Innovative psychological treatments for depression

A number of high-intensity psychosocial interventions have been shown to be as efficacious as and more enduring than medications in the treatment of nonpsychotic depression. Moreover, there have been important advances in the development of strategies to facilitate the selection of the best treatment for a given patient with a depression diagnosis. However, the demand for services is too great to be met by conventional high-intensity approaches alone. Some of the most exciting work in recent years has focused on the development of low-intensity approaches that can benefit many people and do so cost-effectively

Declining Number of Foreign Fighters in the Balkans

Thousands of foreign fighters originating from the Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo have joined the ranks of ISIS, traveling to the Middle East and return with terrorist training. They are a danger to their country of origin as well as the larger European community because they are ideologically radicalized and often hide in plain sight until an attack has been executed. In 2014, the number of radicalized individuals traveling to the Middle East has decreased dramatically. Similarly, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo introduced counter-terrorism measures around the same time to combat radicalization and increase safety. Research concerning whether or not this decrease of foreign fighters from the Balkans stem from a decrease in the relative power of ISIS or new counterterrorism strategies has been lacking. The research done in this paper sought to understand why the decrease in foreign fighters occurred and whether or not the policies implemented in the Western Balkans played a significant role in the reduction. However, this paper is unable to determine what has caused the decrease in foreign fighters. ISIS’s decline in power and drop in recruitment techniques occurred later than the 2013 decline in foreign fighters. The policies enacted by national governments in the Western Balkans are too drastically different from each other to have produced such succinct results across borders. Likewise, the policies were enacted just before the 2014 and have not all been effective combating foreign fighters making it unlikely that they are responsible for the decrease

Dialogue and the 1993 World\u27s Parliament of Religions

This paper is a report on the 1993 World\u27s Parliament of Religion held in Chicago between August 28 and September 4. A report on the proceedings of the Parliament is given, followed by a description of the document sponsored by the Parliament, the Global Ethic. Finally, from these events, conclusions about the prospects and problems of interreligious dialogue are drawn

EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF SEPARATION IN A LOW PRESSURE TURBINE BLADE CASCADE MODEL

The flow field around a low pressure turbine blade is examined using smoke-wire flow visualization, static surface pressure measurements, and particle image velocimetry (PIV). The purpose of the experimental study is to investigate the transition and separation characteristics on low pressure turbine blades under low Reynolds number (Re) and varying freestream turbulence intensity (FSTI). A cascade model consisting of 6 Pratt andamp; Whitney PAK-B low pressure turbine blades was examined in a wind tunnel using PIV and flow visualization. Smoke-wire visualization was performed for test section exit angles of 93°, 95°, and 97°, in the range Re = 3 · 104 to 9 · 104 and three levels of FSTI varied with a passive grid. The locations of separation and transition were determined to be approximately 45% and 77% of the suction surface length, respectively, based upon the smoke stream lines observed in the images, and appear to be independent of Re, turning angle, and FSTI. The maximum size of the separation bubble was found to decrease with increasing Re, turning angle, and FSTI. PIV images from three camera views were processed for an exit angle of 95° and a Re range of 3:0 · 104 to 30:0 · 104 and three levels of FSTI. Velocity, vorticity, and reversed flow probability field plots were generated along with velocity, vorticity, and RMS velocity profiles. The point of separation point was determined to be from 63% SSL to 67% SSL. The area of reversed flow was computed for each image pair from camera views 1 and 3, as an approxiamtion of the relative size of the separation region. For low Re and FSTI cases the area was much larger than for higher FSTI cases at any Re. The raw PIV images include some of the rst clear pictures of the turbulent flow structures forming in the unsteady shear layer over the suction surface of low pressure turbine blades. Several movies are compiled that show how the geometry and location of the shear layer evolve in time for a given set of flow conditions

Icing Mitigation via High-pressure Membrane Dehumidification in an Aircraft Thermal Management

Icing, or the formation of ice from water via freezing or water vapor via desublimation, is a phenomenon that commonly occurs within air cycle-based refrigeration systems and requires thermal control that limits system performance. In aircraft applications icing frequently occurs in the heat exchangers and turbine(s) that are part of the air cycle machine, the refrigeration unit of the environmental control system. Traditionally, water vapor is removed from an air cycle machine via condensing in a heat exchanger and subsequent high-pressure water separation. This approach is not capable of removing all of the vapor present at low altitude conditions, corresponding to a high risk of icing. To mitigate icing under these conditions, a membrane dehumidifier is considered to separate the water vapor that remains after condensing and liquid water separation. Three distinct investigations are conducted as part of this work. The first is aimed at modeling approaches for desublimation frosting, or frost growth on sufficiently cold flat surfaces. This results in a novel, analytical, and non-restrictive solution well-suited for representing frost growth and densification in moist air heat exchangers. The second investigation concerns membrane dehumidification and module design. A custom component model is developed and verified under aircraft conditions, then the Pareto frontier of volumetrically efficient membrane modules is characterized via a multi-objective optimization study. The final investigation evaluates three two-wheel air cycle subsystem architectures with differing dehumidification approaches: (1) condenser-based, (2) membrane dehumidifier-based, and (3) combined. Steady-state simulations are run for each of these over a range of flow rates and altitudes. The results demonstrate that incorporating a membrane dehumidifier reduces the turbine inlet saturation temperature, which mitigates icing in the turbine and reduces the required bypass flow, thus increasing the cooling capacity

Existence of Positive Solutions to a Family of Fractional Two-Point Boundary Value Problems

In this paper we will consider an nth order fractional boundary value problem with boundary conditions that include a fractional derivative at 1. We will develop properties of the Green\u27s Function for this boundary value problem and use these properties along with the Contraction Mapping Principle, and the Schuader\u27s, Krasnozel\u27skii\u27s, and Legget-Williams fixed point theorems to prove the existence of positive solutions under different conditions