The characteristics of reflexivity of younger and middle adolescents

The article is devoted to the problem of development of reflection in the adolescence at the age 11–12 and 13–14. It is shown that there are differences in development of reflexivity of younger and middle adolescents. The structure of relations between reflexivity and locus of control and empathy is investigated by means of factor analysis. The specific of reflexivity of younger and middle adolescents is analyzed. Data are given is used for adaptation of program aimed for development of younger and middle adolescents’ reflexivity by means of debate technology.В статье рассматривается проблема развития рефлексии у подростков 11–12 и 13–14 лет. Выявлены различия в развитии рефлексивности у младших и средних подростков. Посредством факторного анализа и учена структура связей рефлексивности с локусом контроля и эмпатией, проанализирована специфика рефлексивности младших и средних подростков. Полученные результаты используются для адаптации программы по развитию рефлексивности у данных возрастных групп с помощью технологии «Дебаты»

Monocyte Chemotactic Protein-1 (MCP-1) and Growth Factors Called into Question as Markers of Prolonged Psychosocial Stress

BACKGROUND:Psychosocial stress is becoming a major contributor to increased mental ill-health and sick leave in many countries. Valid markers of chronic stress would be valuable for diagnostic and prognostic purposes. A recent study suggested monocyte chemotactic protein-1 (MCP-1), epidermal growth factor (EGF) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) as markers of chronic stress. We aimed to confirm these potential biomarkers of prolonged psychosocial stress in female patients. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS:Circulating levels of MCP-1, EGF and VEGF, along with several other cytokines, were measured in plasma from 42 female patients suffering from exhaustion due to prolonged psychosocial stress and 42 control subjects, using a protein biochip immunoassay. There were no significant differences between patients and controls in any of the cytokines or growth factors analyzed. Furthermore, when using a different protein bioassay and reanalyzing MCP-1 and VEGF in the same samples, markedly different levels were obtained. To further explore if inflammation is present in patients with exhaustion, the classical inflammatory marker C-reactive protein (CRP) was measured in another group of patients (n=89) and controls (n=88) showing a small but significant increase of CRP levels in the patients. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE:MCP-1, EGF and VEGF may not be suitable markers of prolonged psychosocial stress as previously suggested. Furthermore, significant differences were obtained when using two different protein assays measuring the same samples, indicating that comparing studies where different analytic techniques have been used might be difficult. Increased levels of CRP indicate that low-grade inflammation might be present in patients with exhaustion due to prolonged stress exposure but this inflammation does not seem to be reflected by increase in circulating MCP-1 or other cytokines measured

ОПЫТ И ПРОБЛЕМЫ РАЗРАБОТКИ И ВНЕДРЕНИЯ АСУТП ПГУ НА ЭЛЕКТРОСТАНЦИЯХ РОССИИ И БЕЛОРУССИИ

Summed up the experience of the development and implementation I&C of CCPP by the company «Interavtomatika» AG on various types of CCPP. For example, the I&C of 65 Mw CCPP Borisov (Belarus) CHP considered actual problems of modern I&C of CCPP, among which the first is the integration software of the various local PLC groups processing equipment and PLC unit in a unified system of unit management.Обобщен опыт разработки и внедрения АСУТП ПГУ, полученный ЗАО «Интеравтоматика» на ПГУ различного типа. На примере АСУТП ПГУ-65 МВт Борисовской ТЭЦ (РБ) рассмотрены актуальные проблемы создания современных АСУТП ПГУ, среди которых на первое место выходит интеграция выполненных на различных программно-технических средствах блочной АСУТП и локальных АСУ/САУ групп технологического оборудования в единую систему управления объектом

Synthesis and characterization of high-affinity 4,4-difluoro-4-bora-3a,4a-diaza-s-indacene-labeled fluorescent ligands for human β-adrenoceptors

The growing practice of exploiting noninvasive fluorescence-based techniques to study G protein-coupled receptor pharmacology at the single cell and single molecule level demands the availability of high-quality fluorescent ligands. To this end, this study evaluated a new series of red-emitting ligands for the human β-adrenoceptor family. Upon the basis of the orthosteric ligands propranolol, alprenolol, and pindolol, the synthesized linker-modified congeners were coupled to the commercially available fluorophore BODIPY 630/650-X. This yielded high-affinity β-adrenoceptor fluorescent ligands for both the propranolol and alprenolol derivatives; however, the pindolol-based products displayed lower affinity. A fluorescent diethylene glycol linked propranolol derivative (18a) had the highest affinity (log KD of -9.53 and -8.46 as an antagonist of functional β2- and β1-mediated responses, respectively). Imaging studies with this compound further confirmed that it can be employed to selectively label the human β2-adrenoceptor in single living cells, with receptor-associated binding prevented by preincubation with the nonfluorescent β2-selective antagonist 3-(isopropylamino)-1-[(7-methyl-4-indanyl)oxy]-butan-2-ol (ICI 118551) (J. Cardiovasc. Pharmacol. 1983, 5, 430-437.

Internal construct validity of the Shirom-Melamed Burnout Questionnaire (SMBQ)

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Burnout is a mental condition defined as a result of continuous and long-term stress exposure, particularly related to psychosocial factors at work. This paper seeks to examine the psychometric properties of the Shirom-Melamed Burnout Questionnaire (SMBQ) for validation of use in a clinical setting.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Data from both a clinical (319) and general population (319) samples of health care and social insurance workers were included in the study. Data were analysed using both classical and modern test theory approaches, including Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Rasch analysis.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Of the 638 people recruited into the study 416 (65%) persons were working full or part time. Data from the SMBQ failed a CFA, and initially failed to satisfy Rasch model expectations. After the removal of 4 of the original items measuring tension, and accommodating local dependency in the data, model expectations were met. As such, the total score from the revised scale is a sufficient statistic for ascertaining burnout and an interval scale transformation is available. The scale as a whole was perfectly targeted to the joint sample. A cut point of 4.4 for severe burnout was chosen at the intersection of the distributions of the clinical and general population.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>A revised 18 item version of the SMBQ satisfies modern measurement standards. Using its cut point it offers the opportunity to identify potential clinical cases of burnout.</p

Bilingually motivated word segmentation for statistical machine translation

We introduce a bilingually motivated word segmentation approach to languages where word boundaries are not orthographically marked, with application to Phrase-Based Statistical Machine Translation (PB-SMT). Our approach is motivated from the insight that PB-SMT systems can be improved by optimizing the input representation to reduce the predictive power of translation models. We firstly present an approach to optimize the existing segmentation of both source and target languages for PB-SMT and demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach using a Chinese–English MT task, that is, to measure the influence of the segmentation on the performance of PB-SMT systems. We report a 5.44% relative increase in Bleu score and a consistent increase according to other metrics. We then generalize this method for Chinese word segmentation without relying on any segmenters and show that using our segmentation PB-SMT can achieve more consistent state-of-the-art performance across two domains. There are two main advantages of our approach. First of all, it is adapted to the specific translation task at hand by taking the corresponding source (target) language into account. Second, this approach does not rely on manually segmented training data so that it can be automatically adapted for different domains

Expected Performance of the ATLAS Experiment - Detector, Trigger and Physics

A detailed study is presented of the expected performance of the ATLAS detector. The reconstruction of tracks, leptons, photons, missing energy and jets is investigated, together with the performance of b-tagging and the trigger. The physics potential for a variety of interesting physics processes, within the Standard Model and beyond, is examined. The study comprises a series of notes based on simulations of the detector and physics processes, with particular emphasis given to the data expected from the first years of operation of the LHC at CERN

An Integrated TCGA Pan-Cancer Clinical Data Resource to Drive High-Quality Survival Outcome Analytics

For a decade, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) program collected clinicopathologic annotation data along with multi-platform molecular profiles of more than 11,000 human tumors across 33 different cancer types. TCGA clinical data contain key features representing the democratized nature of the data collection process. To ensure proper use of this large clinical dataset associated with genomic features, we developed a standardized dataset named the TCGA Pan-Cancer Clinical Data Resource (TCGA-CDR), which includes four major clinical outcome endpoints. In addition to detailing major challenges and statistical limitations encountered during the effort of integrating the acquired clinical data, we present a summary that includes endpoint usage recommendations for each cancer type. These TCGA-CDR findings appear to be consistent with cancer genomics studies independent of the TCGA effort and provide opportunities for investigating cancer biology using clinical correlates at an unprecedented scale. Analysis of clinicopathologic annotations for over 11,000 cancer patients in the TCGA program leads to the generation of TCGA Clinical Data Resource, which provides recommendations of clinical outcome endpoint usage for 33 cancer types

Спектрометрия ионной подвижности N-метилимидазола и возможности его определения

Objectives. To determine the ion mobility of N-methylimidazole, establish the structure of ions corresponding to characteristic signals, and determine the detection limit of N-methylimidazole on the ion-drift detector Kerber.Methods. Ion mobility spectrometry was used to study the ionization processes. The enthalpies of the reactions of monomer and dimer ions were calculated in the ORCA 4.1.1 software by the B3LYP density functional method with a set of basic functions 6-31G (d, p).Results. The drift time and ion mobility values of N-methylimidazole were determined. A method for mathematical processing of spectra and a program for its implementation was developed. The changing peculiarities of the ion mobility spectrum during measurement at a given time were studied. According to the interpretation of the spectrum signals, the structure of the generated ions was proposed, and the enthalpies of ion formation were determined.Conclusions. The characteristic signal of the N-methylimidazole ion protonated at the nitrogen atom of the pyridine type was revealed. It was found that two signals in the ion mobility spectra of N-methylimidazole correspond to the presence of the monomer and dimer ions. The detection limit of N-methylimidazole on the ion-drift detector Kerber was determined, amounting to 3 pg.Цели. Определение значений ионной подвижности N-метилимидазола. Установление строения ионов, соответствующих характерным сигналам. Определение предела обнаружения N-метилимидазола на ионно-дрейфовом детекторе Кербер.Методы. Метод спектрометрии ионной подвижности был использован для исследования процессов ионизации. Энтальпии реакций мономерных и димерных ионов расчитаны в программе ORCA 4.1.1 методом функционала плотности B3LYP с набором базисных функций 6-31G(d,p).Результаты. Определены значения времени дрейфа и ионной подвижности N-метилимидазола. Разработана методика математической обработки спектров и программа для ее реализации. Изучены особенности изменения характера спектра ионной подвижности в процессе измерения в данный момент времени. Предложено строение генерируемых ионов в соответствии с интерпретацией сигналов спектра. Определены энтальпии образования ионов.Выводы. Выявлен характеристический сигнал иона N-метилимидазола, протонированного по атому азота пиридинового типа. Установлено, что два сигнала в спектрах ионной подвижности N-метилимидазола соответствуют наличию мономерной и димерной формы ионов. Определен предел обнаружения N-метилимидазола на ионно-дрейфовом детекторе Кербер, составляющий 3 пг