Social Support and Depressive Symptoms of Older Adults Residing in an Age Segregated Housing Complex

Research regarding social supports and depression has been extensive with the older adult population except for areas of mid-stzed communities ranging between 25,000 to 75,000. This was an exploratory, cross-sectional study examining the social supports and depressive symptoms of older adults residing in an age segregated housing complex in a Midwest city with a population under 35,000. The participants (N:8), were residents of an age segregated public housing complex. Through the completion of a scheduled stzurdardized interview, the participants answered forty-two questions from the Duke Social Support Index and the Geriatric Depression Scale. The questions were based on current mood level and their social network interactions within the past week of the interview. General systems theory and social support theory were used to identify the relationships of family and friends with the older adult\u27s level of depression. Past research indicates social support decreases the level of depression in the older adult with the age of the participants not warranting any substantial difference in results. Program implications of these findings include: an effective understanding of depression and its relationship to social supports, the importance of lobbying for the needs of the older adults and being an advocate at a community level

Automorphism groups of Steiner triple systems

If $V$ is a Steiner triple system then there is an integer $N_V$ such that$,$ for $u\ge N_V$ and $u\equiv 1$ or $3$ $($mod$\,6),$ there is a Steiner triple system $U$ on $u$ points having $V$ as an ${\rm Aut} U$-invariant subsystem on which ${\rm Aut} U$ induces ${\rm Aut} V$ and ${\rm Aut} U\cong{\rm Aut} V$

Timed Parity Games: Complexity and Robustness

We consider two-player games played in real time on game structures with clocks where the objectives of players are described using parity conditions. The games are \emph{concurrent} in that at each turn, both players independently propose a time delay and an action, and the action with the shorter delay is chosen. To prevent a player from winning by blocking time, we restrict each player to play strategies that ensure that the player cannot be responsible for causing a zeno run. First, we present an efficient reduction of these games to \emph{turn-based} (i.e., not concurrent) \emph{finite-state} (i.e., untimed) parity games. Our reduction improves the best known complexity for solving timed parity games. Moreover, the rich class of algorithms for classical parity games can now be applied to timed parity games. The states of the resulting game are based on clock regions of the original game, and the state space of the finite game is linear in the size of the region graph. Second, we consider two restricted classes of strategies for the player that represents the controller in a real-time synthesis problem, namely, \emph{limit-robust} and \emph{bounded-robust} winning strategies. Using a limit-robust winning strategy, the controller cannot choose an exact real-valued time delay but must allow for some nonzero jitter in each of its actions. If there is a given lower bound on the jitter, then the strategy is bounded-robust winning. We show that exact strategies are more powerful than limit-robust strategies, which are more powerful than bounded-robust winning strategies for any bound. For both kinds of robust strategies, we present efficient reductions to standard timed automaton games. These reductions provide algorithms for the synthesis of robust real-time controllers

Divergence in Dialogue

Copyright: 2014 Healey et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC; http://www.esrc.ac.uk/) through the DynDial project (Dynamics of Conversational Dialogue, RES-062-23-0962) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC; http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/) through the RISER project (Robust Incremental Semantic Resources for Dialogue, EP/J010383/1). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript

Emergence of four dimensional quantum mechanics from a deterministic theory in 11 dimensions

We develop a deterministic theory which accounts for the coupling of a high dimensional continuum of environmental excitations (called gravonons) to massive particle in a very localized and very weak fashion. For the model presented Schrodinger's equation can be solved practically exactly in 11 spacetime dimensions and the result demonstrates that as a function of time an incoming matter wave incident on a screen extinguishes, except at a single interaction center on the detection screen. This transition is reminiscent of the wave - particle duality arising from the "collapse" (also called "process one") postulated in the Copenhagen-von Neumann interpretation. In our theory it is replaced by a sticking process of the particle from the vacuum to the surface of the detection screen. This situation was verified in experiments by using massive molecules. In our theory this "wave-particle transition" is connected to the different dimensionalities of the space for particle motion and the gravonon dynamics, the latter propagating in the hidden dimensions of 11 dimensional spacetime. The fact that the particle is detected at apparently statistically determined points on the screen is traced back to the weakness and locality of the interaction with the gravonons which allows coupling on the energy shell alone. Although the theory exhibits a completely deterministic "chooser" mechanism for single site sticking, an apparent statistical character results, as it is found in the experiments, due to small heterogeneities in the atomic and gravonon structures

Probabilistic Bisimulation: Naturally on Distributions

In contrast to the usual understanding of probabilistic systems as stochastic processes, recently these systems have also been regarded as transformers of probabilities. In this paper, we give a natural definition of strong bisimulation for probabilistic systems corresponding to this view that treats probability distributions as first-class citizens. Our definition applies in the same way to discrete systems as well as to systems with uncountable state and action spaces. Several examples demonstrate that our definition refines the understanding of behavioural equivalences of probabilistic systems. In particular, it solves a long-standing open problem concerning the representation of memoryless continuous time by memory-full continuous time. Finally, we give algorithms for computing this bisimulation not only for finite but also for classes of uncountably infinite systems

Specific Image Characteristics Influence Attitudes about Chimpanzee Conservation and Use as Pets

Chimpanzees are endangered in their native Africa but in the United States, they are housed not only in zoos and research centers but owned privately as pets and performers. In 2008, survey data revealed that the public is less likely to think that chimpanzees are endangered compared to other great apes, and that this is likely the result of media misportrayals in movies, television and advertisements. Here, we use an experimental survey paradigm with composite images of chimpanzees to determine the effects of specific image characteristics. We found that those viewing a photograph of a chimpanzee with a human standing nearby were 35.5% more likely to consider wild populations to be stable/healthy compared to those seeing the exact same picture without a human. Likewise, the presence of a human in the photograph increases the likelihood that they consider chimpanzees as appealing as a pet. We also found that respondents seeing images in which chimpanzees are shown in typically human settings (such as an office space) were more likely to perceive wild populations as being stable and healthy compared to those seeing chimpanzees in other contexts. These findings shed light on the way that media portrayals of chimpanzees influence public attitudes about this important and endangered species

Distribution-based bisimulation for labelled Markov processes

In this paper we propose a (sub)distribution-based bisimulation for labelled Markov processes and compare it with earlier definitions of state and event bisimulation, which both only compare states. In contrast to those state-based bisimulations, our distribution bisimulation is weaker, but corresponds more closely to linear properties. We construct a logic and a metric to describe our distribution bisimulation and discuss linearity, continuity and compositional properties.Comment: Accepted by FORMATS 201