Literature and Media

This book discusses the direction of changes in contemporary culture at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries in Poland on the example of mutual relationships between literature and the media, such as film, radio, TV and the Internet. The interdisciplinary approach adopted by the author combines literary and media studies with the perspectives of social communication, anthropology and sociology of culture. The book focuses on topics such as reconfiguration of culture, expansion of the media, situation of literature and the central place of audio-visual parallels (auteur film, TV series, PC games). The author notes that both literature and the media are situated between art and communication today and both share the meta-cultural role of natural languages

Turbulent mixing at a stable density interface : the variation of the buoyancy flux–gradient relation

Experiments conducted on mixing across a stable density interface in a turbulent Taylor–Couette flow show, for the first time, experimental evidence of an increase in mixing efficiency at large Richardson numbers. With increasing buoyancy gradient the buoyancy flux first passes a maximum, then decreases and at large values of the buoyancy gradient the flux increases again. Thus, the curve of buoyancy flux versus buoyancy gradient tends to be N-shaped (rather than simply bell shaped), a behaviour suggested by the model of Balmforth et al. (J. Fluid Mech. vol. 428, 1998, p. 349). The increase in mixing efficiency at large Richardson numbers is attributed to a scale separation of the eddies active in mixing at the interface; when the buoyancy gradient is large mean kinetic energy is injected at scales much smaller than the eddy size fixed by the gap width, thus decreasing the eddy turnover time. Observations show that there is no noticeable change in interface thickness when the mixing efficiency increases; it is the mixing mechanism that changes. The curves of buoyancy flux versus buoyancy gradient also show a large variability for identical experimental conditions. These variations occur at time scales one to two orders of magnitude larger than the eddy turnover time scale

Daktronics Sales Order Feedback System

For many years Daktronics, a small manufacturing company in Brookings South Dakota, used a paper-based system for tracking feedback related to the product installations. Due to growth of the enterprise and an emergence as a world leader in their line of manufacturing the existing feedback system became inadequate. An automated web-based system was designed and built to meet the needs of the growing firm. This paper covers the background of the company, the technologies used to build the new system, and the technological systems. The paper goes on to outline the objectives established for this new system, the actions taken to build the new system along with the challenges encountered and esolutions to those challenges. Finally the paper outlines possible future enhancements and adaptations to the new system

Die Bedeutung von Emotionsregulation für die Entstehung und Aufrechterhaltung der Depression

Nachweise für die Annahme, dass Kindheitstraumata mit der Entstehung und Wiederkehr von depressiven Störungen assoziiert sind (Chapman et al., 2004; Ferguson & Dacey, 1997; Nanni, Uher, & Danese, 2012), gibt es viele. Was hingegen noch nicht ausreichend erforscht ist, sind deren kausale Mechanismen. Bis heute hat keine Studie die allgemeine Emotionsregulation als mediierenden Mechanismus zwischen Kindheitstraumata und Depressionsschwere sowie Depressionspersistenz in einer klinischen Stichprobe untersucht. Darüber hinaus hat sich die Forschung in diesem Zusammenhang bislang nur auf die allgemeine Emotionsregulation oder auf einzelne dysfunktionale Emotionsregulationsstrategien (z.B. Grübeln) fokussiert. Eine Vielzahl an unterschiedlichen Emotionsregulationskompetenzen sind noch nicht berücksichtigt worden. Die Rückfallrate für Major Depression (engl. Major Depressive Disorder, MDD) ist sehr hoch (Vittengl, Clark, Dunn, & Jarrett, 2007; Westen & Morrison, 2001), weshalb ein dringender Bedarf besteht, potenzielle Faktoren zu identifizieren, welche die Wiederkehr von depressiven Symptomen verhindern und welche helfen, erzielte Behandlungserfolge aufrechtzuerhalten. Prospektive Studien haben gezeigt, dass es mithilfe von Emotionsregulation möglich ist, depressive Symptome vorherzusagen (Berking, Wirtz, Svaldi, & Hofmann, 2014; Radkovsky, McArdle, Bockting, & Berking, 2014; Wang et al., 2014). Unklar ist hingegen, ob Emotionsregulation nach erfolgter Psychotherapie wegen Depression ein Prädiktor für nachfolgende depressive Symptome bleibt. Des Weiteren gibt es noch keine Studien, die untersuchen, ob Emotionsregulation die Zeit bis zu einem Depressionsrückfall bei Remittierten nach Psychotherapie vorhersagt. Es gibt bislang keine Forschungsergebnisse bezüglich der potenziell unterschiedlichen Relevanz einer Vielzahl von spezifischen Emotionsregulationskompetenzen für die Vorhersage von depressiven Symptomen und für die Vorhersage der Zeit bis zu einem Depressionsrückfall nach einer Behandlung. Ziel vorliegender Dissertation ist der Nachweis, dass allgemeine adaptive Emotionsregulation eine entscheidende Rolle für die Entstehung und Aufrechterhaltung der Depression spielt. Ein weiterer Schwerpunkt liegt bei der Relevanz spezifischer adaptiver Emotionsregulationskompetenzen. In einer längsschnittlichen Studie untersuchten wir die Hypothese adaptiver Emotionsregulation als Prädiktor depressiver Symptome bis zu einem Jahr nach stationärer MDD-Behandlung (Studie 1). Effektivere allgemeine Emotionsregulation sagte nur unter den Therapie-Respondern weniger depressive Symptome drei Monate, jedoch nicht zwölf Monate nach der Behandlung vorher. Die effektive Emotionsregulationskompetenz Konfrontationsbereitschaft sagte weniger depressive Symptome zwölf Monate und die Emotionsregulationskompetenz Akzeptanz weniger depressive Symptome sowohl drei als auch zwölf Monate nach der Behandlung vorher. In einer querschnittlichen Studie untersuchten wir die Hypothese von Emotionsregulation als Mediator des Effekts von Kindheitstraumata auf die Depressionsschwere sowie auf die Depressionspersistenz bei stationär behandelten Personen mit MDD (Studie 2). Die allgemeine Emotionsregulation sowie die Emotionsregulationskompetenz Konfrontationsbereitschaft erwiesen sich als partielle Mediatoren des Zusammenhangs zwischen Kindheitstraumata und späterer Depressionsschwere sowie bisheriger Depressionspersistenz. In einer längsschnittlichen Studie untersuchten wir den prospektiven Zusammenhang zwischen adaptiver Emotionsregulation und der Zeit bis zu einem Rückfall in die MDD nach erfolgreicher stationärer Behandlung (Studie 3). Die effektivere allgemeine Emotionsregulation sowie die effektiveren spezifischen Emotionsregulationskompetenzen emotionale Akzeptanz und Toleranz, mitfühlende Selbstunterstützung, zielbezogene Konfrontationsbereitschaft mit belastenden Situationen sowie die Fähigkeit zur Modifikation negativer Affekte sagten eine längere Zeit bis zu einem MDD-Rückfall vorher. Zukünftige Untersuchungen wie beispielsweise randomisierte, kontrollierte Studien werden zeigen müssen, inwieweit gezielte Interventionen zur Verbesserung der Emotionsregulation bei ehemals depressiven sowie missbrauchten Personen zu einer Verringerung des nachfolgenden Depressionsrisikos beitragen können. Des Weiteren müssten zukünftige Studien zeigen, inwieweit gezielte Interventionen zur Verbesserung der Emotionsregulation bei ehemals Depressiven zu einem Schutz vor Rückfällen in die Depression beitragen können

Top-down versus bottom-up attention differentially modulate frontal-parietal connectivity

The moment‐to‐moment focus of our mind's eye results from a complex interplay of voluntary and involuntary influences on attention. Previous neuroimaging studies suggest that the brain networks of voluntary versus involuntary attention can be segregated into a frontal‐versus‐parietal or a dorsal‐versus‐ventral partition—although recent work suggests that the dorsal network may be involved in both bottom‐up and top‐down attention. Research with nonhuman primates has provided evidence that a key distinction between top‐down and bottom‐up attention may be the direction of connectivity between frontal and parietal areas. Whereas typical fMRI connectivity analyses cannot disambiguate the direction of connections, dynamic causal modeling (DCM) can model directionality. Using DCM, we provide new evidence that directed connections within the dorsal attention network are differentially modulated for voluntary versus involuntary attention. These results suggest that the intraparietal sulcus exerts a baseline inhibitory effect on the frontal eye fields that is strengthened during exogenous orienting and attenuated during endogenous orienting. Furthermore, the attenuation from endogenous attention occurs even with salient peripheral cues when those cues are known to be counter predictive. Thus, directed connectivity between frontal and parietal regions of the dorsal attention network is highly influenced by the type of attention that is engaged

Magnocellular and parvocellular influences on reflexive attention

AbstractPrevious studies have provided conflicting evidence regarding whether the magnocellular (M) or parvocellular (P) visual pathway is primarily responsible for triggering involuntary orienting. Here, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to provide new evidence that both the M and P pathways can trigger attentional capture and bias visual processing at multiple levels. Specifically, cued-location targets elicited enhanced activity, relative to uncued-location targets, at both early sensory processing levels (indexed by the P1 component) and later higher-order processing stages (as indexed by the P300 component). Furthermore, the present results show these effects of attentional capture were not contingent on the feature congruency between the cue and expected target, providing evidence that this biasing of visual processing was not dependant on top-down expectations or within-pathway priming

Near-field flow structure of a confined wall jet on flat and concave rough walls

Experimental results are presented of the mean flow and turbulence characteristics in the near field of a plane wall jet issuing from a nozzle onto flat and concave walls consisting of fixed sand beds. This is a flow configuration of interest for sediment erosion, also referred to as scouring. The measurements were made with an acoustic profiler that gives access to the three components of the instantaneous velocities. For the flat-wall flow, it is shown that the outer-layer spatial growth rate and the maxima of the Reynolds stresses approach the values accepted for the far field of a wall jet at a downstream distance x/b0 ≈ 8. These maxima are only about half the values of a plane free jet. This reduction in Reynolds stresses is also observed in the shear-layer region, x/b0 11, the maximum Reynolds shear stress approaches the value of a plane free jet. This change in Reynolds stresses is related to the mean vertical velocity that is negative for x/b0 < 8 and positive further downstream. The evolution of the inner region of the wall jet is found to be in good agreement with a previous model that explicitly includes the roughness length. On the concave wall, the mean flow and the Reynolds stresses are drastically changed by the adverse pressure gradient and especially by the development of Görtler vortices. On the downslope side of the scour hole, the flow is nearly separating with the wall shear stress tending to zero, whereas on the upslope side, the wall-friction coefficient is increased by a factor of about two by Görtler vortices. These vortices extend well into the outer layer and, just above the wall, cause a substantial increase in Reynolds shear stres

Investigating Gαs Pepducin’s Effect on β2AR Signaling for CHF Pharmacology

Introduction: Congestive heart failure affects nearly six million Americans and significantly impairs their quality of life. New and better interventions are needed to improve HF patients’ survival and outcomes. Pharmacologics that bias β2AR signaling towards arrestin, which promotes cardiomyocyte survival and contractility, may offer advantages over traditional β-blockers. Objective: It has been demonstrated that peptides mimicking the C-terminus of the Gαs subunit block downstream signaling of GPCRs. The study’s objective is to determine if a pepducin derived from the C-terminus of the Gαs subunit of the β2AR could block Gs signaling but maintain arrestin-recruitment, thereby producing a cardioprotective phenotype. Methods: We used inverse PCR and bacterial transformation to design the peptide. We transfected Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells with the pepducin and used FACS and Glosensor assays to measure the concentration of cAMP in various cells. Results: Results showed no inhibition of Gs signaling. Therefore, arrestin-recruitment was not tested. Discussion: Previous researchers have demonstrated the results we failed to show, therefore we have reason to believe the peptide failed to inhibit Gs signaling because it is too small or too unstable. We are abandoning this line of research and will be continuing to approach the project’s objective from new angles