1,605 research outputs found
The impact of Eysenck's extraversion-introversion personality dimension on prospective memory
Prospective memory (PM) is memory for future events. PM is a developing area of research (e.g., Brandimonte, Einstein & McDaniel, 1996) with recent work linking personality types and their utilisation of PM (Goschke & Kuhl, 1996; Searleman, 1996). The present study compared 28 extraverts and 28 introverts on their short- and long-term prospective memory using the Prospective Memory Scale developed by Hannon, Adams, Harrington, Fries-Dias & Gibson (1995). The main finding was that extraverts reported significantly fewer errors on short- and long-term PM than introverts, and this difference could not be explained in terms of the number of strategies used to support prospective remembering. These findings are discussed in relation to differences between the personality types
Subjective ratings of prospective memory deficits in chronic heavy alcohol users
Chronic alcohol abuse has a detrimental effect on retrospective memory. Less is known about its putative effects on everyday memory. This study looked at self-ratings of prospective memory (PM) (memory for future events). After controlling for other drug and strategy use, chronic heavy alcohol users showed global impairments in PM, when compared to matched controls. The underlying mechanisms are discussed
Enantiomeric separations using macrocyclic glycopeptide based chiral stationary phases, an application and mechanism study
The purpose of this dissertation was to further investigate the mechanism by which macrocyclic glycopeptides are able to separate enantiomers and to try to develop and expand their application in high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and other related separation techniques. A unique application of enantiomeric separations for chiral sulfoxides using macrocyclic glycopeptide chiral stationary phases (CSPs) was first demonstrated. Furthermore, another successful enantiomeric separation of a series of biologically active racemic analogues of dihydrofurocoumarin was done using this class of CSPs. The macrocyclic glycopeptides proved to be exceptionally selective for many classes of chiral compounds. Enantiomeric recognition mechanism was discussed and investigated. The last part of this dissertation presented an absolute configuration determination approach using exciton coupling chirality method. This method was extended as a general method for determination of the absolute configuration of dihydrofuroangelicins bearing a variety of C-8 substituted double bonds, synthesized in the racemic form and resolved through enantioselective chromatography
A novel performance monitoring framework for health research systems: experiences of the National Institute for Health Research in England.
RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are.BACKGROUND: The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) was established in 2006 with the aim of creating an applied health research system embedded within the English National Health Service (NHS). NIHR sought to implement an approach for monitoring its performance that effectively linked early indicators of performance with longer-term research impacts. We attempted to develop and apply a conceptual framework for defining appropriate key performance indicators for NIHR. METHOD: Following a review of relevant literature, a conceptual framework for defining performance indicators for NIHR was developed, based on a hybridisation of the logic model and balanced scorecard approaches. This framework was validated through interviews with key NIHR stakeholders and a pilot in one division of NIHR, before being refined and applied more widely. Indicators were then selected and aggregated to create a basket of indicators aligned to NIHR's strategic goals, which could be reported to NIHR's leadership team on a quarterly basis via an oversight dashboard. RESULTS: Senior health research system managers and practitioners endorsed the conceptual framework developed and reported satisfaction with the breadth and balance of indicators selected for reporting. CONCLUSIONS: The use of the hybrid conceptual framework provides a pragmatic approach to defining performance indicators that are aligned to the strategic aims of a health research system. The particular strength of this framework is its capacity to provide an empirical link, over time, between upstream activities of a health research system and its long-term strategic objectives
Transcriptional regulation of PIN genes by FOUR LIPS and MYB88 during Arabidopsis root gravitropism
PIN proteins are auxin export carriers that direct intercellular auxin flow and in turn regulate many aspects of plant growth and development including responses to environmental changes. The Arabidopsis R2R3-MYB transcription factor FOUR LIPS (FLP) and its paralogue MYB88 regulate terminal divisions during stomatal development, as well as female reproductive development and stress responses. Here we show that FLP and MYB88 act redundantly but differentially in regulating the transcription of PIN3 and PIN7 in gravity-sensing cells of primary and lateral roots. On the one hand, FLP is involved in responses to gravity stimulation in primary roots, whereas on the other, FLP and MYB88 function complementarily in establishing the gravitropic set-point angles of lateral roots. Our results support a model in which FLP and MYB88 expression specifically determines the temporal-spatial patterns of PIN3 and PIN7 transcription that are closely associated with their preferential functions during root responses to gravity
Variational Knowledge Distillation for Disease Classification in Chest X-Rays
Disease classification relying solely on imaging data attracts great interest
in medical image analysis. Current models could be further improved, however,
by also employing Electronic Health Records (EHRs), which contain rich
information on patients and findings from clinicians. It is challenging to
incorporate this information into disease classification due to the high
reliance on clinician input in EHRs, limiting the possibility for automated
diagnosis. In this paper, we propose \textit{variational knowledge
distillation} (VKD), which is a new probabilistic inference framework for
disease classification based on X-rays that leverages knowledge from EHRs.
Specifically, we introduce a conditional latent variable model, where we infer
the latent representation of the X-ray image with the variational posterior
conditioning on the associated EHR text. By doing so, the model acquires the
ability to extract the visual features relevant to the disease during learning
and can therefore perform more accurate classification for unseen patients at
inference based solely on their X-ray scans. We demonstrate the effectiveness
of our method on three public benchmark datasets with paired X-ray images and
EHRs. The results show that the proposed variational knowledge distillation can
consistently improve the performance of medical image classification and
significantly surpasses current methods
Satellite quantum communications when man-in-the-middle attacks are excluded
An application of quantum communications is the transmission of qubits to
create shared symmetric encryption keys in a process called Quantum Key
Distribution (QKD). Contrary to public-private key encryption, symmetric
encryption is safe from (quantum) computing attacks, i.e. it provides forward
security and is thus attractive for secure communications. In this paper we
argue that for free-space quantum communications, especially with satellites,
if one assumes that man-in-the-middle attacks can be detected by classical
channel monitoring techniques, simplified quantum communications protocols and
hardware systems can be implemented that offer improved key rates. We term
these protocols photon key distribution (PKD) to differentiate them from the
standard QKD protocols. We identify three types of photon sources and calculate
asymptotic secret key rates for PKD protocols and compare them to their QKD
counterparts. Results show that PKD protocols have roughly a factor of two
higher rates as only one measurement basis is used and due to the relaxed
security assumptions can establish keys at very high losses whereas in QKD the
privacy amplification process becomes prohibitive.Comment: 5 page
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