Explaining Variations in Mindfulness Levels in Daily Life

Despite the apparent benefits of being mindful, people are often not very mindful. There seem to be forces that drive people toward as well as away from mindfulness. These forces are conceptualised in terms of competition for scarce attentional resources. To explore these forces and to test this framework, an experience sampling study was performed among people with an explicit intention to be mindful and an ongoing practice to examine concurrent associations between state mindfulness and daily life experiences that may affect it. Participants (N=29, 1012 observations) filled out questions on momentary experiences at semi-random intervals, five times a day, over a period of 7 to 10days. Predictors of within-person variations in awareness of Present Moment Experience (PME) and non-reactivity to PME were examined using multilevel analyses. Participants were more aware of PME when they had an activated intention to be mindful and when they felt good, and not very busy or hurried, and were not involved in social interaction. They were more reactive to PME when they experienced unpleasant affect, and when they were hurried or tired. An activated intention to be mindful was also associated with an increased tendency to analyse PME. Experiencing threat was associated with increased reactivity, but not with decreased awareness. Our study generally supports the idea that competition for attention can be a fruitful framework to describe mechanisms behind being or not being mindful

Multi-site scheduling with fuzzy concepts

AbstractThe objective of multi-site scheduling is to support the scheduling activities of a global scheduler and schedulers in distributed production plants in a cooperative way. A global schedule generated on a global level must be translated into detailed schedules as part of the local scheduling process. In case of disturbance, feedback between the local and global levels is essential. Global level data are normally aggregated, imprecise, or estimated. Previous methods focused on local production sites, in most cases without coordination. In this work we present an approach that considers the adequate modeling and processing of imprecise data for global level scheduling within a multi-site scheduling system based on fuzzy concepts. One of the goals is to create a robust prescription for the local scheduling systems which helps to reduce the effort of coordination and rescheduling

Higher Derivative Corrections to Eleven Dimensional Supergravity via Local Supersymmetry

In this paper we derive higher derivative corrections to the eleven dimensional supergravity by applying the Noether method with respect to the N=1 local supersymmetry. An ansatz for the higher derivative effective action, which includes quartic terms of the Riemann tensor, is parametrized by 132 parameters. Then we show that by the requirement of the local supersymmetry, the higher derivative effective action is essentially described by two parameters. The bosonic parts of these two superinvariants completely match with the known results obtained by the perturbative calculations in the type IIA superstring theory. Since the calculations are long and systematic, we build the computer programming to check the cancellation of the variations under the local supersymmetry. This is an extended version of our previous paper hep-th/0508204.Comment: 67 pages, no figure, references added, typos correcte

One-loop four-graviton amplitude in eleven-dimensional supergravity

We find explicit expression for the one-loop four-graviton amplitude in eleven-dimensional supergravity compactified on a circle. Represented in terms of the string coupling (related to the compactification radius) it takes the form of an infinite sum of perturbative string loop corrections. We also compute the amplitude in the case of compactification on a 2-torus which is given by an SL(2,Z) invariant expansion in powers of the torus area. We discuss the structure of quantum corrections in eleven-dimensional theory and their relation to string theory.Comment: 14 pages, harvmac. Remarks on the amplitude in uncompactified D=11 space and on explicit structure of R^4 terms adde

Heterotic - type I superstring duality and low-energy effective actions

We compare order $R^4$ terms in the 10-dimensional effective actions of SO(32) heterotic and type I superstrings from the point of view of duality between the two theories. Some of these terms do not receive higher-loop corrections being related by supersymmetry to `anomaly-cancelling' terms which depend on the antisymmetric 2-tensor. At the same time, the consistency of duality relation implies that the `tree-level' $R^4$ super-invariant (the one which has $\zeta(3)$-coefficient in the sphere part of the action) should appear also at higher orders of loop expansion, i.e. should be multiplied by a non-trivial function of the dilaton.Comment: 16 pages, harvma

On SO(32) heterotic - type I superstring duality in ten dimensions

We provide some additional evidence in favour of the strong - weak coupling duality between the SO(32) heterotic and type I superstring theories by comparing terms quartic in the gauge field strength in their low-energy effective actions. We argue that these terms should not receive higher-loop string corrections so that duality should relate the leading-order perturbative coefficients in the two theories. In particular, we demonstrate that the coefficient of the $F^4$-term in the one-loop (torus) part of the SO(32) heterotic string action is exactly the same as the coefficient of the $F^4$-term in the tree-level (disc) part of the type I action.Comment: 11 pages, harvmac. Several comments added, final version to appear in Physics Letters

Coupling Constant Dependence in the Thermodynamics of N=4 Supersymmetric Yang-Mills Theory

The free energy of the maximally supersymmetric SU(N) gauge theory at temperature T is expected to scale, in the large N limit, as N^2 T^4 times a function of the 't Hooft coupling, f(g_{YM}^2 N). In the strong coupling limit the free energy has been deduced from the near-extremal 3-brane geometry, and its normalization has turned out to be 3/4 times that found in the weak coupling limit. In this paper we calculate the leading correction to this result in inverse powers of the coupling, which originates from the R^4 terms in the tree level effective action of type IIB string theory. The correction to 3/4 is positive and of order (g_{YM}^2 N)^{-3/2}. Thus, f(g_{YM}^2 N) increases as the 't Hooft coupling is decreased, in accordance with the expectation that it should be approaching 1 in the weak coupling limit. We also discuss similar corrections for other conformal theories describing coincident branes. In particular, we suggest that the coupling-independence of the near extremal entropy for D1-branes bound to D5-branes is related to the vanishing of the Weyl tensor of AdS_3\times S^3.Comment: 24 pages; a paragraph about the 5-form background added in section 3; in the Note Added we clarify the meaning of the metric found in section 3; sign in eq. (34) correcte

The Supersymmetric Effective Action of the Heterotic String in Ten Dimensions

We construct the supersymmetric completion of quartic $R+R^4$-actions in the ten-dimensional effective action of the heterotic string. Two invariants, of which the bosonic parts are known from one-loop string amplitude calculations, are obtained. One of these invariants can be generalized to an $R+F^2+F^4$-invariant for supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory coupled to supergravity. Supersymmetry requires the presence of $B\wedge R\wedge R\wedge R\wedge R$-terms, ($B\wedge F\wedge F\wedge F\wedge F$ for Yang-Mills) which correspond to counterterms in the Green-Schwarz anomaly cancellation. Within the context of our calculation the $\zeta(3)R^4$-term from the tree-level string effective action does not allow supersymmetrization.Comment: 42 pages, UG-9/9

Treatment Patterns and Use of Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors Among Patients with Metastatic Bladder Cancer in a Dutch Nationwide Cohort

Since 2017, two immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have become the standard of care for the treatment of metastatic urothelial carcinoma in Europe: pembrolizumab as second-line therapy and avelumab as maintenance therapy. Our aim was to describe the use of ICIs as first and later lines of treatment in patients with metastatic bladder cancer (mBC) in the Netherlands. We identified all patients diagnosed with primary mBC between 2018 and 2021 in the Netherlands from the Netherlands Cancer Registry (NCR). NCR data were supplemented with data from the Dutch nationwide Prospective Bladder Cancer Infrastructure (ProBCI) collected from medical files, with follow-up until death or end of data collection on January 1, 2023. A total of 1525 patients were diagnosed with primary mBC between 2018 and 2021 in the Netherlands. Of these, 34.7% received at least one line of systemic treatment with chemotherapy or ICI. After first-line platinum-based chemotherapy, 34.1% received second-line ICI and 3.9% received maintenance ICI. Among patients who completed or discontinued first-line cisplatin- or carboplatin-based chemotherapy after approval of maintenance ICI in the Netherlands, 40.7% and 19.7% received second-line ICI, and 9.3% and 14.1% received maintenance ICI, respectively. ICI use for mBC treatment has not increased considerably since their introduction in 2017. Future research should assess whether the introduction of maintenance avelumab (available since April 2021 in the Netherlands) has led to increases in the proportion of patients with mBC patients receiving systemic treatment and the proportion receiving ICI. Patient summary: We assessed the rate of immunotherapy use for patients with metastatic bladder cancer in the Netherlands. Since its introduction, immunotherapy has been used in a minority of patients, mostly as second-line treatment after platinum-based chemotherapy.</p