Why a Particle Physicist is Interested in DNA Branch Migration

We describe an explicitly discrete model of the process of DNA branch migration. The model matches the existing data well, but we find that branch migration along long strands of DNA (N \simge 40~bp) is also well modeled by continuum diffusion. The discrete model is still useful for guiding future experiments.Comment: Talk presented at LATTICE96(theoretical developments); 3 pages, TeXsis w/ LAT96.txs (available from ftp://lifshitz.ph.utexas.edu/texsis/styles/LAT96.txs and will be a part of the next Elsevier.txs) and TXSdcol.te

Patterns of Treatment for Psychiatric Disorders Among Children and Adolesecents in Mississippi Medicaid

The nature of services for psychiatric disorders in public health systems has been understudied, particularly with regard to frequency, duration, and costs. The current study examines patterns of service reception and costs among Medicaid-covered youth newly diagnosed with anxiety, depression, or behavioral disturbance in a large data set of provider billing claims submitted between 2015–2016. Eligibility criteria included: 1) identification of an initial diagnosis of a single anxiety, unipolar mood, or specific behavioral disorder; 2) continuous Medicaid eligibility over the duration of the time period studied; and 3) under 18 years of age on the date of initial psychiatric diagnosis. The final cohort included 7,627 cases with a mean age of 10.65 (±4.36), of which 58.04% were male, 57.09% were Black, 38.97% were White, and 3.95% were of other ethnicities. Data indicated that 65.94% of the cohort received at least some follow-up services within a median 18 days of diagnosis. Of those, 54.27% received a combination of medical and psychosocial services, 32.01% received medical services only, and 13.72% received psychosocial services only. Overall median costs for direct treatment were $576.69, with wide discrepancies between the lowest (anxiety =$308.41) and highest (behavioral disturbance = $653.59) diagnostic categories. Across all categories the frequency and duration of psychosocial services were much lower than would be expected in comparison to data from a well-known effectiveness trial. Overall, follow-up to psychiatric diagnosis could be characterized as highly variable, underutilized, and emphasizing biomedical treatment. Understanding more about these patterns may facilitate systematic improvements and greater cost efficiency in the future

The Units of Investigation in the Social Sciences

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Correction of Optical Aberrations in Elliptic Neutron Guides

Modern, nonlinear ballistic neutron guides are an attractive concept in neutron beam delivery and instrumentation, because they offer increased performance over straight or linearly tapered guides. However, like other ballistic geometries they have the potential to create significantly non-trivial instrumental resolution functions. We address the source of the most prominent optical aberration, namely coma, and we show that for extended sources the off-axis rays have a different focal length from on-axis rays, leading to multiple reflections in the guide system. We illustrate how the interplay between coma, sources of finite size, and mirrors with non-perfect reflectivity can therefore conspire to produce uneven distributions in the neutron beam divergence, the source of complicated resolution functions. To solve these problems, we propose a hybrid elliptic-parabolic guide geometry. Using this new kind of neutron guide shape, it is possible to condition the neutron beam and remove almost all of the aberrations, whilst providing the same performance in beam current as a standard elliptic neutron guide. We highlight the positive implications for a number of neutron scattering instrument types that this new shape can bring.Comment: Presented at NOP2010 Conference in Alpe d'Huez, France, in March 201

A Trip to the Moon: Personalized Animated Movies for Self-reflection

Self-tracking physiological and psychological data poses the challenge of presentation and interpretation. Insightful narratives for self-tracking data can motivate the user towards constructive self-reflection. One powerful form of narrative that engages audience across various culture and age groups is animated movies. We collected a week of self-reported mood and behavior data from each user and created in Unity a personalized animation based on their data. We evaluated the impact of their video in a randomized control trial with a non-personalized animated video as control. We found that personalized videos tend to be more emotionally engaging, encouraging greater and lengthier writing that indicated self-reflection about moods and behaviors, compared to non-personalized control videos

Reaching the Unreachable: A Method for Early Stage Software Startups to Reach Inaccessible Stakeholders within Large Corporations

Bridging the gap in software development from idea to need remains a difficult task for startups, especially when users are unreachable within the black boxes of large corporations. The lack of customer collaboration results in the failure of requirements elicitation and subsequently the failure of software products. In this work, we describe a simple but effective method to enable startups to reach relevant hidden stakeholders within large corporations and elicit requirements from them. AdvisorNet leverages professional networks and social media to find senior domain experts. These carefully selected advisors bridge the gap from the outside world to the hidden corporate structure and social networks in the target corporation and enable highly successful elicitation from stakeholders. We demonstrate AdvisorNet with a real-world case study in which a London-based startup successfully connected with multiple advisors who then introduced previously unreachable users for requirements elicitation and decision-makers to achieve their goal of trialing their product within the large corporations. Finally, we provide suggestions for future research to formalize the method further and enable it to become rigorous and repeatable

Give Them Some Slack - They\u27re Trying to Change! The Benefits of Excess Cash, Excess Employees, and Increased Human Capital in the Context of Strategic Change

[Excerpt] Human resource strategists perennially struggle with the issue of staffing levels, especially the difficult task of determining the number of people required to meet their units’ business goals. Should they go “lean and mean”, as the saying goes, or is it better to overstaff a bit – to build a little slack in the system? Theory suggests that the answer to this question is “it depends”. Units experiencing periods of stability with little change are advised to opt for the former approach in the interest of enhancing operational efficiency and minimizing labor costs. Those undergoing strategic change, however, would do better to build in some HR slack to allow for the allocation of talent to the exploration and early staffing of new initiatives without detracting from current operations. This notion of contingency has some empirical support with respect to financial slack, but to date there is no comparable research on HR slack. The study reported here fills this gap, while taking the additional step of exploring whether HR slack and financial slack have complementary effects on firm performance (see Figure 1 on page 2). Initially, the study examined whether the role of HR slack differed in firms that were and were not undergoing strategic change. Second, the analysis focused specifically on firms undergoing strategic transitions and explored two questions: (1) To what extent did the existence of financial slack affect the relationship between HR slack and firm performance? And (2) to what extent did it matter whether or not firms chose to allocate a significant portion of their financial slack to developing their human capital? To help answer these questions, the study relied on data provided by the Federal Deposit Insurance Company (FDIC) pertaining to 6,606 commercial banks covering a 12-year period between 2002 and 2014

Expectancies, working alliance, and outcome in transdiagnostic and single diagnosis treatment for anxiety disorders: an investigation of mediation

Patients’ outcome expectancies and the working alliance are two psychotherapy process variables that researchers have found to be associated with treatment outcome, irrespective of treatment approach and problem area. Despite this, little is known about the mechanisms accounting for this association, and whether contextual factors (e.g., psychotherapy type) impact the strength of these relationships. The primary aim of this study was to examine whether patient-rated working alliance quality mediates the relationship between outcome expectancies and pre- to post-treatment change in anxiety symptoms using data from a recent randomized clinical trial comparing a transdiagnostic treatment (the Unified Protocol [UP]; Barlow et al., Unified protocol for transdiagnostic treatment of emotional disorders: Client workbook, Oxford University Press, New York, 2011a; Barlow et al., Unified protocol for transdiagnostic treatment of emotional disorders: Patient workbook. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017b) to single diagnosis protocols (SDPs) for patients with a principal heterogeneous anxiety disorder (n = 179). The second aim was to explore whether cognitive-behavioral treatment condition (UP vs. SDP) moderated this indirect relationship. Results from mediation and moderated mediation models indicated that, when collapsing across the two treatment conditions, the relationship between expectancies and outcome was partially mediated by the working alliance [B = 0.037, SE = 0.05, 95% CI (.005, 0.096)]. Interestingly, within-condition analyses showed that this conditional indirect effect was only present for SDP patients, whereas in the UP condition, working alliance did not account for the association between expectancies and outcome. These findings suggest that outcome expectancies and working alliance quality may interact to influence treatment outcomes, and that the nature and strength of the relationships among these constructs may differ as a function of the specific cognitive-behavioral treatment approach utilized.This study was funded by grant R01 MH090053 from the National Institutes of Health. (R01 MH090053 - National Institutes of Health)First author draf

A Rare Presentation of Orthostatic Tremor as Abdominal Tremor

Background: Orthostatic tremor (OT) is a weight-bearing hyperkinetic disorder characterized by unsteadiness while standing that is relieved when sitting or walking. Case report: A 66-year-old male presented with a 5 year-history of tremor in his abdomen, but only when he stood in a stationary position. The tremor disappeared when he stood or walked. On examination, he had palpable tremor in his rectus abdominis and gastrocnemius virtually instantaneously after standing. His electromyography findings confirmed the presence of a 12-Hz tremor in the tibialis anterior while standing, with subharmonics recorded in the external obliques and rectus abdominis. Discussion: Our case illustrates an unusual presentation of OT. The diagnosis is supported by its characteristic frequency and specific appearance only during upright stance

A Synoptic Climatology of Derecho Producing Mesoscale Convective Systems in the North-Central Plains

Synoptic-scale environments favourable for producing derechos, or widespread convectively induced windstorms, in the North-Central Plains are examined with the goal of providing pattern-recognition:diagnosis techniques. Fifteen derechos were identified across the North-Central Plains region during 1986–1995. The synoptic environment at the initiation, mid-point and decay of each derecho was then evaluated using surface, upper-air and National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR):National Center for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) reanalysis datasets. Results suggest that the synoptic environment is critical in maintaining derecho producing mesoscale convective systems (DMCSs). The synoptic environment in place downstream of the MCS initiation region determines the movement and potential strength of the system. Circulation around surface low pressure increased the instability gradient and maximized leading edge convergence in the initiation region of nearly all events regardless of DMCS location or movement. Other commonalities in the environments of these events include the presence of a weak thermal boundary, high convective instability and a layer of dry low-to-mid-tropospheric air. Of the two corridors sampled, northeastward moving derechos tend to initiate east of synoptic-scale troughs, while southeastward moving derechos form on the northeast periphery of a synoptic-scale ridge. Other differences between these two DMCS events are also discussed