Two nonlinear systems from mathematical physics

The dissertation is divided into two chapters. In the first one, we consider the 2-Vortex problem for two point vortices in a complex domain. The Hamiltonian of the system contains the regular part of a hydrodynamic Green’s function, the Robin function h and two coefficinets which are the strengths of the point vortices. We prove the existence of infinitely many periodic solutions with minimal period T which are a superposition of a slow motion of the center of vorticity along a level line of h and of a fast rotation of the two vortices around their center of vorticity. These vortices move in a prescribed subset of the domain that has to satisfy a geometric condition. The minimal period can be any T in a certain interval. Subsets to which our results apply can be found in any generic bounded domain. The proofs are based on a recent higher dimensional version of the Poincaré-Birkhoff theorem due to Fonda and Ureña. In the second part, we study bifurcations of a multi-component Schrödinger system. We construct a solution branch synchronized to a positive solution of a simpler system. From this branch, we find a sequence of local bifurcation values in the one dimensional case and also in the general case provided that the positive solution is nondegenerate

PEMBINAAN TANGGUNG JAWAB SOSIAL SISWA MELALUI PENDIDIKAN UMUM :Studi Kualitatif disuatu Sekolah Menengah Atas Negeri Subang

Pendidikan Nasional Indonesia bertujuan untuk mengembangkan potensi peserta didik agar menjadi manusia yang beriman, bertaqwa kepada fuhan YME. berahlak mulia, sehat, berilmu, cakap, kreatif, niandiri dan menjadi warga yang demokratis serta bertanggung jawab. Pada pendidikan formal" tujuan tersebut dilaksanakan melalui program sekolah berupa mata pelajaran yang berfimesi sebagai pendidikan umum, pendidikan ketcrampilan dan pendidikan akademik. ~ Pelaksanaan pendidikan umum di sekolah merupakan masalah pokok dalam penelitian ini. Bertujuan mendapatkan gambaran yang jelas tentang tanggung jawab sosial siswa di SMA dan juga SMP, pelaksamaan pembinaan tanggung jawab sosial siswa melalui pendidikan umum dan faktor yang mempengaruhi keberhasilan pembinaan tersebut. Hasil penelitian ini diharapkan dapat bermanfaat bagi guru terutama dalam melaksanakan tugasnya yang utama yaitu mengembangkan keseimbangan nengetahuan teoritis dan praktis serta nilai-nilai dalam peningkatan kualitas siswa di sekolah, juga bagi orang tua sebagai pendidik dalam keluarga sebagai upaya menunjang proses pembinaan tanggung jawab sosial anak. Penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan kualitatif, bemsaha mengungkap pelaksanaan tanggung jawab sosial siswa melalui pendidikan umum. Data dikumpulkan melalui teknik observasi, wavvancara dan studi dokumentasi. Dari hasil penelitian terungkap baliwa pelaksanaan pendidikan umum di sekolali mampu membina tanggung jawab siswa, walaupun hasilnya banyak dipengaruhi oleh nengalaman belajar siswa sebclumnya. Faktor yang mempengaruhi pembinaan selain sekolah adalah orang tua dan masyarakat. Kerjasama yang baik diantara tripusat pendidikan akan memperbesar keberhasilan upaya yang dilakukan gum di sekolah. Dalam penelitian ini ditemukan beberapa masalah yaitu masih perlunya ditingkatkan kerjasama antara sekolah dan orang tua dalam upaya pembinaan tanggung jawab sosial siswa dan masih adanya sebagian kecil siswa yang merasa terpaksa mantaati berbagai peraturan di sekolah serta masalah yang berkaitan dengan kctcrbatasan waktu dan tcnaga gum yang menyebabkan kurang maksunalnya upaya pemantauan terhadap siswa di luar sekolah. Temuan makna pada penelitian ini adalah keteladanan kepala sekolah, gum dan orang tua memiliki pengamh besar terhadap pembinaan tanggung jawab sosial siswa. Kerjasama yang baik diantara para gum. kesadaran siswa. kebiasaan dan pola hidup disiplin dalam keluarga memberi sumbangan besar terhadap keberhasilan upaya yang dilakukan. Penelitian ini merekomendasikan bahwa kemampuan guru dalam proses belajar mcngajar (PBM) kluisusnya mata pelajaran umum harus ditingkatkan melalui pelatihan-nelatihan, kemauan clan inisiatif guru dalam pengembangan kemampuan mengajar merupakan kunci pokoknya. Kerjasama antara orang tua, sekolah dan masyarakat periu ditingkatkan melalui wadah yang telali tersedia vaitu dewan sekolah

Insomnia Really Hurts: Effect of a Bad Night's Sleep on Pain Increases With Insomnia Severity

Insomnia and chronic pain are highly prevalent conditions and are often comorbid. Somatic complaints other than pain are also often observed in insomnia. Poor sleep and pain are known to mutually reinforce each other. However, it is unknown whether the habitual severity of insomnia modulates the acute effect of a particularly bad night's sleep on the next day's pain severity, and whether it modulates the acute effect of pain on the following night's sleep quality. Using data from 3,508 volunteers (2,684 female, mean age 50.09 y), we addressed these questions in addition to the associations between the habitual severity of insomnia, somatic complaints, and pain. Results indicated that people suffering from more severe habitual insomnia showed stronger mutual acute within-day reactivity of pain and poor sleep quality. The same increased reactivity was found in people with more severe habitual pain. Interestingly, the acute within-day mutual reactivity of pain and sleep quality showed consistent asymmetry. Pain worsened more after a particularly bad night's sleep than it improved after a particularly good night's sleep. Likewise, sleep worsened more after a day with more-than-usual pain than it improved after a day with less-than-usual pain. Future interventions may profit from addressing this asymmetric mutual reactivity especially in people with severe comorbid insomnia and chronic pain

Beauty sleep: experimental study on the perceived health and attractiveness of sleep deprived people

Objective To investigate whether sleep deprived people are perceived as less healthy, less attractive, and more tired than after a normal night’s sleep

Parameter Search for Aesthetic Design and Composition

PhDThis thesis is about algorithmic creation in the arts – where an artist, designer or composer uses a formal generative process to assist in crafting forms and patterns – and approaches to finding effective input parameter values to these generative processes for aesthetic ends. Framed in three practical studies, approaches to navigating the aesthetic possibilities of generative processes in sound and visuals are presented, and strategies for eliciting the preferences of the consumers of the generated output are explored. The first study presents a musical interface that enables navigation of the possibilities of a stochastic generative process with respect to measures of subjective predictability. Through a mobile phone version of the application, aesthetic preferences are crowd-sourced. The second study presents an eye-tracking based framework for the exploration of the possibilities afforded by generative designs; the interaction between the viewers’ gaze patterns and the system engendering a fluid navigation of the state-space of the visual forms. The third study presents a crowd-sourced interactive evolutionary system, where populations of abstract colour images are shaped by thousands of preference selections from users worldwide For each study, the results of analyses eliciting the attributes of the generated outputs – and their associated parameter values – that are most preferred by the consumers/users of these systems are presented. Placed in a historical and theoretical context, a refined perspective on the complex interrelationships between generative processes, input parameters and perceived aesthetic value is presented. Contributions to knowledge include identified trends in objective aesthetic preferences in colour combinations and their arrangements, theoretical insights relating perceptual mechanisms to generative system design and analysis, strategies for effectively leveraging evolutionary computation in an empirical aesthetic context, and a novel eye-tracking based framework for the exploration of visual generative designs.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) as part of the Doctoral Training Centre in Media and Arts Technology at Queen Mary University of London (ref: EP/G03723X/1)

A Longitudinal Study of Stress During Pregnancy, Children’s Sleep and Polygenic Risk for Poor Sleep in the General Pediatric Population

Early life stress is robustly associated with poor sleep across life. Preliminary studies suggest that these associations may begin already in utero. Here, we study the longitudinal associations of prenatal psychosocial stress with sleep across childhood, and assess whether prenatal stress interacts with genetic liability for poor sleep. The study is embedded in the Generation R population-based birth cohort. Caregivers reported on prenatal psychosocial stress (life events, contextual, parental or interpersonal stressors) and on children’s sleep at ages 2 months, 1.5, 2, 3 and 6 years. The study sample consisted of 4,930 children; polygenic risk scores for sleep traits were available in 2,063. Prenatal stress was consistently associated with more sleep problems across assessments. Effect sizes ranged from small (B = 0.21, 95%CI: 0.14;0.27) at 2 months to medium (B = 0.45, 95%CI: 0.38;0.53) at 2 years. Prenatal stress was moreover associated with shorter sleep duration at 2 months (Bhrs = -0.22, 95%CI: -0.32;-0.12) and at 2 years (Bhrs = -0.04, 95%CI -0.07; -0.001), but not at 3 years (Bhrs = 0.02, 95%CI: -0.02;0.06). Prenatal negative life events interacted with polygenic risk for insomnia to exacerbate sleep problems at 6 years (Binteraction = 0.07, 95%CI: 0.02;0.13). Psychosocial stress during pregnancy has negative associations with children’s sleep that persist across childhood, and are exacerbated by genetic liability for insomnia. Associations with sleep duration were more pronounced in infancy and seem to attenuate with age. These findings highlight the role of the prenatal environment for developing sleep regulation, and could inform early intervention programs targeting sleep in children from high-risk pregnancies.</p

Sleep and 24-h activity rhythms in relation to cortisol change after a very low-dose of dexamethasone

The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis plays an important role in sleep. Nevertheless, the association of sleep and its 24-h organization with negative feedback control of the HPA axis has received limited attention in population-based studies. We explored this association in 493 mid

Associations of the 24-h activity rhythm and sleep with cognition: A population-based study of middle-aged and elderly persons

Background: Cognitive functioning changes with age, sleep, and the circadian rhythm. We investigated whether these factors are independently associated with different cognitive domains assessed in middle-aged and elderly persons. Methods: In 1723 middle-aged and elderly persons (age 62 ± 9.4 years, mean ± standard deviation, SD) of the Rotterdam Study, we collected actigraphy recordings of on average 138 h. Actigraphy was used to quantify 24-h rhythms by calculating the stability of the rhythm over days and the fragmentation of the rhythm. Sleep parameters including total sleep time, sleep-onset latency, and wake after sleep onset were also estimated from actigraphy. Cognitive functioning was assessed with the word learning test (WLT), word fluency test (WFT), letter digit substitution task (LDST), and Stroop color word test (Stroop). Results: Persons with less stable 24-h rhythms performed worse on the LDST (. B = 0.42 per SD increase, p = 0.004) and the Stroop interference trial (. B = -1.04 per SD increase, p = 0.003) after full adjustment. Similarly, persons with more fragmented rhythms performed worse on the LDST (. B = -0.47 per SD increase, p = 0.002) and the Stroop (.

Cost-effectiveness of i-Sleep, a guided online CBT intervention, for patients with insomnia in general practice: protocol of a pragmatic randomized controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Insomnia is a highly prevalent disorder causing clinically significant distress and impairment. Furthermore, insomnia is associated with high societal and individual costs. Although cognitive behavioural treatment for insomnia (CBT-I) is the preferred treatment, it is not used often. Offering CBT-I in an online format may increase access. Many studies have shown that online CBT for insomnia is effective. However, these studies have all been performed in general population samples recruited through media. This protocol article presents the design of a study aimed at establishing feasibility, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a guided online intervention (i-Sleep) for patients suffering from insomnia that seek help from their general practitioner as compared to care-as-usual. METHODS/DESIGN: In a pragmatic randomized controlled trial, adult patients with insomnia disorder recruited through general practices are randomized to a 5-session guided online treatment, which is called "i-Sleep", or to care-as-usual. Patients in the care-as-usual condition will be offered i-Sleep 6 months after inclusion. An ancillary clinician, known as the psychological well-being practitioner who works in the GP practice (PWP; in Dutch: POH-GGZ), will offer online support after every session. Our aim is to recruit one hundred and sixty patients. Questionnaires, a sleep diary and wrist actigraphy will be administered at baseline, post intervention (at 8 weeks), and at 6 months and 12 months follow-up. Effectiveness will be established using insomnia severity as the main outcome. Cost-effectiveness and cost-utility (using costs per quality adjusted life year (QALY) as outcome) will be conducted from a societal perspective. Secondary measures are: sleep diary, daytime consequences, fatigue, work and social adjustment, anxiety, alcohol use, depression and quality of life. DISCUSSION: The results of this trial will help establish whether online CBT-I is (cost-) effective and feasible in general practice as compared to care-as-usual. If it is, then quality of care might be increased because implementation of i-Sleep makes it easier to adhere to insomnia guidelines. Strengths and limitations are discussed. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Netherlands Trial register NTR 5202 (registered April 17(st) 2015)