Enhancing legacy in palliative care: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial of Dignity Therapy focused on positive outcomes.

BackgroundDignity Therapy is a brief psychotherapy that can enhance a sense of legacy while addressing the emotional and existential needs of patients receiving hospice or palliative care. In Dignity Therapy, patients create a formalized "legacy" document that records their most cherished memories, their lessons learned in life, as well as their hopes and dreams for loved ones in the future. To date, this treatment has been studied for its impact on mitigating distress within hospice and palliative care populations and has provided mixed results. This study will instead focus on whether Dignity Therapy enhances positive outcomes in this population.Methods/designIn this study, 90 patients with cancer receiving hospice or palliative care will complete a mixed-methods randomized controlled trial of Dignity Therapy (n = 45) versus Supportive Attention (n = 45). The patients will be enrolled in the study for 3 weeks, receiving a total of six study visits. The primary outcomes examine whether the treatment will quantitatively increase levels of positive affect and a sense of life closure. Secondary outcomes focus on gratitude, hope, life satisfaction, meaning in life, resilience, and self-efficacy. Using a fixed, embedded dataset design, this study will additionally use qualitative interviews to explore patients' perceptions regarding the use of positive outcome measures and whether these outcomes are appropriately matched to their experiences in therapy.DiscussionDignity Therapy has shown mixed results when evaluating its impact on distress, although no other study to date has solely focused on the potential positive aspects of this treatment. This study is novel in its use of mixed methods assessments to focus on positive outcomes, and will provide valuable information about patients' direct experiences in this area.Trial registrationISRCTN91389194

AXES at TRECVid 2011

The AXES project participated in the interactive known-item search task (KIS) and the interactive instance search task (INS) for TRECVid 2011. We used the same system architecture and a nearly identical user interface for both the KIS and INS tasks. Both systems made use of text search on ASR, visual concept detectors, and visual similarity search. The user experiments were carried out with media professionals and media students at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, with media professionals performing the KIS task and media students participating in the INS task. This paper describes the results and findings of our experiments

VARIATION IN AGGRESSIVENESS AND AFLP AMONG Alternaria solani ISOLATES FROM INDONESIA

Alternaria solani is a necrotroph fungus that causes three-phased diseases in tomato. Management of the pathogen by using resistant cultivars requires knowledge on the aggressiveness and genetic diversity of the fungus. The aims of this study were to isolate A. solani from major tomato and potato producing areas in Indonesia and to study their aggressiveness and genetic variability. Twenty two A. solani isolates were recovered from early blighted tomato and potato in Central and West Java.  A. alternata was also isolated from tomato leaves in West Java and North Sumatra, indicating that early blight in Indonesia may be caused by more than one Alternaria species. Resistance tests of four tomato genotypes to selected A. solani isolates revealed that local isolates were more aggressive in inciting early blight and stem lesion than an imported isolate from USA. This implies that introduced breeding materials must be tested to local isolates to obtain effective resistance genes. Cluster analysis based on amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) obtained from EcoRI+AG and MseI+C primer amplification separated 28 local and Taiwan isolates from the US isolate, which was coincided with aggressiveness separation between the local isolates and the US isolate. Three clusters of AFLP genotypes which did not associate with geographic origin were observed among tropical isolates. The low genetic diversity among the Indonesian isolates suggests clonal population structure with wide distribution. Successful local tomato breeding requires the availability of local A. solani collection with well-characterized aggressiveness level and molecular diversity to obtain effective resistance genes

Conformational plasticity of RepB, the replication initiator protein of promiscuous streptococcal plasmid pMV158

13 p.-7 fig.-1 tab.DNA replication initiation is a vital and tightly regulated step in all replicons and requires an initiator factor that specifically recognizes the DNA replication origin and starts replication. RepB from the promiscuous streptococcal plasmid pMV158 is a hexameric ring protein evolutionary related to viral initiators. Here we explore the conformational plasticity of the RepB hexamer by i) SAXS, ii)sedimentation experiments, iii) molecular simulations and iv) X-ray crystallography. Combining these techniques, we derive an estimate of the conformational ensemble in solution showing that the C-terminal oligomerisation domains of the protein form a rigid cylindrical scaffold to which the N-terminal DNA-binding/catalytic domains are attached as highly flexible appendages, featuring multiple orientations. In addition, we show that the hinge region connecting both domains plays a pivotal role in the observed plasticity. Sequence comparisons and a literature survey show that this hinge region could exists in other initiators, suggesting that it is a common, crucial structural element for DNA binding and manipulation.This study was supported by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Grants BFU2008-02372/BMC; BFU2011-22588, BFU2014-53550 and Unidad de Excelencia Maria de Maeztu MDM-2014-0435 to MC; BIO2009-10964 and E-SCIENCE to MO;BFU2010-19597, PNEUMOTALK, and CSD2008-00013, INTERMODS, to GdS; Ramón and Cajal subprogramme RYC-2011-09071 to CM), the Generalitat de Catalunya (Grants 2014-SGR1309 to MC and SGR2009-1348 to MO),Fundación Marcelino Botín (MO) and the European Commission (Cooperation Project SILVER, GA No. 260644 to MC and SCALALIFE Project to MO).Peer reviewe

Variation In Aggressiveness And Aflp Among Alternaria Solani Isolates From Indonesia

Alternaria solani is a necrotroph fungus that causes three-phased diseases in tomato. Management of the pathogen by using resistant cultivars requires knowledge on the aggressiveness and genetic diversity of the fungus. The aims of this study were to isolate A. solani from major tomato and potato producing areas in Indonesia and to study their aggressiveness and genetic variability. Twenty two A. solani isolates were recovered from early blighted tomato and potato in Central and West Java. A. alternata was also isolated from tomato leaves in West Java and North Sumatra, indicating that early blight in Indonesia may be caused by more than one Alternaria species. Resistance tests of four tomato genotypes to selected A. solani isolates revealed that local isolates were more aggressive in inciting early blight and stem lesion than an imported isolate from USA. This implies that introduced breeding materials must be tested to local isolates to obtain effective resistance genes. Cluster analysis based on amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) obtained from EcoRI+AG and MseI+C primer amplification separated 28 local and Taiwan isolates from the US isolate, which was coincided with aggressiveness separation between the local isolates and the US isolate. Three clusters of AFLP genotypes which did not associate with geographic origin were observed among tropical isolates. The low genetic diversity among the Indonesian isolates suggests clonal population structure with wide distribution. Successful local tomato breeding requires the availability of local A. solani collection with well-characterized aggressiveness level and molecular diversity to obtain effective resistance genes

Magellanic Cloud Structure from Near-IR Surveys II: Star Count Maps and the Intrinsic Elongation of the LMC

I construct a near-IR star count map of the LMC and demonstrate, using the viewing angles derived in Paper I, that the LMC is intrinsically elongated. I argue that this is due to the tidal force from the Milky Way. The near-IR data from the 2MASS and DENIS surveys are used to create a star count map of RGB and AGB stars, which is interpreted through ellipse fitting. The radial number density profile is approximately exponential with a scale-length 1.3-1.5 kpc. However, there is an excess density at large radii that may be due to the tidal effect of the Milky Way. The position angle and ellipticity profile converge to PA_maj = 189.3 +/- 1.4 degrees and epsilon = 0.199 +/- 0.008 for r > 5 deg. At large radii there is a drift of the center of the star count contours towards the near side of the plane, which can be undrestood as due to viewing perspective. The fact that PA_maj differes from the line of nodes position angle Theta = 122.5 +/- 8.3 (cf. Paper I) indicates that the LMC disk is not circular, but has an intrinsic ellipticity of 0.31. The LMC is elongated in the general direction of the Galactic center, and is elongated perpendicular to the Magellanic Stream and the velocity vector of the LMC center of mass. This suggests that the elongation of the LMC has been induced by the tidal force of the Milky Way. The position angle of the line of nodes differs from the position angle Theta_max of the line of maximum line of sight velocity gradient: Theta_max - Theta = 20-60 degrees. This could be due to: (a) streaming along non-circular orbits in the elongated disk; (b) uncertainties in the transverse motion of the LMC center of mass; (c) precession and nutation of the LMC disk as it orbits the Milky Way (expected on theoretical grounds). [Abridged]Comment: Astronomical Journal, in press. 34 pages, LaTeX, with 7 PostScript figures. Contains minor revisions with respect to previously posted version. Check out http://www.stsci.edu/~marel/lmc.html for a large scale (23x21 degree) stellar number-density image of the LMC constructed from RGB and AGB stars in the 2MASS and DENIS surveys. The paper is available with higher resolution color figures from http://www.stsci.edu/~marel/abstracts/abs_R32.htm

Homogenization of tropospheric data: evaluating the algorithms under the presence of autoregressive process

Presentación realizada en: IX Hotine-Marussi Symposium celebrado en Roma del 18 al 22 de junio de 2018.This research was supported by the Polish National Science Centre, grant No. UMO-2016/21/B/ST10/02353

Electron correlation effects and magnetic ordering at the Gd(0001) surface

Effects of electron correlation on the electronic structure and magnetic properties of the Gd(0001) surface are investigated using of the full-potential linearized augmented plane wave implementation of correlated band theory ("LDA+U"). The use of LDA+U instead of LDA (local density approximation) total energy calculations produces the correct ferromagnetic ground state for both bulk Gd and the Gd surface. Surface strain relaxation leads to an 90 % enhancement of the interlayer surface-to-bulk effective exchange coupling. Application of a Landau-Ginzburg type theory yields a 30 % enhancement of the Curie temperature at the surface, in very good agreement with the experiment.Comment: revised version: minor typos correcte

Magellanic Cloud Structure from Near-IR Surveys I: The Viewing Angles of the LMC

We present a detailed study of the viewing angles of the LMC disk plane. We find that our viewing direction differs considerably from the commonly accepted values, which has important implications for the structure of the LMC. The discussion is based on an analysis of spatial variations in the apparent magnitude of features in the near-IR color-magnitude diagrams extracted from the DENIS and 2MASS surveys. Sinusoidal brightness variations with a peak-to-peak amplitude of approximately 0.25 mag are detected as function of position angle, for both AGB and RGB stars. This is naturally interpreted as the result of distance variations, due to one side of the LMC plane being closer to us than the opposite side. The best fitting geometric model of an inclined plane yields an inclination angle i = 34.7 +/- 6.2 degrees and line-of-nodes position angle Theta = 122.5 +/- 8.3 degrees. There is tentative evidence that the LMC disk plane may be warped. Traditional methods to estimate the position angle of the line of nodes have used either the major axis position angle Theta_maj of the spatial distribution of tracers on the sky, or the position angle Theta_max of the line of maximum gradient in the velocity field, given that for a circular disk Theta_maj = Theta_max = Theta. The present study does not rely on the assumption of circular symmetry, and is considerably more accurate than previous studies of its kind. We find that the actual position angle of the line of nodes differs considerably from both Theta_maj and Theta_max, for which measurements have fallen in the range 140-190 degrees. This indicates that the intrinsic shape of the LMC disk is not circular, but elliptical, as discussed further in Paper II. [Abridged]Comment: Astronomical Journal, in press. 44 pages, LaTeX, with 8 PostScript figures. Contains minor revisions with respect to previously posted version. Check out http://www.stsci.edu/~marel/lmc.html for a large scale (23x21 degree) stellar number-density image of the LMC constructed from RGB and AGB stars in the 2MASS and DENIS surveys. The paper is available with higher resolution figures from http://www.stsci.edu/~marel/abstracts/abs_R31.htm