A randomised controlled trial of treatments of childhood anxiety disorder in the context of maternal anxiety disorder: clinical and cost-effectiveness outcomes

Background: This study evaluated whether clinical and economic outcomes from CBT for child anxiety disorders in the context of maternal anxiety disorders are improved by adding treatment focused on (i) maternal anxiety disorders, or (ii) mother-child interactions. Methods: 211 children (7 – 12 years, 85% White British, 52% female) with a primary anxiety disorder, whose mothers also had a current anxiety disorder, were randomised to receive (i) child-focused CBT with non-specific control interventions (CCBT+Con), (ii) CCBT with CBT for the maternal anxiety disorder (CCBT+MCBT), or (iii) CCBT with an intervention targeting the mother-child interaction (CCBT+MCI). A cost-utility analysis from a societal perspective was conducted using mother/child combined Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs). [Trial registration: https://doi.org/10.1186/ISRCTN19762288]. Results: MCBT was associated with immediate reductions in maternal anxiety compared to the non-specific control; however, after children had also received CCBT, maternal outcomes in the CCBT+MCI and CCBT+Con arms improved and CCBT+MCBT was no longer superior. Neither CCBT+MCBT nor CCBT+MCI conferred a benefit over CCBT+Con in terms of child anxiety disorder diagnoses post-treatment [primary outcome] (adj RR: 1.22 (95% CI 0.88, 1.67), p = .23; adj RR: 1.21 (95% CI 0.88, 1.65), p = .24 respectively) or global improvement ratings (adj RR 1.25 (95% CI 0.99, 1.57), p = .06; adj RR 1.18 (95% CI 0.93, 1.50), p = .17) or six and 12 months later. No significant differences between the groups were found on the main economic outcome measures (child/mother combined QALY mean difference: CCBT+MCBT vs CCBT+Con: -0.04 (95% CI -0.12, 0.04), p = 0.29; CCBT+MCI vs CCBT+Con: 0.02 (95% CI -0.05, -0.09), p = 0.54). CCBT+MCI was associated with non-significantly higher costs than CCBT (mean difference: £154 (95% CI -£1239, £1547), p = 0.83) but, when taking into account sampling uncertainty, it may be cost-effective compared with CCBT alone. Conclusions: Good outcomes were achieved for children and their mothers across treatment arms. There was no evidence of significant clinical benefit from supplementing CCBT with either CBT for the maternal anxiety disorder or treatment focussed on mother-child interactions, but the addition of MCI (and not MCBT) may be cost-effective. Keywords: Child; anxiety; mother; parent-child interaction; CBT

Conformal Affine Toda Soliton and Moduli of IIB Superstring on AdS5×S5AdS_5\times S^5

In this paper we interpret the hidden symmetry of the moduli space of IIB superstring on $AdS_{5}\times S^{5}$ in terms of the chiral embedding in $AdS_{5}$, which turns to be the $\mathbb{CP}^{3}$ conformal affine Toda model. We review how the position $\mu$ of poles in the Riemann-Hilbert formulation of dressing transformation and how the value of loop parameters $\mu$ in the vertex operator of affine algebra determines the moduli space of the soliton solutions, which describes the moduli space of the Green-Schwarz superstring. We show also how this affine SU(4) symmetry affinize the conformal symmetry in the twistor space, and how a soliton string corresponds to a Robinson congruence with twist and dilation spin coefficients $\mu$ of twistor.Comment: Final version, Misprints corrected, Note adde

Superconformal operators in N=4 super-Yang-Mills theory

We construct, in the framework of the N=4 SYM theory, a supermultiplet of twist-two conformal operators and study their renormalization properties. The components of the supermultiplet have the same anomalous dimension and enter as building blocks into multi-particle quasipartonic operators. The latter are determined by the condition that their twist equals the number of elementary constituent fields from which they are built. A unique feature of the N=4 SYM is that all quasipartonic operators with different SU(4) quantum numbers fall into a single supermultiplet. Among them there is a subsector of the operators of maximal helicity, which has been known to be integrable in the multi-color limit in QCD, independent of the presence of supersymmetry. In the N=4 SYM theory, this symmetry is extended to the whole supermultiplet of quasipartonic operators and the one-loop dilatation operator coincides with a Hamiltonian of integrable SL(2|4) Heisenberg spin chain.Comment: 45 pages, Latex, 4 figure

Model-based analyses: Promises, pitfalls, and example applications to the study of cognitive control

We discuss a recent approach to investigating cognitive control, which has the potential to deal with some of the challenges inherent in this endeavour. In a model-based approach, the researcher defines a formal, computational model that performs the task at hand and whose performance matches that of a research participant. The internal variables in such a model might then be taken as proxies for latent variables computed in the brain. We discuss the potential advantages of such an approach for the study of the neural underpinnings of cognitive control and its pitfalls, and we make explicit the assumptions underlying the interpretation of data obtained using this approach

Quantification of three macrolide antibiotics in pharmaceutical lots by HPLC: Development, validation and application to a simultaneous separation

A new validated high performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method with rapid analysis time and high efficiency, for the analysis of erythromycin, azithromycin and spiramycin, under isocratic conditions with ODB RP18 as a stationary phase is described. Using an eluent composed of acetonitrile –2-methyl-2-propanol –hydrogenphosphate buffer, pH 6.5, with 1.5% triethylamine (33:7: up to 100, v/v/v), delivered at a flow-rate of 1.0 mL min-1. Ultra Violet (UV) detection is performed at 210 nm. The selectivity is satisfactory enough and no problematic interfering peaks are observed. The procedure is quantitatively characterized and repeatability, linearity, detection and quantification limits are very satisfactory. The method is applied successfully for the assay of the studied drugs in pharmaceutical dosage forms as tablets and powder for oral suspension. Recovery experiments revealed recovery of 97.13–100.28%

Highly-parallelized simulation of a pixelated LArTPC on a GPU

The rapid development of general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU) is allowing the implementation of highly-parallelized Monte Carlo simulation chains for particle physics experiments. This technique is particularly suitable for the simulation of a pixelated charge readout for time projection chambers, given the large number of channels that this technology employs. Here we present the first implementation of a full microphysical simulator of a liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) equipped with light readout and pixelated charge readout, developed for the DUNE Near Detector. The software is implemented with an end-to-end set of GPU-optimized algorithms. The algorithms have been written in Python and translated into CUDA kernels using Numba, a just-in-time compiler for a subset of Python and NumPy instructions. The GPU implementation achieves a speed up of four orders of magnitude compared with the equivalent CPU version. The simulation of the current induced on 10^3 pixels takes around 1 ms on the GPU, compared with approximately 10 s on the CPU. The results of the simulation are compared against data from a pixel-readout LArTPC prototype

Structural, Remote Sensing and Multivariate Correlation Methods as Aids to Mineral Exploration, Central Ireland

This work discusses structural, remote sensing and multivariate correlation methods as aids to mineral exploration in West Central Ireland. The work was performed as part of the EU-funded CREST project

Automatic subthalamic nucleus detection from microelectrode recordings based on noise level and neuronal activity

Microelectrode recording (MER) along surgical trajectories is commonly applied for refinement of the target location during deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery. In this study, we utilize automatically detected MER features in order to locate the subthalamic nucleus (STN) employing an unsupervised algorithm. The automated algorithm makes use of background noise level, compound firing rate and power spectral density along the trajectory and applies a threshold-based method to detect the dorsal and the ventral borders of the STN. Depending on the combination of measures used for detection of the borders, the algorithm allocates confidence levels for the annotation made (i.e. high, medium and low). The algorithm has been applied to 258 trajectories obtained from 84 STN DBS implantations. MERs used in this study have not been pre-selected or pre-processed and include all the viable measurements made. Out of 258 trajectories, 239 trajectories were annotated by the surgical team as containing the STN versus 238 trajectories by the automated algorithm. The agreement level between the automatic annotations and the surgical annotations is 88%. Taking the surgical annotations as the golden standard, across all trajectories, the algorithm made true positive annotations in 231 trajectories, true negative annotations in 12 trajectories, false positive annotations in 7 trajectories and false negative annotations in 8 trajectories. We conclude that our algorithm is accurate and reliable in automatically identifying the STN and locating the dorsal and ventral borders of the nucleus, and in a near future could be implemented for on-line intra-operative use