Remediation efficacy of the memory notebook for patients with memory dysfunction in multiple sclerosis

The current paper evaluated the effectiveness of an 8-week memory notebook treatment for multiple sclerosis (MS) patients with memory dysfunction. Fourteen participants who were diagnosed with MS and had either a score indicating mild-to-moderate impairment on an objective memory test (i.e., the CVLT-II or the BVMT) or a self-report of a decline in memory were randomly assigned to either the Memory Notebook group (MNG) or the Supportive Psychotherapy control group (CG). Both groups received 8 training sessions for 1.5 hours over 7 weeks; on the eighth week, one hour was dedicated to training and the remaining half hour was designated to follow-up paperwork. The primary outcome measures were between-groups comparison of pre-post change on the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) and the Everyday Memory Questionnaire (EMQ). In terms of secondary measures, a between-groups comparison of pre-mid-post change on the Retrospective Memory Task (5RMT) and the Prospective Memory Task (5RMT), and comparisons of pre-post change on the Functional Assessment of Multiple Sclerosis, Version 2 (FAMS-2), the State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS), the Zung Anxiety Scale (ZAS), the Modified Fatigue Impact Scale (MFIS), and the Fatigue Severity Scale (FSS). A greater improvement of depression symptoms was seen for the MNG than the CG. Non-significant changes were seen in clinically therapeutic directions on all other measures. This trial supports the efficacy of memory notebook training for distress reduction in MS

Nell Tenhaaf: Fit/Unfit, Robert Mclaughlin Gallery, Oshawa

Nell Tenhaaf's recent survey, "Fit/Unfit," at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa, illustrates how her work tracks both the evolution of genetic engineering and our relationship to the concurrent progress of digital technologies. When Celera Genomics and the Human Genome Project announced a working draft of the genome in June of 2000, they realized that it would take some time to rearrange the parts list that they had identified into the actual sequence of the genome itself. Tenhaaf offers a counter-narrative to their unfinished story that also adds issues of gender and mythology. Her machines and images provide access to scientific constructs that often elude us. Over the past two decades she has undertaken a critique of science and its illusions of objectified knowledge

Erring on the mount

In many ways the arts community in Peterborough is made up of various allied factions. However, curator Liz Fennell's call to all artists for site-specific work came with the intention of bringing those with a high degree of professional experience into proximity with emerging and amateur artists. This move could be read as an attempt to create some porosity between different degrees of artist recognition in order to demonstrate the full breadth of the community's practices. The City of Peterborough's future intent for St. Joseph's is for it to transition into affordable housing, gallery and performance spaces, community gardens and perhaps food programs. Site-specificity and interactivity were therefore integral to the Public Energy project as ways to facilitate public engagement with the site and draw support for its future use. Sculpture Projects Münster (1997) achieved a similar result for the small German town, and there are other examples in Canada: Shorefast President Zita Cobb's rejuvenation of Fogo Island, Newfoundland, is a case in point, albeit on a different scale. Cobb's decision to leave her work in technology and finance, move back to Fogo, and establish the Fogo Island Arts residencies program is an example of the w ay local identity pulls one back to home. Artists in Peterborough are similarly resilient, and they remain rooted regardless of the day-to-day stresses of living in an under-resourced municipality. For the past 20 years, Peterborough has witnessed the decline of the small manufacturing industries upon which the local economy relied. The resulting increase in unemployment is acutely noticeable when one walks Peterborough's main streets, where at least a third of storefronts lie empty and for lease. While Peterborough residents experience nowhere near the level of economic hardship that those living on Fogo Island do, Erring on the Mount is a preliminary nod in the same direction and demonstrates the potential to rethink the messaging of the city. Public Energy Artistic producer Bill Kimball knows this, hence his 20+ years of efforts to bring cutting edge contemporary dance to a small university town

Ground Testing of High Chamber-Pressure Propulsion Systems

This paper describes the analysis, design and mechanization of a ground support system for application during the captive testing of high chamberpressure propulsion systems and components. A dual-piston intensifier concept is employed to transform pneumatic control pressures into corresponding propellant supply pressures at the inlet to the thrust chamber assembly under test; a mechanical pressure amplification ratio of over 5 to 1 is achieved in the intensifier design . High speed gas pressurization valves are servo con- · trolled to establish and maintain the desired propellant feed pressures during both transient and steady-state TCA operational phases . Transient control has been satisfactorily implemented at pressure rise rates of up to 10,000 psi/second. The mechanical intensifier assembly can be characterized as a dual-piston pressure amplification device, capable of transforming a relatively low pressure gas driving medium into a corresponding high pressure propellant supply . The intensifier assemblies illustrated in Figs. (1) and (2 ) were designed to generate propellant pressures of over 6000 psi; because of the 5.2:1 design piston area ratio, the corresponding inlet gas pressure required was slightly less than 1200 psi. Hence, the intensifier concept provides the high pressure propellant environment necessary for the static testing of high-Pc propulsion systems, but eliminates the need for expensive high pressure propellant tankage and gas reservoir capabilities. Both fuel and oxidizer intensifiers of Figs. (1) and (2) were identical in design; the dualpiston assembly stroke was approximately 110 inches, while the gas and liquid side cavity volumes were 622 and 120 gallons respectively. Although storable propellants were involved in the test program described in this paper, the intensifier concept applies also to cryogenic and advanced slurry-type propellants

Synthesis of neotrehalose; kinetics and mutagenesis of NtdC

3,3'-Neotrehalosadiamine (NTD) is a diaminosugar that possesses a rare alpha,beta-1,1'-linked glycosidic bond and has been reported to possess antimicrobial activity against Staphylococcus aureus. The ntdABC operon contains three structural genes that are necessary for the production of NTD in certain mutants of Bacillus subtilis. The gene predicted to be the first in the NTD biosynthetic pathway, ntdC, was subcloned into pET-28b as the hexa-histidine tagged fusion. The gene product was expressed, purified to homogeneity, and found to be an NAD+-dependent glucose 6-phosphate 3-dehydrogenase, likely operating according to a ternary complex mechanism and possessing a catalytic dyad composed by D176 and H180. The advent of this knowledge suggests that additional genes are required for the biosynthesis of NTD aside from the three encoded by the ntdABC operon

"Me calling him-him calling me"-Tom Sherman's recent video work

If one tracks Tom Sherman's YouTube posts/ presentations/screenings retrospectively, there is a series of works that predate the archive that also focus on the fishery industry but which are set in Alley 9, a karaoke bar in Liverpool, Nova Scotia. In these videos, Sherman and Jan Pottie document members of the local community singing pop and country hits : 3 Mikes sing Purple Rain (2010), Luke sings Another Brick in the Wall (2010), Don Don sings House of the Rising Sun (2010), and so on. There are also videos posted of a local band called The Cransons, as well as a heartfelt tape of a senior couple singing an original song (Doin' Country: Dale and Sue Verge perform We Believe in Happy Endings 2011). This parallel archive of video art that focuses on local community singing is curious, but it provides an opportunity for reflection back by local folks, and for building trust in the artist. In any case, the assorted footage of individuals in the bar is moving. Well shot and edited, these works create a joyful and tight- knit community backdrop for the advocacy work that deals, with the fishing industry. When Sherman and Pottie finished a single-channel work ûeà Alley 9 (2010), based on the first of their karaoke documentation nights, they sent stacks of dvds to the staff at the bar, and sent copies to everyone they knew who appeared on the video.18 Over a hundred copies were also distributed around Liverpool, After this initial influx, Sherman and Pottie began to post "singles," including the aforementioned works, on YouTube and Vimeo. The effects have been numerous, with the dvd being played at living room parties all over Queen's County. As Sherman has observed, "People here know they sing well and know how to have a good time. We are simply representing this cultural phenomenon in media."19 But Sherman acknowledges that the videos land within a deep and broad culture based on families, their stories, personal histories and music. The impact of the karaoke videos shows, as well as the reaction to the videos focusing on the fishing industry, alignment with Jean-Luc Nancy's iteration of community as something that is "gifted." But, as he explains, it is "a gift to be renewed and communicated, it is not a work to be done or produced."20 Nature is the foil to the machine. But for Sherman, in a perpetual homage to information theorist Claude Shannon, the delivery system for his mode of communication is as significant as its content. He has vehemently defended video as his medium of choice based on its "complete integration of acoustic and visual space."3 For Sherman, "Video is like an x-ray technology. It sees through fiction."4 More recently, Sherman's video works have been posted by the artist on VouTube and Vimeo, signifying a strategic expansion of screenings in art galleries and physical venues. In her recent publication, Learningjrom YouTube, Alex Juhasz stresses that media praxis "must integrate theory and practice with the local andglobal."s For Juhasz, activists working with digital processes "...should lead and learn from conversations in real communities about the impacts, meanings and power of the media."6 But Juhasz's strident statement begs the question of how one defines community, how it inheres, how it is produced. In The Inoperative Community (1991), Jean-Luc Nancy deeply considers the production of community. As iterated in the opening epigram, a community is bound up with the presentation of its "mortal truth," and Nancy notes that, although the world has changed, no new figure of the community has been proposed and "perhaps this in itself teaches us something."7 He also asserts, "It is a matter rather of thinking community, that is thinking its insistent and possibly still unheard demand, beyond communitarian models or remodelings."

Subarcsecond optical imaging of proto-planetary nebulae

We find nine of them to be resolved, with sizes up to 3″, and two others to perhaps also be extended. Of the nine, four appear to be elliptical in shape. Thus an aspherical morphology is demonstrated to commonly exist early in the transition between the asymptotic giant branch and planetary nebula phases. The results of this larger observational study, together with the previously published imaging studies, indicate that most PPNs are elliptical (or bipolar) in shape.published_or_final_versio

Embodiment and the Digital Continuum: Post-Cinematic Diffractions in Ex Machina, Her, and Under The Skin

This thesis explores ties between three recent films: Her (2013), Under the Skin (2013), and Ex Machina (2015). I will argue that each of these films incorporates a distinct post-cinematic aesthetic – 1) digitally rendered eco-cinema, 2) hyper-informatic cinema, and 3) transmedia – while narratively working through how bodies are becoming entangled with and porous to their increasingly affective and convergent media. Each of these films show human bodies in-becoming-with technology, both in terms of narrative (or diegesis), and the non-diegetic processes of computer-generated imagery, sonic manipulation and audiovisual or rhythmic intensification that manipulate and digitize bodies as captured by the camera. Each film thus reflexively expresses through post-cinematic affect the spatiotemporal and corporeal discontents associated with the digital shift or the “audiovisual turn” (Vernallis 2013) when humans and technology are in a moment of coevolution: bodies, space, and technology fold into each other and become equalized phenomena, tied by an increasingly reciprocal bio-digital flow

High-resolution imaging of two bipolar proto-planetary nebulae

Sub-arcsecond resolution V and I images have been obtained for two proto-planetary nebulae. Both are found to show a definite bipolar morphology. A circumstellar disk is clearly seen in the V - I color image, suggesting that the bipolar lobes are due to starlight scattered into the polar openings. This indicates that bipolar morphologies develop early in the evolution of planetary nebulae, even before the onset of photoionization. © 1996. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.published_or_final_versio