Boosting expensive synchronizing heuristics

For automata, synchronization, the problem of bringing an automaton to a particular state regardless of its initial state, is important. It has several applications in practice and is related to a fifty-year-old conjecture on the length of the shortest synchronizing word. Although using shorter words increases the effectiveness in practice, finding a shortest one (which is not necessarily unique) is NP-hard. For this reason, there exist various heuristics in the literature. However, high-quality heuristics such as SynchroP producing relatively shorter sequences are very expensive and can take hours when the automaton has tens of thousands of states. The SynchroP heuristic has been frequently used as a benchmark to evaluate the performance of the new heuristics. In this work, we first improve the runtime of SynchroP and its variants by using algorithmic techniques. We then focus on adapting SynchroP for many-core architectures, and overall, we obtain more than 1000× speedup on GPUs compared to naive sequential implementation that has been frequently used as a benchmark to evaluate new heuristics in the literature. We also propose two SynchroP variants and evaluate their performance

Metacognitive beliefs and their relation with symptoms in obsessive-compulsive disorder

Introduction: Metacognitive constructs have shown promise in explaining the symptoms of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Few studies have examined the role of metacognitions in symptom dimensions of OCD, despite mounting clinical, neuropsychological and imaging evidence for the distinctiveness of these dimensions. Methods: Metacognitions were assessed using the Metacognitions Questionnaire (MCQ-30) in 51 participants with DSM IV OCD and 46 healthy controls. The Maudsley Obsessional Compulsive Inventory (MOCI) was used to quantify symptom dimensions, along with the Hamilton Anxiety Rating Scale (HAM-A) for anxiety, and Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAM-D) for depression. Results: Individuals with OCD differed from healthy controls on beliefs of uncontrollability and danger when depression and anxiety were controlled for. Correlations between metacognitive beliefs and obsessive-compulsive symptom dimensions were largely similar across the OCD and healthy control groups. Hierarchical regression showed that need to control thoughts contributed to checking, cleaning and rumination symptoms; cognitive self-consciousness to symptoms of slowness; uncontrollability and danger to doubt symptoms; positive beliefs to checking symptoms. Conclusions: Specific associations between metacognitive variables and the different symptom dimensions of OCD are evident, however, severity of anxiety and depression also contribute to these associations. © 2018 by Turkish Association of Neuropsychiatry

Successful desensitization of a case with desferrioxamine hypersensitivity

PubMed ID: 17093379Thalassaemia major is a severe chronic hemolytic disease, resulted with iron overload mainly due to regular blood transfusions. Iron overload may lead to serious organ toxicity and even fatal complications, if no iron excretion is achieved by a chelating agent. First introduced in 1976 as s.c. treatment for thalassaemia major, desferrioxamine (DFO) has substantially improved the life expectancy in the disease. While DFO can cause local allergic reactions including redness, itching, pain and lumps, on rare occasion anaphylactic reactions can occur. The mechanism of anaphylaxis like reactions is not well understood. In this case report, we presented a 10 years-old girl with thalassaemia major who had to stop DFO therapy after appearing of systemic allergic reactions with hypotension, tachycardia, pruritus and urticaria against this drug. Serum IgE level was normal, specific IgE and skin prick tests were negative. Intradermal test was resulted with positive reaction to DFO. The patient was hospitalized and desensitization protocol was initiated with rapid s.c. infusions per 15 min. The protocol was stopped at the 17th cycle because of local reaction reappeared. After that, DFO was further diluted and was restarted with lower dosage and longer infusion period. Then, DFO dosage was increased and the dilutions and infusion times were decreased gradually. By this desensitization programme, the patient would continue to use DFO chelation safely for 10 months

Is clinical insight associated with working memory components in schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder?

Objective: Previous studies suggest that the level of clinical insight in schizophrenia patients is related to working memory functions. However, these studies were not specifically concerned with the components of working memory and had not focused in detail on working memory functions. For this reason, the current study investigated the relationship between clinical insight and working memory components in patients with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder. Method: The patient group was evaluated by using the Scale for Assessment of Negative Symptoms, the Scale for Assessment of Positive Symptoms, and the Scale to Assess Unawareness of Mental Disorder to measure clinical insight. Moreover, all participants underwent a "Situation Awareness" test in order to measure working memory functions. Based on published data, the first stage of this test was accepted to measure the "visual spatial sketchpad" component of working memory, and the second stage was accepted to measure the "episodic buffer" (bound information storage) component. The functions of these components were measured separately as top-down and bottom-up cognitive processes. Results: The episodic buffer function (managed by the bottom-up cognitive process) was related with clinical insight. This relationship also continued after correcting for the effect of positive symptoms on insight. The patients performed worse than the controls in terms of visual spatial sketchpad function, which was managed by both top-down and bottom-up cognitive processes. The patients performed worse than the controls in terms of both top-down and bottom-up cognitive processes and visual spatial sketchpad function. Furthermore, the patients were also worse than the controls in terms of episodic buffer function (managed by top-down cognitive processes). Conclusion: Clinical insight may be associated with binding function (associated with episodic buffer function) managed by bottom-up cognitive processes in patients with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder. Further studies are necessary to confirm this novel finding. © 2019, Turkish Association of Nervous and Mental Health

Monopolar elektrokoterin farklı güçlerde orta kulağa uygulanmasının iç kulağa etkisi

AMAÇ: Çoğu ameliyatta kesi ve kanama kontrolü üçün monopolarelektrokoter yaygın olarak kullanılan cerrrahi bir enstrümandır. Ancakmonopolar elektorkoterin iç kulak üzerine etkisi bilinmemektedir.Çalışmamızda monopolar elektrokoterin iç kulak üzerine etkisinin odyo-lojik ve histopatolojik olarak incelenmesi amaçlandı.GEREÇ VE YÖNTEM: Çalışmamıza 32 adet sağlıklı dişi SpragueDawley sıçan (200-240 gr) dahil edildi. Ratlar her biri sekizerli olacakşekilde dört gruba ayrıldı.Grup 1: Monopolar elektrokoter-5WGrup 2: Monopolar elektrokoter-10WGrup 3: Monopolar elektrokoter-20WGrup 4: KontrolTüm gruplardaki ratlara bazal odyometrik ölçümler (DistorsiyonProduct Otoakustik Emisyon (DPOAE) ve Auditory Branstem Respones(ABR)) yapıldı.Grup 1,2 ve 3 e bazal odiyometrik ölçümler yapıldıktan sonra pro-montorium üzerine transtimpanik olarak monopolar elektrokoterin iğneucu ile mikroskop altında 2sn koterizasyon yapıldı. Kontrol grubuna her-hangibir işlem uygulanmadı. Tüm gruplarda çalışmanın 7 ve 14. günle-rinde odiyometrik ölçümler tekrarlandı.Çalışmanın odyolojik aşaması bittikten sonra ratların kokleaları eksizeedildi ve histopatolojik değerlendirme yapıldıBULGULAR: Grup 1,2,3 ve 4 ün bazal 7 ve 14. günlerindeki yüksekfrekans DPOAE amplitütleri (701 Hz, 997 Hz, 1401 Hz, 1977 Hz, 2834.Hz, 4002 Hz, 5636 Hz, 7988 Hz, 11288 Hz, 15991 Hz, 22608 Hz)(veABR eşikleri (10 kHz, 16kHz, 20 KhZ, 32kHz) arasında anlamlı farkyoktu (p>0,05).Tüm gruplarda kokleadaki spiral ganglion hücrelerinde ve sinir lifle-rinde hem hidropik dejenerasyon hemde nükleer kayıp gözlenmedi. Herüç grupda da histopatolojik değerlendirmede normal koklea yapısı göz-lenmiş olup gruplar arasında anlamlı fark bulunmamaktadır (p>0.05)SONUÇ: Farklı güçlerde (5W,10W ve 20 W) monopolar elektorkoteruygulaması sonrasında 7 ve 14. günlerde yapılan odyolojik ve hsitopa-tolojik değerlendirmelerde iç kulakta herhangibir zararlı etki saptanma-mıştır. Bu çalışma iç kulağın yakınında monopolar elektrokoterin güven-le kullanılabileceğini düşündümektedir

Column generation approaches to a robust airline crew pairing model for managing extra flights

The airline crew pairing problem (CPP) is one of the classical problems in airline operations research due to its crucial impact on the cost structure of an airline. Moreover, the complex crew regulations and the large scale of the resulting mathematical programming models have rendered it an academically interesting problem over decades. The CPP is a tactical problem, typically solved over a monthly planning horizon, with the objective of creating a set of crew pairings so that every ight in the schedule is covered, where a crew pairing refers to a sequence of ights operated by a single crew starting and ending at the same crew base. This paper discusses how an airline may hedge against a certain type of operational disruption by incorporating robustness into the pairings generated at the planning level. In particular, we address how a set of extra fights may be added into the fight schedule at the time of operation by modifying the pairings at hand and without delaying or canceling the existing fights in the schedule. We assume that the set of potential extra fights and their associated departure time windows areknown at the planning stage. We note that this study was partially motivated during our interactions with the smaller local airlines in Turkey which sometimes have to add extra fights to their schedule at short notice, e.g., charter fights. These airlines can typically estimate the potential time windows of the extra fights based on their past experiences, but prefer to ignore this information during planning since these flights may not need to be actually operated. Typically, these extra flights are then handled by recovery procedures at the time of operation which may lead to substantial deviations from the planned crew pairings and costs. The reader is referred to [3] for an in-depth discussion of the conceptual framework of this problem which we refer to as the Robust Crew Pairing for Managing Extra Flights (RCPEF). In [3], the authors introduce how an extra flight may be accommodated by modifying the existing pairings and introduce a set of integer programming models that provide natural recovery options without disrupting the existing flights. These recovery options are available at the planning stage and render operational recovery procedures that pertain to crew pairing unnecessar

Column generation approaches to a robust airline crew pairing model for managing extra flights

The airline crew pairing problem (CPP) is one of the classical problems in airline operations research due to its crucial impact on the cost structure of an airline. Moreover, the complex crew regulations and the large scale of the resulting mathematical programming models have rendered it an academically interesting problem over decades. The CPP is a tactical problem, typically solved over a monthly planning horizon, with the objective of creating a set of crew pairings so that every ight in the schedule is covered, where a crew pairing refers to a sequence of ights operated by a single crew starting and ending at the same crew base. This paper discusses how an airline may hedge against a certain type of operational disruption by incorporating robustness into the pairings generated at the planning level. In particular, we address how a set of extra fights may be added into the fight schedule at the time of operation by modifying the pairings at hand and without delaying or canceling the existing fights in the schedule. We assume that the set of potential extra fights and their associated departure time windows areknown at the planning stage. We note that this study was partially motivated during our interactions with the smaller local airlines in Turkey which sometimes have to add extra fights to their schedule at short notice, e.g., charter fights. These airlines can typically estimate the potential time windows of the extra fights based on their past experiences, but prefer to ignore this information during planning since these flights may not need to be actually operated. Typically, these extra flights are then handled by recovery procedures at the time of operation which may lead to substantial deviations from the planned crew pairings and costs. The reader is referred to [3] for an in-depth discussion of the conceptual framework of this problem which we refer to as the Robust Crew Pairing for Managing Extra Flights (RCPEF). In [3], the authors introduce how an extra flight may be accommodated by modifying the existing pairings and introduce a set of integer programming models that provide natural recovery options without disrupting the existing flights. These recovery options are available at the planning stage and render operational recovery procedures that pertain to crew pairing unnecessar