The Consequences of Perfectionism Scale: Factorial structure and relationships with perfectionism, performance perfectionism, affect, and depressive symptoms

This study investigated the Consequences of Perfectionism Scale (COPS) and its relationships with perfectionism, performance perfectionism, affect, and depressive symptoms in 202 university students using confirmatory factor analysis, correlations, and regression analyses. Results suggest that the COPS is a reliable and valid measure of positive and negative consequences of perfectionism

Effects of inhaled acids on lung biochemistry.

Effects of respirable aerosols of sulfuric acid, ammonium sulfate, sodium sulfite, and ammonium persulfate on lungs of rats are reviewed. The literature regarding interactions between ozone or nitrogen dioxide and acidic aerosols (ammonium sulfate, sulfuric acid) is discussed. An unexpected interaction between nitrogen dioxide and sodium chloride aerosol is also discussed. An attempt is made to identify bases for prediction of how and when acid aerosols might potentiate effects of inhaled gases

Transcriptional Regulation of a Human H4 Histone Gene is Mediated by Multiple Elements Interacting with Similar Transcription Factors: A Dissertation

Synthesis of histone proteins occurs largely during the S phase of the cell cycle and coincides with DNA replication to provide adequate amounts of histones necessary to properly package newly replicated DNA. Controlling transcription from cell cycle dependent and proliferation specific genes, including histone H4, is an important level of regulation in the overall governance of the cell growth process. Coordination of histone gene transcription results from the cumulative effects of cell signaling pathways, dynamic chromatin structure and multiple transcription factor interactions. The research of this dissertation focused on the characterization and identification of transcription factors interacting on the human histone H4 gene FO108. I also focused on the elucidation of regulatory elements within the histone coding region. Our results suggest a possible mechanism by which a transcription factor facilitates reorganization of histone gene chromatin structure. The histone promoter region between -418 nt and -215 nt, Site III, was previously identified as both a positive and negative cis-regulatory element for transcription. Results of in vitroanalyses presented in this dissertation identified multiple transcription factors interacting at Site III. These factors include H4UA-1/YY1, AP-2, AP-2 like factor and distal factor (NF-1 like factor). Transient transfection experiments show that Site III does not confer significant influence on transcription; however, there may exist a physiological role for Site III which would not be detected in these assay systems. We analyzed the histone H4 gene sequences for additional transcription factor binding motifs and identified several putative YY1 binding sites. Using electrophoretic mobility shift assays (EMSA), we found that Site IV, Site I and two elements within the histone H4 coding region are capable of interacting with YY1. In transient transfection experiments using reporter constructs containing either Site III or one of the coding region elements as potential promoter regulatory elements, and an expression vector encoding YY1, we observed levels of expression up to 2.7 fold higher than from the reporters lacking these elements. Therefore, YY1 appears to interact at multiple regulatory sites of the histone gene and can influence transcription through these elements. Prior to this study, the role of the coding region in histone gene expression was not known. To determine if the coding region is involved in regulating transcription, I constructed and tested a series of heterologous reporter constructs containing various sequences of the histone coding region. Results from these experiments demonstrated that the histone coding region contains three repressor elements. Extensive in vitro analysis indicated that the three repressor elements interact with the repressor CDP/cut. Further analysis showed that CDP/cut interactions with the repressor elements are cell cycle regulated and proliferation specific. CDP/cut interactions increase during the cell cycle when histone transcription decreases. These observations are consistent with the hypothesis that CDP/cutis a cell cycle regulated repressor factor which influences transcription of the histone H4 gene as such. The proximal promoter region of the histone H4 gene between -70 nt and +190 nt is devoid of normal nucleosome structure. This same region contains multiple CDP/cut binding sites. We hypothesized that CDP/cut is involved with chromatin remodeling of the histone gene. DNase I footprinting and EMSA results show purified recombinant CDP/cut interacts specifically with the histone promoter reconstituted into nucleosome cores. Thus, CDP/cutmay facilitate the organization of chromatin of the histone gene. In conclusion, the research presented in this dissertation supports the hypothesis that expression from the human histone H4 gene FO108 is regulated by multiple cis-regulatory elements which interact with several proteins. CDP/cut interacts with Site II, the three repressor elements in the histone coding region and at Distal Site I. YY1 interacts at Site IV, Site III, Site I, and twice in the coding region. ATF/CREB interacts with Site IV and Site I. Distal factor interacts with Site III and within the histone coding region. IRF 2 interacts with Site II and Distal Site I. Thus, histone gene expression is probably regulated by transcription factors CDP/cut, YY1, IRF 2 and ATF/CREB interacting with multiple regulatory elements dispersed throughout its promoter and the coding region. Cell cycle regulation of these transcription factors may contribute to cell cycle dependent expression of the histone gene

Collagen biosynthesis.

Collagen is the major structural protein of the lung. At least five genetically distinct collagen types have been identified in lung tissue. However, the precise role of collagen in nonrespiratory lung function is not well understood, in part because of the difficulties inherent in studying lung collagen, regardless of the type of assay used. A major problem is the insolubility of lung collagen; generally less than 20% of total lung collagen can be solubilized as intact chains, even with harsh extraction procedures. Since such collagen may not be representative of total lung collagen, errors in quantitating collagen types, for example, may arise from using such material. Measurement of total lung collagen content may also pose problems, unless appropriate parameters of normalization are chosen. Biopsy dry weight, protein content, and DNA content, for example, may all change in certain disease states. Despite these difficulties, a number of changes in lung collagen have been documented in experimental pulmonary fibrosis, including increased collagen content, increased collagen synthesis rates, and changes in collagen type ratios. Many questions remain. For example, why do diverse toxic substances appear to cause essentially the same fibrotic response, even though initial sites of damage may vary? Conversely, why do similar toxic substances, such as ozone and NO2, cause diverse responses (fibrosis and emphysema, respectively)? Much work remains to be done to elucidate the mechanisms underlying the lung's choice of response

Impact of Advanced Synoptics and Simplified Checklists During Aircraft Systems Failures

AbstractNatural human capacities are becoming increasingly mismatched to the enormous data volumes, processing capabilities, and decision speeds demanded in todays aviation environment. Increasingly Autonomous Systems (IAS) are uniquely suited to solve this problem. NASA is conducting research and development of IAS - hardware and software systems, utilizing machine learning algorithms, seamlessly integrated with humans whereby task performance of the combined system is significantly greater than the individual components. IAS offer the potential for significantly improved levels of performance and safety that are superior to either human or automation alone. A human-in-the-loop test was conducted in NASA Langleys Integration Flight Deck B-737-800 simulator to evaluate advanced synoptic pages with simplified interactive electronic checklists as an IAS for routine air carrier flight operations and in response to aircraft system failures. Twelve U.S. airline crews flew various normal and non-normal procedures and their actions and performance were recorded in response to failures. These data are fundamental to and critical for the design and development of future increasingly autonomous systems that can better support the human in the cockpit. Synoptic pages and electronic checklists significantly improved pilot responses to non-normal scenarios, but implementation of these aids and other intelligent assistants have barriers to implementation (e.g., certification cost) that must overcome

Evolving classification of intensive care patients from event data

Objective: This work aims at predicting the patient discharge outcome on each hospitalization day by introducing a new paradigm—evolving classification of event data streams. Most classification algorithms implicitly assume the values of all predictive features to be available at the time of making the prediction. This assumption does not necessarily hold in the evolving classification setting (such as intensive care patient monitoring), where we may be interested in classifying the monitored entities as early as possible, based on the attributes initially available to the classifier, and then keep refining our classification model at each time step (e.g., on daily basis) with the arrival of additional attributes. / Materials and methods: An oblivious read-once decision-tree algorithm, called information network (IN), is extended to deal with evolving classification. The new algorithm, named incremental information network (IIN), restricts the order of selected features by the temporal order of feature arrival. The IIN algorithm is compared to six other evolving classification approaches on an 8-year dataset of adult patients admitted to two Intensive Care Units (ICUs) in the United Kingdom. / Results: Retrospective study of 3452 episodes of adult patients (≥ 16 years of age) admitted to the ICUs of Guy’s and St. Thomas’ hospitals in London between 2002 and 2009. Random partition (66:34) into a development (training) set n = 2287 and validation set n = 1165. Episode-related time steps: Day 0—time of ICU admission, Day x—end of the x-th day at ICU. The most accurate decision-tree models, based on the area under curve (AUC): Day 0: IN (AUC = 0.652), Day 1: IIN (AUC = 0.660), Day 2: J48 decision-tree algorithm (AUC = 0.678), Days 3–7: regenerative IN (AUC = 0.717–0.772). Logistic regression AUC: 0.582 (Day 0)—0.827 (Day 7). / Conclusions: Our experimental results have not identified a single optimal approach for evolving classification of ICU episodes. On Days 0 and 1, the IIN algorithm has produced the simplest and the most accurate models, which incorporate the temporal order of feature arrival. However, starting with Day 2, regenerative approaches have reached better performance in terms of predictive accuracy

Enhanced ionization in small rare gas clusters

A detailed theoretical investigation of rare gas atom clusters under intense short laser pulses reveals that the mechanism of energy absorption is akin to {\it enhanced ionization} first discovered for diatomic molecules. The phenomenon is robust under changes of the atomic element (neon, argon, krypton, xenon), the number of atoms in the cluster (16 to 30 atoms have been studied) and the fluency of the laser pulse. In contrast to molecules it does not dissappear for circular polarization. We develop an analytical model relating the pulse length for maximum ionization to characteristic parameters of the cluster

Double butterfly spectrum for two interacting particles in the Harper model

We study the effect of interparticle interaction $U$ on the spectrum of the Harper model and show that it leads to a pure-point component arising from the multifractal spectrum of non interacting problem. Our numerical studies allow to understand the global structure of the spectrum. Analytical approach developed permits to understand the origin of localized states in the limit of strong interaction $U$ and fine spectral structure for small $U$.Comment: revtex, 4 pages, 5 figure