10,756 research outputs found
Measurements of aerosol properties needed to infer backscatter characteristics in support of the NASA Doppler Lidar program
During the first year two areas of work were emphasized, analysis of aerosol data to provide improved estimates of backscatter over the Pacific ocean and development of a global model for backscatter at different wavelengths and preparation and planning for the aircraft flights of the GLOVE program. Significant progress was made in each of these areas. The analytical work is a continuation of the GAMETAG analysis, and was directed toward the development of a backscatter model for the Pacific Oceanic free troposphere. This has included a further evaluation of relationships between the optical effects at different wavelengths, a comparison of modeled optical effects at differing temporal resolutions, and an investigation of the effects of sampling on the modeled results. An initial investigation of the predictability of 9 to 10 micrometers Beta values from other data sets as well as some preliminary comparisons of the modeling results with experimental data. The comparison of the optical effects was extended to make the comparisons for different sets of time bases between 1 and 20 minutes
Brief Consultation to Families of Treatment Refusers with Symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: Does It Impact Family Accommodation and Quality of Life?
Family members are often directly and significantly impacted by the restrictive demands of OCD, a frequently disabling disorder. Family accommodation behaviors (i.e., doing things for or because of the OCD sufferer that a person would not normally do) are associated with dysfunction, including poorer treatment responses in OCD sufferers and greater distress in family members. Although evidence suggests family-based intervention can reduce symptoms in OCD sufferers who participate in treatment, there is a lack of research documenting the impact of interventions designed for the families of OCD treatment refusers (TR). Brief Family Consultation (BFC) was developed by our clinical team to help families refocus their efforts on the things that they can realistically control and change (e.g., participation in compulsions). In this crossover study, twenty families related to an individual who exhibited OCD symptoms but had refused treatment were assigned to five phone sessions of either BFC or a psychoeducation condition. Compared to this credible, attention-placebo control group (Brief Educational Support; BES), BFC (but not BES) resulted in reductions in family accommodation behavior, yet neither BFC nor BES resulted in improved quality of life for family members of treatment refusers. BFC is one of the first interventions to be evaluated for its ability to help families when their loved ones with obsessive compulsive symptoms refuse treatment. This pilot study provides new insights for clinicians and researchers to better address the needs of these neglected families
Audio Features Affected by Music Expressiveness
Within a Music Information Retrieval perspective, the goal of the study
presented here is to investigate the impact on sound features of the musician's
affective intention, namely when trying to intentionally convey emotional
contents via expressiveness. A preliminary experiment has been performed
involving tuba players. The recordings have been analysed by extracting a
variety of features, which have been subsequently evaluated by combining both
classic and machine learning statistical techniques. Results are reported and
discussed.Comment: Submitted to ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in
Information Retrieval (SIGIR 2016), Pisa, Italy, July 17-21, 201
HOw patients view extended halfâlife products: impressions from realâworld experience (The HOPE study)
Introduction
Extended halfâlife (EHL) clotting factors have been shown to offer people with haemophilia (PwH) protection from bleeding with fewer infusions, which might reduce treatment burden.
Aim
The HOw Patients view Extended halfâlife products (HOPE) study aimed to explore, understand and describe patient expectations around the prophylactic use of EHL products and to establish whether these expectations were met through individual followâup analysis.
Methods
The HOPE study was a prospective, qualitative cohort study conducted among PwH who had switched to Fc fusion protein EHL products in routine clinical care and who had not been recruited to clinical trials of these products. Semiâstructured audioârecorded interviews were undertaken over two time points; transcripts were analysed to systematically generate theory from data that contains both inductive and deductive thinking.
Results
Fortyâthree interviews were conducted with 25 participants. Most participants were positive about EHL treatment and intended to continue using them. Reduced frequency of infusions meant lives were less disrupted or dominated by haemophilia, and there was less perceived stress on overused veins. For those PwH who did not reduce infusion frequency, there were other perceived benefits from EHLs with respect to greater protection with higher trough levels and fewer bleeds.
Conclusion
Patients switching to EHL treatments believe these products will result in fewer infusions and less disruption of everyday life, leaving them feeling more protected with fewer bleeds and increased activity levels, as well as enhanced wellâbeing and mental health. Understanding patient expectation and experience around using products adds realâworld data to clinical trial experience
Coupling biochemistry and mechanics in cell adhesion: a model for inhomogeneous stress fiber contraction
Biochemistry and mechanics are closely coupled in cell adhesion. At sites of
cell-matrix adhesion, mechanical force triggers signaling through the
Rho-pathway, which leads to structural reinforcement and increased
contractility in the actin cytoskeleton. The resulting force acts back to the
sites of adhesion, resulting in a positive feedback loop for mature adhesion.
Here we model this biochemical-mechanical feedback loop for the special case
when the actin cytoskeleton is organized in stress fibers, which are
contractile bundles of actin filaments. Activation of myosin II molecular
motors through the Rho-pathway is described by a system of reaction-diffusion
equations, which are coupled into a viscoelastic model for a contractile actin
bundle. We find strong spatial gradients in the activation of contractility and
in the corresponding deformation pattern of the stress fiber, in good agreement
with experimental findings.Comment: Revtex, 35 pages, 13 Postscript figures included, in press with New
Journal of Physics, Special Issue on The Physics of the Cytoskeleto
USING A NONLINEAR CROSSED RANDOM EFFECTS MODEL WITH THREE-WAY TREATMENT STRUCTURE FOR DESCRIBING CIRCADIAN PATTERNS OF SERUM PROLACTIN CONCENTRATIONS IN HEAT STRESSED HOLSTEINS
A modified Gaussian model with three-level crossed and nested random effects is used to describe circadian patterns of serum prolactin concentrations in a crossover experiment. Testing of three-way treatment effects and carryover effects are incorporated with the model building process as is the within-group correlation. We found that the interaction between environment and parity had significant effect (p\u3c0.05) on both initial serum prolactin concentration and range of the prolactin concentration. There was no significant effect of recombinant bovine somatotropin (rbST) on either the initial value or concentration of serum prolactin. The inclusion of carryover effects in the model significantly improves the fit of the multilevel nonlinear mixed effects model. We present in detail a general approach to nonlinear crossed random effects model building and three-way treatment effects testing
Diffusive behavior for randomly kicked Newtonian particles in a spatially periodic medium
We prove a central limit theorem for the momentum distribution of a particle
undergoing an unbiased spatially periodic random forcing at exponentially
distributed times without friction. The start is a linear Boltzmann equation
for the phase space density, where the average energy of the particle grows
linearly in time. Rescaling time, the momentum converges to a Brownian motion,
and the position is its time-integral showing superdiffusive scaling with time
. The analysis has two parts: (1) to show that the particle spends
most of its time at high energy, where the spatial environment is practically
invisible; (2) to treat the low energy incursions where the motion is dominated
by the deterministic force, with potential drift but where symmetry arguments
cancel the ballistic behavior.Comment: 55 pages. Some typos corrected from previous versio
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