Role of Novelty Seeking Personality Traits as Mediator of the Association between COMT and Onset Age of Drug Use in Chinese Heroin Dependent Patients

Personality traits such as novelty seeking (NS) are associated with substance dependence but the mechanism underlying this association remains uncertain. Previous studies have focused on the role of the dopamine pathway.Examine the relationships between allelic variants of the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene, NS personality traits, and age of onset of drug use in heroin-dependent subjects in China.The 478 heroin dependent subjects from four drug rehabilitation centers in Shanghai who were genotyped for eight tagging single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) on the COMT gene completed the NS subscale from the Temperament and Character Inventory. Multivariate analyses were used to assess the potential mediating role of NS personality traits in the association between COMT gene variants and the age of onset of heroin use.In the univariate analysis the COMT rs737866 gene variants were independently associated with both NS and age of onset of drug use: those with the TT genotype had higher NS subscale scores and an earlier onset age of heroin use than individuals with CT or CC genotypes. In the multivariate analysis the inclusion of the NS subscore variable weakened the relationship between the COMT rs737866 TT genotype and an earlier age of onset of drug use. Our findings that COMT is associated with both NS personality traits and with the age of onset of heroin use helps to clarify the complex relationship between genetic and psychological factors in the development of substance abuse

A SOM-based Chan–Vese model for unsupervised image segmentation

Active Contour Models (ACMs) constitute an efficient energy-based image segmentation framework. They usually deal with the segmentation problem as an optimization problem, formulated in terms of a suitable functional, constructed in such a way that its minimum is achieved in correspondence with a contour that is a close approximation of the actual object boundary. However, for existing ACMs, handling images that contain objects characterized by many different intensities still represents a challenge. In this paper, we propose a novel ACM that combines—in a global and unsupervised way—the advantages of the Self-Organizing Map (SOM) within the level set framework of a state-of-the-art unsupervised global ACM, the Chan–Vese (C–V) model. We term our proposed model SOM-based Chan– Vese (SOMCV) active contourmodel. It works by explicitly integrating the global information coming from the weights (prototypes) of the neurons in a trained SOM to help choosing whether to shrink or expand the current contour during the optimization process, which is performed in an iterative way. The proposed model can handle images that contain objects characterized by complex intensity distributions, and is at the same time robust to the additive noise. Experimental results show the high accuracy of the segmentation results obtained by the SOMCV model on several synthetic and real images, when compared to the Chan–Vese model and other image segmentation models

From Nationalism to Conservatism : the Intellectual Groups Associated with "National Essence" in China (from 1890s to 1940s)

Cette recherche étudie les trois associations « conservatrices » du cercle de l’« essence nationale » : l’École d’essence nationale fondée en 1905, la Société du Sud créée en 1909 et le groupe Critical Review établi en 1921. L’essence nationale désigne la quintessence de la culture traditionnelle. Dans le contexte révolutionnaire de la fin des Qing, l’École d’essence nationale et la Société du Sud ont recours à ce concept pour façonner leur nationalisme autour de deux directions. Au niveau sociétal, les deux s’engagent dans les mouvements sociaux et les associations intermédiaires pour exprimer leurs attentes nationalistes et lancent un projet des lumières sociales pour libérer le peuple des contraintes familiales et politiques. Cette libération doit se combiner avec des responsabilités envers la nation. Au niveau institutionnel, elles incorporent la culture traditionnelle dans les réformes inspirées par la politique libérale de l’Occident, comme la démocratie, la séparation des pouvoirs et l’État de droit. L’essence nationale relève de la culture traditionnelle régénérée, utilisée pour solidariser et éduquer la nation, ainsi que pour modeler le système politique de la Chine. Le groupe Critical Review, situé dans un contexte historique différent, a hérité de cette rhétorique nationaliste. Cependant, cet idéal nationaliste en est venu à être considéré comme conservateur à l’époque du 4 Mai parce que certains activistes de la Nouvelle Culture ont voulu rompre tout lien avec la tradition. Le conservatisme de cette période constitue une réaction à une conception de la liberté fondée sur le primat de l’individu, au déni de l’usage politique de la culture traditionnelle par les intellectuels du 4 Mai, mais aussi une réponse aux crises nationales et à la Première Guerre mondiale, qui amènent certains intellectuels à mettre en cause la civilisation occidentale. Ainsi, si l’essence nationale sert toujours à fédérer et discipliner le peuple, après 1919 la notion n’incorpore plus nécessairement une acceptation des idées politiques libérales occidentales. En fonction de la façon dont l’essence nationale est traduite dans la politique, le conservatisme de l’époque républicaine peut se diviser en quatre catégories : le conservatisme libéral qui continue de cautionner les éléments libéraux de la culture chinoise et la politique libérale occidentale ; le conservatisme antimoderne qui appelle à un retour au système socio-politique conforme à la culture agraire et communautaire traditionnelle ; le conservatisme philosophique qui accentue l’utilité des valeurs confucéennes d’élitisme, de hiérarchie sociale et de modération dans la rectification de la liberté excessive et de la corruption politique ; le conservatisme autoritaire qui mobilise les éléments les plus répressifs du confucianisme, tels que la suprématie du chef, l’obédience absolue et la tutelle politique, pour s’opposer au libéralisme pendant la décennie de Nankin.This dissertation examines three “conservative” associations of the “national essence” circle: the National Essence School founded in 1905, the Southern Society created in 1909 and the Critical Review Group established in 1921. National essence designates the quintessence of Chinese traditional culture. In the Late-Qing revolutionary context, the National Essence School and the Southern Society theorized this concept to shape nationalism from two directions. At the societal level, nationalist expectations were expressed in various social forms, such as intermediate associations, and a social enlightenment movement was undertaken to liberate people from traditional familial and political constraints. This liberty was expected to be reconciled with responsibilities towards the nation. At the institutional level, the two associations incorporated traditional culture into reforms inspired by Western liberal politics, like democracy, separation of power and rule of law. National essence was this regenerated traditional culture, used to solidarize the nation and to model China’s future political system. The Critical Review Group, situated in a different historical context, inheritated this nationalist rhetoric. However, this ideal of nationalism came to be seen as conservative during the May Fourth era, because certain activists advocated a clean break with tradition. Conservatism in this period is formulated as a reaction against the young generation’s perceived disregard for responsibilities in the pursuit of liberty, the denial of the political utility of traditional culture by the May Fourth intellectuals, but also as a response to the national crisis and the First World War, leading some to question the merits of Western civilization. The meaning of national essence for the members of the three associations thus diversified. Although the concept was still used to federate and discipline the people and to inform the political reforms, national essence no longer necessarily incorporated Western liberal politics. According to the way in which national essence was translated into concrete political projects, conservatism of the Republican era can be divided into four types: liberal conservatism that continued to advocate liberal elements of Chinese tradition and Western liberal politics; anti-modern conservatism that appealed to a socio-political system in line with China’s agrarian and communitarian culture; philosophical conservatism that emphasized the utility of Confucian values of elitism, social hierarchy and doctrine of the mean in rectifying excessive liberty and political corruption and authoritarian conservatism that mobilized the most repressive elements of Confucianism, like supremacy of the leader, absolute obedience to superiors and political tutelage, to oppose liberalism during the Nanjing decade

Dynamic Model and Fault Feature Research of Dual-Rotor System with Bearing Pedestal Looseness

The paper presents a finite element model of dual-rotor system with pedestal looseness stemming from loosened bolts. Dynamic model including bearing pedestal looseness is established based on the dual-rotor test rig. Three-degree-of-freedom (DOF) planar rigid motion of loose bearing pedestal is fully considered and collision recovery coefficient is also introduced in the model. Based on the Timoshenko beam elements, using the finite element method, rigid body kinematics, and the Newmark-β algorithm for numerical simulation, dynamic characteristics of the inner and outer rotors and the bearing pedestal plane rigid body motion under bearing pedestal looseness condition are studied. Meanwhile, the looseness experiments under two different speed combinations are carried out, and the experimental results are basically the same. The simulation results are compared with the experimental results, indicating that vibration displacement waveforms of loosened rotor have “clipping” phenomenon. When the bearing pedestal looseness fault occurs, the inner and outer rotors vibration spectrum not only contains the difference and sum frequency of the two rotors’ fundamental frequency but also contains 2X and 3X component of rotor with loosened support, and so forth; low frequency spectrum is more, containing dividing component, and so forth; the rotor displacement spectrums also contain fewer combination frequency components, and so forth; when one side of the inner rotor bearing pedestal is loosened, the inner rotor axis trajectory is drawn into similar-ellipse shape