripts. These depot-specific homeobox signatures and transcriptional profiles strongly suggest different functional roles for the pericardial and subcutaneous adipose depots. Further characterization of these inter-depot differences should be a research priority

Interfacing Toolbox for Robotic Arms with Real-Time Adaptive Behavior Capabilities

Industrial robotic systems are increasingly being used to perform tasks requiring in-loop adaptive behavior to accommodate the demands of data-driven and autonomous manufacturing in the era of Industry 4.0. Achieving effective integration and the full potential of robotic systems presents significant challenges. This paper presents a C++ language-based toolbox, developed to facilitate the integration of industrial robotic arms with server computers, sensors and actuators. The new toolbox, namely the “Interfacing Toolbox for Robotic Arms” (ITRA), is fully flexible and extensible. It is capable of controlling multiple robots simultaneously, thus providing the opportunity for sophisticated manufacturing operations to be coordinated among multiple robots. ITRA can be used to achieve fast adaptive robotic systems, with latency as low as 30ms. Moreover, ITRA is cross-platform, allowing great flexibility between different computer architectures. The paper describes the architecture of ITRA, presents all its functions and gives some application examples

Being fluent and keeping looking

The complexities of the many concepts and models around information literacy are considered, and some personal views given as to how they may best be clarified, both theoretically and practically. A slightly adapted idea of the concept of information fluency can serve as a main general purpose for the promotion of information literacy, expressed as a more specific meta-model for the prevailing technological environment, and as still more specific components for a particular context. The focus of this relatively stable general formulation is on understanding, rather than skills or competences. It can incorporate the need for education, advice and counseling, as well as information provision, and with domain-specific literacies, as well as supporting personal information literacy

Supporting child witnesses during identification lineups: Exploring the effectiveness of Registered Intermediaries

Performance at identification lineup was assessed in 85 6- to 11-year-old typically developing children. Children viewed a live staged event involving two male actors, and were asked to identify the perpetrators from two separate lineups (one perpetrator present lineup, and one perpetrator absent lineup). Half the children took part in lineups adapted by a Registered Intermediary (an impartial, trained professional who facilitates understanding and communication between vulnerable witnesses and members of the justice system), and half took part in ‘Best-Practice’ lineups, according to current guidance for eyewitness identification in England and Wales. Children receiving assistance from a Registered Intermediary (relative to children who received ‘Best-Practice’ lineups) were more accurate in their identifications for perpetrator present lineups, and there was some evidence that they were also more accurate for perpetrator absent lineups. This provides the first empirical evidence for the effectiveness of Registered Intermediary support during identification lineups

Robotic geometric and volumetric inspection of high value and large scale aircraft wings

Increased demands in performance and production rates require a radical new approach to the design and manufacturing of aircraft wings. Performance of modern robotic manipulators has enabled research and development of fast automated non-destructive testing (NDT) systems for complex geometries. This paper presents recent outcomes of work aimed at removing the bottleneck due to data acquisition rates, to fully exploit the scanning speed of modern 6-DoF manipulators. The geometric assessment of the parts is carried out with a robotised dynamic laser scanner encoded through an absolute laser tracker. This method allows scanning speeds up to 330mm/s at 1mm pitch. State of the art ultrasonic instrumentation has been integrated into a large robot cell to enable fast data acquisition, high scan resolutions and accurate positional encoding. A fibre optic connection between the ultrasonic instrument and the server computer enables data transfer rates up to 1.6 GB/s. The robotic inspection system presented herein is currently being tested for industrial exploitation. The adopted system integration strategies allow traditional ultrasonic phased array scanning as well as full matrix capture (FMC) and other novel scanning approaches (e.g. multi-Tx phased array). Scan results, relative to a 1.2m x 3m carbon fibre sample, are presented. The system shows a reference scanning rate of 25.3m2/hour with an 8Tx/8Rx PA approach and an ultrasonically reachable scanning rate over 100m2/hour with the novel techniques

The knowledge gap: Implications of leveling the playing field for low‐income and middle‐income children

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/88070/1/RRQ.41.2.2.pd

Systematic identification of cis-silenced genes by trans complementation

A gene’s transcriptional output is the combined product of two inputs: diffusible factors in the cellular milieu acting in trans, and chromatin state acting in cis. Here, we describe a strategy for dissecting the relative contribution of cis versus trans mechanisms to gene regulation. Referred to as trans complementation, it entails fusing two disparate cell types and searching for genes differentially expressed between the two genomes of fused cells. Any differential expression can be causally attributed to cis mechanisms because the two genomes of fused cells share a single homogenized milieu in trans. This assay uncovered a state of transcriptional competency that we termed ‘occluded’ whereby affected genes are silenced by cis-acting mechanisms in a manner that blocks them from responding to the trans-acting milieu of the cell. Importantly, occluded genes in a given cell type tend to include master triggers of alternative cell fates. Furthermore, the occluded state is maintained during cell division and is extraordinarily stable under a wide range of physiological conditions. These results support the model that the occlusion of lineage-inappropriate genes is a key mechanism of cell fate restriction. The identification of occluded genes by our assay provides a hitherto unavailable functional readout of chromatin state that is distinct from and complementary to gene expression status