Small, low cost, artificial kidney

Disposable hemodialyzer is described that can be used at home by non-medically trained personnel. Short lengths of semipermeable membrane tubes are arranged in parallel, supported by plastic mesh and encased in epoxy at ends. Tubes are connected to input and output blood manifolds which are separated by dialysate chamber. Daily dialysis requires only two hours or less

The Effect of an In-Class Behavioral Intervention Plus Differentiated Instruction Program on the Achievement and Behavior Outcomes of Verbally Disruptive 8th-Grade Students With and Without Co-Occurring Reading Delimitations

The purpose of the study was to determine the effect of an in-class behavioral intervention plus differentiated instruction program on the achievement and behavior outcomes of 8th-grade students with verbally disruptive behavior and co-occurring below grade level reading test scores compared to 8th-grade students with verbally disruptive behavior and grade level reading test scores. Statistically significantly improved posttest reading vocabulary and reading total Normal Curve Equivalent scores and between class tardy frequencies supported the use of an in-class behavioral intervention program that allowed students with verbally disruptive behavior and co-occurring below grade level reading test scores to reclaim themselves after verbally disruptive behavioral incidences with scripted administrator assistance and student return to differentiated individualized instructional classroom activities. Posttest reading comprehension scores, Grade Point Average Scores, in-school suspension, and out of school suspension frequencies were also in the direction of improvement for these students. Students with verbally disruptive behavior and grade level reading test scores had a statistically improved posttest reading vocabulary score and statistically improved between class tardy and out of school suspension frequencies. Posttest-posttest between group comparisons indicated statistically significant reading vocabulary, reading comprehension, reading total, and Grade Point Average differences but no between class tardy, office referral, in-school suspension, or out of school suspension statistically significant differences. Educators should sustain programs that directly help students reclaim themselves after verbally disruptive escape responding incidences in support of their timely return to differentiated classroom activities. Overall, the results of this study suggest continued use of this intervention

Declarative Scheduling for Active Objects

International audienceActive objects are programming constructs that abstract dis- tribution and help to handle concurrency. In this paper, we extend the multiactive object programming model to offer a priority specification mechanism. This mechanism allows programmers to have control on the scheduling of requests. The priority representation is based on a dependency graph which makes it very convenient to use. This article shows how to use this mechanism from the programmer side, and exposes the main properties of the dependency graph. The software architecture of our implementation is also presented, as it can be applied to various scheduling systems. Finally, we validate our approach through a microbenchmark that shows that the overhead of our priority representation is rather low. On the whole, we provide a general pattern to introduce a prioritized scheduling in active objects or in any other con- current systems. The resulting framework is shown to be fine-grained, user-friendly, and efficient

Issues Related to the Explication of Process-Product Relationships in DoD-Std-21677 and DoD-Std-2168

This paper is a discussion of issues related to the thesis entitled, "The Explication of Process-Product Relationships in DoD-STD-2167 and DoD-STD-2168 via an Augmented Data Flow Diagram Model." In particular, the major results of the above thesis are viewed in light of the draft standards DoD-STD-2167 and DoD-STD-2168 (both dated 1 April 1987), and the issue of development objectives is explored. The ideas presented in this paper represent the author's opinion and are speculative in nature due to the fact that, at present, the revised DoD standards are in draft form, and the issue of development objectives has not yet been thoroughly investigated

Silvopastoral Agroforestry in Upland and Lowland UK Grassland: Tree Growth and Animal Performance

Trees, individually protected from herbivore damage using plastic shelters, were planted at two densities (100 and 400 stems/ha) into sheepgrazed pasture in upland and lowland UK grassland sites in 1988. Tree and animal performance were compared with conventional forestry (no sheep) and pasture (no tree) systems. Effects on tree growth and survival are highly species and site dependent although some treatment effects did emerge. Tree shelters encouraged rapid early height growth compared to forestry controls although in some cases tree form was also adversely affected. Generally tree performance within agroforestry treatments was better at the higher planting density. Eight years after planting there has been no reduction in animal production despite interception of up to 10% of total photosynthetically active radiation by the developing tree canopy

Acceptability of Specialist Psychotherapy with Emotion for Anorexia in Kent and Sussex (SPEAKS): A novel intervention for anorexia nervosa

Investigate the acceptability of Specialist Psychotherapy with Emotion for Anorexia in Kent and Sussex (SPEAKS), a novel intervention for anorexia nervosa (AN), conducted as a feasibility trial to provide an initial test of the intervention. SPEAKS therapy lasting 9-12 months was provided to 34 people with AN or atypical AN by eight specialist eating disorder therapists trained in the model across two NHS Trusts in the UK (Kent and Sussex) during a feasibility trial. All participants were offered a post-therapy interview; sixteen patients and six therapists agreed. All patient participants were adult females. Interviews were semi-structured and asked questions around individuals' experience of SPEAKS, the acceptability of the intervention and of the research methods. Interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis. Key areas explored in line with research questions led to 5 overarching themes and 14 subthemes: (1) shift in treatment focus and experience, (2) balancing resources and treatment outcomes, (3) navigating the online treatment environment, (4) therapist adaptation and professional development, and (5) research processes. SPEAKS was found to be an acceptable intervention for treating AN from the perspective of patients and therapists. The findings provide strong support for delivery of a larger scale randomized control trial. Recommendations for future improvements, particularly pertaining to therapist understanding of the treatment model are detailed, alongside broader clinical implications. We aimed to evaluate the acceptability of a new anorexia nervosa treatment called SPEAKS. Interviews were conducted with patients and therapists involved in the pilot study and responses were analyzed. Results showed that both patients and therapists found SPEAKS to be an acceptable treatment for anorexia nervosa. The study suggests that SPEAKS meets the criteria for moving forward with a larger trial to assess its effectiveness. [Abstract copyright: © 2024 The Authors. International Journal of Eating Disorders published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.

Selection of optimised ligands by fluorescence-activated bead sorting

The chemistry of aptamers is largely limited to natural nucleotides, and although modifications of nucleic acids can enhance target aptamer affinity, there has not yet been a technology for selecting the right modifications in the right locations out of the vast number of possibilities, because enzymatic amplification does not transmit sequence-specific modification information. Here we show the first method for the selection of specific nucleoside modifications that increase aptamer binding efficacy, using the oncoprotein EGFR as a model target. Using fluorescence-activated bead sorting (FABS), we have successfully selected optimized aptamers from a library of >65 000 variations. Hits were identified by tandem mass spectrometry and validated by using an EGFR binding assay and computational docking studies. Our results provide proof of concept for this novel strategy for the selection of chemically optimised aptamers and offer a new method for rapidly synthesising and screening large aptamer libraries to accelerate diagnostic and drug discovery

Specifying and Inheriting Concurrent Behavior in an Actor-BasedObject-Oriented Language

Using CCS behavior equations to specify and reason about the observable behavior of concurrent objects, we demonstrate that a language mechanism called a behavior set can be used to capture the behavior of actor-like objects. Using behavior equations as a formal representation of concurrent object behavior results in the explication of a mapping from the domain of objects to a domain of behavior sets. We call this mapping the behavior function. By expressing relevant object states, behavior sets and the behavior function as first-class, inheritable, and mutable entities in a concurrent object-oriented language, we have defined the conditions which must be met in order to inherit concurrent behavior free of known anomalies

The Application of Concurrent Object-Oriented Techniques to Reactive Systems

A language and system model combining concurrency, abstract communication and an object orientation offers several advantages in the design and implementation of large-scale reactive systems. An object-orientation captures the abstraction and variety of entities inhabiting the environment while the autonomy of actual entities is clearly reflected by expressions of concurrency in the program of the reactive system. Abstract communication is necessary to achieve data sharing among heterogeneous systems. However, attempts to design and implement a paradigm unifying these three features have encountered unexpected difficulties. These difficulties include the interference between concurrency control (synchronization) and inheritance, inadequate application-oriented communication abstractions, the absence of a useful model of exception handling for concurrent object-oriented applications, and the lack of a powerful and useful theory of computation based on asynchrony

The Synergy Between Object-Oriented Programming and Open System Interconnection

The software engineering practice of building distributed object-oriented applications can be improved dramatically by exploiting the powerful synergism between object-oriented programming (OOP) and Open System Interconnection (OSI). The synergy arises because there are corresponding and complementary elements in both OOP and OSI; these elements are detailed and the synergism resulting from their integration is explained. The architecture of a prototype implementation, the goal of Project Synergy, is described. The environment created by Project Synergy supports application development using classes which are defined in an implementation-independent manner, implemented in possibly different programming languages, and executed in a distributed system on possibly heterogeneous processor architectures