ADAPTIVE CONTROL BASED ON THE APPLICATION OF A SIMPLIFIED UNIFORM STRUCTURES AND LEARNING PROCEDURES

The present state of creating a new branch of Soft Computing (SC) for particular problem classes, possibly wider than the control of mechanical systems, is reported in this article. Like "traditional" SC il evades the development of analytical system models, and uses uniform structures, but these structures originate from various Lie groups. The advantages are a drastic reduction in size and an increase in lucidity. The generally "stochastic or semistochastic" "learning" or parameter tuning seems to be replaceable by simple explicit algebraic procedures of limited steps, too. The idea originated from mechanical systems\u27 control while considering their general internal symmetry group, and later it was further developed by using specific general features of it on a much wider scale. Convergence considerations are given for MIMO and SISO systems, too. Simulation examples are presented for the control of the inverted pendulum with the use of the Generalized Lorentzian Matrices. It is concluded that the me/hod is promising and probably imposes acceptable convergence requirements in many cases

Talking about a nanny nation: investigating the rhetoric framing public health debates in Australian news media

Objectives and importance of study: News media portrayal of public health issues influences public opinion, policy action and decision making. This study aimed to analyse the use of 'nanny state' frames in Australian news media coverage; identify the stakeholders invoking this frame; determine which public health-related policies attract such framing; and investigate whether 'nanny state' framing is directly challenged in news coverage. STUDY TYPE: A qualitative framing analysis. METHODS: Articles featuring the term 'nanny state' that were published in Australian print newspapers during matched periods between March and September in 2017 and 2018 were sourced through Factiva, coded and analysed for content and 'nanny state' framing. Content analysis was used to identify any public health-related issues that the terminology nanny state was applied to, and who was portrayed as imposing the nanny state. Frame analysis was used to analyse what meanings are co-presented with the phrase nanny state. RESULTS: Out of 81 print newspaper articles that included the term 'nanny state', 19% linked the term to restricting personal choice or creating dissatisfaction with too many health-related rules and regulations broadly, across a range of issues, including: bike helmets, e-cigarettes, firearm restrictions, seatbelts, pool fences and smoking bans. The next most frequent links were to regulations on alcohol (17%), road safety (14%), obesity-related issues (7%) and tobacco control (6%). Of the 81 articles, 53% appeared in news publications owned by News Corporation Australia, 20% in Fairfax Media (Nine Entertainment) publications, 17% in Daily Mail and General Trust and 10% in publications owned by other organisations. Governments were the entity most frequently framed as imposing the nanny state. Most nanny state framings (73%) were negative towards public health controls and focused on policies and regulations. Nanny state was portrayed as an assault on freedom and choice (14%) and used to attack proponents of nanny state controls (11%), while few articles framed the nanny state (7%) in a favourable light. CONCLUSIONS: 'Nanny state' is a rhetorical device commonly used in Australian news media that may contribute to discrediting of the regulation of a range of health-related issues. News Corp publications are a major propagator of nanny state rhetoric in Australian newspaper media. Public health advocates are not commonly represented within nanny state debates within the news media

Social-Cognitive and Emotion Processing in Children's Aggression: Descriptors, Predictors, and Precursors.

Components of boys’ and girls’ early social information and emotion processing were investigated. The first study used narrative themes derived from the MacArthur Story Stem Battery and measures of emotion understanding to examine how individual differences in children’s affective social-cognitive schemata related to hostile attribution biases. Results revealed that distinct schemata related to physical and relational aggression were uniquely associated with hostile attribution biases. Also, deficits in emotion understanding were associated with hostile attribution biases only for girls. These findings suggest that maladaptive affective social-cognitive schemata are present early in development and are related to hostile attribution biases in gender-specific ways. In the second study, individual differences in children’s affective social-cognitive schemata, hostile intent attributions, and skills in emotion regulation were examined in relation to teacher reports of overt and relational aggression. Results indicated that deficits and biases in social information and emotion processing contributed to the display of boys’ overt aggression uniquely, but interacted to contribute to the display of boys’ relational aggression. However, deficits in emotion processing primarily contributed to the display of girls’ overt and relational aggression. Thus, findings suggest distinct patterns in the development of overt and relational aggression during the kindergarten period and underscore the importance of including measures of both social-cognitive and emotion processes in investigations of children’s aggression. In the third study, mothers’ parenting and discipline techniques, children’s emotion understanding, and children’s susceptibility to anger during preschool were examined in relation to children’s affective social-cognitive schemata during kindergarten. Results revealed that early deficits and biases in emotion processing predicted less socially adaptive schemata for boys, whereas early deficits and biases in emotion processing interacted with mothers’ parenting to predict more skills in emotion processing for girls. These findings suggest that antecedents to maladaptive affective social-cognitive schemata differ for boys and girls and are present as early as the preschool period. Findings are integrated and discussed in relation to future research design, as well as preventative and interventional measures in the development of children’s physical and relational aggression.Ph.D.PsychologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/60869/1/lacombs_1.pd

Identifying effective interventions to promote consumption of protein-rich foods from lower ecological footprint sources: A systematic literature review

Addressing overconsumption of protein-rich foods from high ecological footprint sources can have positive impacts on health such as reduction of non-communicable disease risk and protecting the natural environment. With the increased attention towards development of ecologically sustainable diets, this systematic review aimed to critically review literature on effectiveness of those interventions aiming to promote protein-rich foods from lower ecological footprint sources. Five electronic databases (Medline, Web of Science, Scopus, Embase and Global Health) were searched for articles published up to January 2021. Quantitative studies were eligible for inclusion if they reported on actual or intended consumption of protein-rich animal-derived and/or plant-based foods; purchase, or selection of meat/plant-based diet in real or virtual environments. We assessed 140 full-text articles for eligibility of which 51 were included in this review. The results were narratively synthesised. Included studies were categorised into individual level behaviour change interventions (n = 33) which included education, counselling and self-monitoring, and micro-environmental/structural behaviour change interventions (n = 18) which included menu manipulation, choice architecture and multicomponent approaches. Half of individual level interventions (52%) aimed to reduce red/processed meat intake among people with current/past chronic conditions which reduced meat intake in the short term. The majority of micro-environmental studies focused on increasing plant-based diet in dining facilities, leading to positive dietary changes. These findings point to a clear gap in the current evidence base for interventions that promote plant-based diet in the general population

Quantum and semiclassical phase-space dynamics of a wave packet in strong fields using initial-value representations

We assess the suitability of quantum and semiclassical initial value representations, exemplified by the coupled coherent states (CCS) method and the Herman Kluk (HK) propagator, respectively, for modeling the dynamics of an electronic wave packet in a strong laser field, if this wave packet is initially bound. Using Wigner quasiprobability distributions and ensembles of classical trajectories, we identify signatures of over-the-barrier and tunnel ionization in phase space for static and time-dependent fields and the relevant sets of phase-space trajectories in order to model such features. Overall, we find good agreement with the full solution of the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation (TDSE) for Wigner distributions constructed with both initial-value representations. Our results indicate that the HK propagator does not fully account for tunneling and over-the-barrier reflections. However, it is able to partly reproduce features associated with the wave packet crossing classically forbidden regions, although the trajectories employed in its construction always obey classical phase-space constraints. We also show that the Coupled Coherent States (CCS) method represents a fully quantum initial value representation and accurately reproduces the results of a standard TDSE solver. Furthermore, we sow that both the HK propagator and the CCS approach may be successfully employed to compute the time-dependent dipole acceleration and high-harmonic spectra. Nevertheless, the semiclassical propagator exhibits a worse agreement with the TDSE than the outcome of the CCS method, as it neither fully accounts for tunneling nor for over-the-barrier reflections. This leads to a dephasing in the time-dependent wave function which becomes more pronounced for longer times

A two-layer approach to the coupled coherent states method

In this paper a two-layer scheme is outlined for the coupled coherent states (CCS) method, dubbed two-layer CCS (2L-CCS). The theoretical framework is motivated by that of the multiconfigurational Ehrenfest (MCE) method, where different dynamical descriptions are used for different subsystems of a quantum mechanical system. This leads to a flexible representation of the wavefunction, making the method particularly suited to the study of composite systems. It was tested on a 20-dimensional asymmetric system-bath tunnelling problem, with results compared to a benchmark calculation, as well as existing CCS, MP/SOFT and CI expansion methods. The two-layer method was found to lead to improved short and long term propagation over standard CCS, alongside improved numerical efficiency and parallel scalability. These promising results provide impetus for future development of the method for on-the-fly direct dynamics calculations

An umbrella review of the benefits and risks associated with youths’ interactions with electronic screens

The influence of electronic screens on the health of children and adolescents and their education is not well understood. In this prospectively registered umbrella review (PROSPERO identifier CRD42017076051), we harmonized effects from 102 meta-analyses (2,451 primary studies; 1,937,501 participants) of screen time and outcomes. In total, 43 effects from 32 meta-analyses met our criteria for statistical certainty. Meta-analyses of associations between screen use and outcomes showed small-to-moderate effects (range: r = –0.14 to 0.33). In education, results were mixed; for example, screen use was negatively associated with literacy (r = –0.14, 95% confidence interval (CI) = –0.20 to –0.09, P ≤ 0.001, k = 38, N = 18,318), but this effect was positive when parents watched with their children (r = 0.15, 95% CI = 0.02 to 0.28, P = 0.028, k = 12, N = 6,083). In health, we found evidence for several small negative associations; for example, social media was associated with depression (r = 0.12, 95% CI = 0.05 to 0.19, P ≤ 0.001, k = 12, N = 93,740). Limitations of our review include the limited number of studies for each outcome, medium-to-high risk of bias in 95 out of 102 included meta-analyses and high heterogeneity (17 out of 22 in education and 20 out of 21 in health with I2 > 50%). We recommend that caregivers and policymakers carefully weigh the evidence for potential harms and benefits of specific types of screen use

Resilience in high-risk adolescents of mothers with recurrent depressive disorder: the contribution of fathers

This study examines the role of paternal emotional support as a resilience promoter in offspring of mothers with depression by considering the role of fathers’ mental health and the quality of the couple relationship. Two hundred and sixty-five mothers with recurrent unipolar depression, partners and adolescents from Wales were assessed. Paternal emotional support, couple relationship quality, and paternal depression were assessed at baseline; adolescent mental health symptoms were assessed using the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Assessment at follow-up. Results showed evidence of an indirect pathway whereby couple relationship quality predicted paternal emotional support (β=-.21, 95% CI [-.34, -.08]; p=.002) which in turn predicted adolescent depression (β=-.18, 95% CI [-.33, -.04]; p=.02), but not disruptive behaviours (β=-.10, 95% CI [-.26, .40]; p=.21), after controlling for relevant confounders. The findings highlight that fathers and the broader family system play an important role in enhancing resilience to depression symptoms in at-risk adolescents

Coupled-coherent-states approach for high-order harmonic generation

In this paper, we report a version of the coupled-coherent-states method which is able to accurately compute the high-order harmonic generation (HHG) spectrum of an electron in a laser field in one dimension by the use of trajectory-guided grids of Gaussian wave packets. It is shown that by periodic reprojection of the wave function and dynamically altering the basis set size, the method can account for a wave function which spreads out to cover a large area in phase space while still keeping computational expense low and ensuring the preservation of coherence of the wave function. The HHG spectra obtained show good agreement with those from a time-dependent Schrödinger equation solver. We show also that the part of the wave function which is responsible for HHG moves along a periodic orbit which is far from that of classical motion. Although this paper is a proof of principle and therefore focused on a simple one-dimensional system, future generalizations for the multielectron case are discussed