A critical period for robust curriculum-based deep reinforcement learning of sequential action in robot arm

Action Contro

European principles of care for physiotherapy provision for persons with inherited bleeding disorders: Perspectives of physiotherapists and patients

Introduction: In their Chronic Care Model, the World Health Organisation states that people with chronic disorders and their families should be informed about the expected course, potential complications, and effective strategies to prevent complications and manage symptoms. Physiotherapists are a key professional group involved in the triage, assessment and management of musculoskeletal conditions of persons with a bleeding disorder (PWBD). Nevertheless, recent reports describe access to physiotherapy for those with these conditions is only sometimes available. Aim: Access to high quality individualised physiotherapy should be ensured for all PWBD, including those with mild and moderate severities, male and female, people with von Willebrand Disease (vWD) and other rare bleeding disorders. Physiotherapy should be viewed as a basic requisite in their multidisciplinary care. Methods/ results: Following a series of meetings with physiotherapists representing the European Association for Haemophilia and Allied Disorders (EAHAD) and PWBD representing the European Haemophilia Consortium (EHC) and a review of publications in the field, eight core principles of physiotherapy care for persons with a bleeding disorder have been co-produced by EAHAD and EHC. Conclusion: These eight principles outline optimum standards of practice in order to advocate personalised patient-centred care for physical health in which both prevention and interventions include shared decision making, and supported self-management

CC and CXC chemokine levels in children with meningococcal sepsis accurately predict mortality and disease severity

INTRODUCTION: Chemokines are a superfamily of small peptides involved in leukocyte chemotaxis and in the induction of cytokines in a wide range of infectious diseases. Little is known about their role in meningococcal sepsis in children and their relationship with disease severity and outcome. METHODS: Monocyte chemoattractant protein (MCP)-1, macrophage inflammatory protein (MIP) 1α, growth-related gene product (GRO)-α and interleukin (IL)-8 were measured in 58 children with meningococcal sepsis or septic shock on admission and 24 hours thereafter. Nine patients died. Serum chemokine levels of survivors and nonsurvivors were compared, and the chemokine levels were correlated with prognostic disease severity scores and various laboratory parameters. RESULTS: Extremely high levels of all chemokines were measured in the children's acute-phase sera. These levels were significantly higher in nonsurvivors compared with survivors and in patients with septic shock compared with patients with sepsis (P < 0.0001). The cutoff values of 65,407 pg/ml, 85,427 pg/ml and 460 pg/ml for monocyte chemoattractant protein, for IL-8 and for macrophage inflammatory protein 1α, respectively, all had 100% sensitivity and 94–98% specificity for nonsurvival. Chemokine levels correlated better with disease outcome and severity than tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α and correlated similarly to interleukin (IL)-6. In available samples 24 hours after admission, a dramatic decrease of chemokine levels was seen. CONCLUSION: Initial-phase serum levels of chemokines in patients with meningococcal sepsis can predict mortality and can correlate strongly with disease severity. Chemokines may play a key role in the pathophysiology of meningococcal disease and are potentially new targets for therapeutic approaches

Relation between dust and radio luminosity in optically selected early type galaxies

We have surveyed an optical/IR selected sample of nearby E/S0 galaxies with and without nuclear dust structures with the VLA at 3.6 cm to a sensitivity of 100 $\mu$Jy. We can construct a Radio Luminosity Function (RLF) of these galaxies to ~10^19 W/Hz and find that ~50% of these galaxies have AGNs at this level. The space density of these AGNs equals that of starburst galaxies at this luminosity. Several dust-free galaxies have low luminosity radio cores, and their RLF is not significantly less than that of the dusty galaxies.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in A&

Describing and measuring leadership within school teams by applying a social network perspective

Despite the growing number of studies that acknowledge a crucial role of distributed leadership within schools, limited knowledge exists on how to describe and measure this multi-faceted concept. In a social network study with 130 respondents, from 14 Dutch school teams carrying out collaborative innovation, we theoretically describe three core aspects of the social interaction process of distributed leadership: collective, dynamic, or relational. Furthermore, we empirically explore how to measure all these three aspects of distributed leadership from a social network perspective, whereas most research focuses on either collective or dynamic. Our findings indicate that three network measures (density, reciprocity, indegree centralization) form a coherent combination to measure distributed leadership in school teams in terms of collective, relational, and dynamic, respectively. Furthermore, based on the combination of measures we found differences in distributed leadership between school teams. Thus, adding the relational aspect in addition to the collective and dynamic aspects seems to be informative to measure distributed leadership. Our study motivates to take a social network perspective, instead of the mostly used aggregation approaches, to measure distributed leadership in school teams

The core fundamental plane of B2 radio galaxies

The photometric, structural and kinematical properties of the centers of elliptical galaxies, harbor important information of the formation history of the galaxies. In the case of non active elliptical galaxies these properties are linked in a way that surface brightness, break radius and velocity dispersion of the core lie on a fundamental plane similar to that found for their global properties. We construct the Core Fundamental Plane (CFP) for a sizeable sample of low redshift radio galaxies and compare it with that of non radio ellipticals. To pursue this aim we combine data obtained from high resolution HST images with medium resolution optical spectroscopy to derive the photometric and kinematic properties of ~40 low redshift radio galaxies. We find that the CFPs of radio galaxies is indistinguishable from that defined by non radio elliptical galaxies of similar luminosity. The characteristics of the CFP of radio galaxies are also consistent (same slope) with those of the Fundamental Plane (FP) derived from the global properties of radio (and non radio) elliptical galaxies. The similarity of CFP and FP for radio and non radio ellipticals suggests that the active phase of these galaxies has minimal effects for the structure of the galaxies.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic

Nectar formation and floral nectary anatomy of Anigozanthos flavidus: a combined magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy study

Metabolic processes underlying the formation of floral nectar carbohydrates, especially the generation of the proportions of fructose, glucose, and sucrose, are important for understanding ecological plant–pollinator interactions. The ratio of sucrose-derived hexoses, fructose and glucose, in the floral nectar of Anigozanthos flavidus (Haemodoraceae) was observed to be different from 1:1, which cannot be explained by the simple action of invertases. Various NMR techniques were used to investigate how such an unbalanced ratio of the two nectar hexoses can be formed. High-resolution 13C NMR spectroscopy in solution was used to determine the proportion of carbohydrates in vascular bundles of excised inflorescences fed with 13C-labelled carbohydrates. These experiments verified that feeding did not affect the metabolic processes involved in nectar formation. In vivo magnetic resonance imaging (e.g. cyclic J cross-polarization) was used to detect carbohydrates in vascular bundles and 1H spin echo imaging non-invasively displayed the architecture of tepal nectaries and showed how they are connected to the vascular bundles. A model of the carbohydrate metabolism involved in forming A. flavidus floral nectar was established. Sucrose from the vascular bundles is not directly secreted into the lumen of the nectary but, either before or after invertase-catalysed hydrolyses, taken up by nectary cells and cycled at least partly through glycolysis, gluconeogenesis, and the pentose phosphate pathway. Secretion of the two hexoses in the cytosolic proportion could elegantly explain the observed fructose:glucose ratio of the nectar

Leadership practices in collaborative innovation: A study among Dutch school principals

School principals and teachers are expected to continuously innovate their practices in changing school environments. These innovation processes can be shared more widely through collaboration between principals and teachers, i.e. collaborative innovation. In order to gain more insight into how school principals enact their leadership practices in leading collaborative innovation, we interviewed 22 school principals of primary, secondary and vocational education in the Netherlands. All participants have implemented the same collaborative innovation programme, aimed at enhancement of collaboration between teachers and school principals within schools, that has already been implemented by 900 Dutch schools. They were interviewed twice during the implementation year. Interview transcripts were analysed using an open coding strategy looking for leadership practices. Based on 11 leadership practices, we described two main leadership patterns: school principals enacting leadership practices as either a team player or as a facilitator. We conclude that our findings suggest a wider repertoire of leadership practices than is reported in previous studies. Future studies would need to address the generalisability of the practices and patterns as found in this specific context of collaborative innovation

The counterrotating core and the black hole mass of IC1459

The E3 giant elliptical galaxy IC1459 is the prototypical galaxy with a fast counterrotating stellar core. We obtained one HST/STIS long-slit spectrum along the major axis of this galaxy and CTIO spectra along five position angles. We present self-consistent three-integral axisymmetric models of the stellar kinematics, obtained with Schwarzschild's numerical orbit superposition method. We study the dynamics of the kinematically decoupled core (KDC) in IC1459 and we find it consists of stars that are well-separated from the rest of the galaxy in phase space. The stars in the KDC counterrotate in a disk on orbits that are close to circular. We estimate that the KDC mass is ~0.5% of the total galaxy mass or ~3*10^9 Msun. We estimate the central black hole mass M_BH of IC1459 independently from both its stellar and its gaseous kinematics. Some complications probably explain why we find rather discrepant BH masses with the different methods. The stellar kinematics suggest that M_BH = (2.6 +/- 1.1)*10^9 Msun (3 sigma error). The gas kinematics suggests that M_BH ~ 3.5*10^8 Msun if the gas is assumed to rotate at the circular velocity in a thin disk. If the observed velocity dispersion of the gas is assumed to be gravitational, then M_BH could be as high as ~1.0*10^9 Msun. These different estimates bracket the value M_BH = (1.1 +/- 0.3)*10^9 Msun predicted by the M_BH-sigma relation. It will be an important goal for future studies to assess the reliability of black hole mass determinations with either technique. This is essential if one wants to interpret the correlation between the BH mass and other global galaxy parameters (e.g. velocity dispersion) and in particular the scatter in these correlations (believed to be only ~0.3 dex). [Abridged]Comment: 51 pages, LaTeX with 19 PostScript figures. Revised version, with three new figures and data tables. To appear in The Astrophysical Journal, 578, 2002 October 2

Describing and measuring leadership within school teams by applying a social network perspective

Despite the growing number of studies that acknowledge a crucial role of distributed leadership within schools, limited knowledge exists on how to describe and measure this multi-faceted concept. In a social network study with 130 respondents, from 14 Dutch school teams carrying out collaborative innovation, we theoretically describe three core aspects of the social interaction process of distributed leadership: collective, dynamic, or relational. Furthermore, we empirically explore how to measure all these three aspects of distributed leadership from a social network perspective, whereas most research focuses on either collective or dynamic. Our findings indicate that three network measures (density, reciprocity, indegree centralization) form a coherent combination to measure distributed leadership in school teams in terms of collective, relational, and dynamic, respectively. Furthermore, based on the combination of measures we found differences in distributed leadership between school teams. Thus, adding the relational aspect in addition to the collective and dynamic aspects seems to be informative to measure distributed leadership. Our study motivates to take a social network perspective, instead of the mostly used aggregation approaches, to measure distributed leadership in school teams