Adult-Child Sexual Contact: Examining Mental Health Trainees’ Perception of the Impact on Adult Psychological-Emotional Status

Thirty-eight graduate students enrolled in mental health-related programs completed the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) indicating anticipated impact of adult-child sexual contact on the psychological status of a young adult woman from positive family environment and one from a negative family environment. BSI subscale scores were significantly higher than the BSI general population’s mean scores in both cases. Multiple regression analyses found that: in the healthy family scenario, practitioners’ background variables (parent education, family of origin climate, prior childhood sexual contact with an adult, and education) did not contribute significantly to the variance in their prediction of expectation of client’s overall psychological distress; and, in the dysfunctional family case, practitioners’ background (childhood experience with adult sexual contact, education level, and professional experience) contributed to 40% of the variance in their prediction of the client’s emotional state. Results of qualitative analyses are presented, and implications for training and service delivery discussed

Learning temporal clusters using capsule routing for speech emotion recognition

Emotion recognition from speech plays a significant role in adding emotional intelligence to machines and making human-machine interaction more natural. One of the key challenges from machine learning standpoint is to extract patterns which bear maximum correlation with the emotion information encoded in this signal while being as insensitive as possible to other types of information carried by speech. In this paper, we propose a novel temporal modelling framework for robust emotion classification using bidirectional long short-term memory network (BLSTM), CNN and Capsule networks. The BLSTM deals with the temporal dynamics of the speech signal by effectively representing forward/backward contextual information while the CNN along with the dynamic routing of the Capsule net learn temporal clusters which altogether provide a state-of-the-art technique for classifying the extracted patterns. The proposed approach was compared with a wide range of architectures on the FAU-Aibo and RAVDESS corpora and remarkable gain over state-of-the-art systems were obtained. For FAO-Aibo and RAVDESS 77.6% and 56.2% accuracy was achieved, respectively, which is 3% and 14% (absolute) higher than the best-reported result for the respective tasks

Sample convection in liquid-state NMR: Why it is always with us, and what we can do about it

AbstractMany NMR experiments on liquids suffer if the sample convects. This is particularly true for applications, such as the measurement of diffusion, that rely on spatial labelling of spins. It is widely assumed that, in most well-conducted experiments with stable temperature regulation, samples do not convect. Unfortunately this is not the case. It is shown here that typical NMR samples show measurable convective flow for all but a very narrow range of temperatures; convection is seen both above and below this range, which can be as small as a degree or so for a mobile solvent such as chloroform. This convection is driven by both vertical and horizontal temperature gradients.Measurements of convection velocity are presented for a range of samples, sample tubes, probes, and temperatures. Both decreasing sample tube inner diameter and changing sample tube material from glass to sapphire can slow convection markedly, with sapphire tubes being particularly effective. Such tubes are likely to be particularly helpful for accurate measurement of diffusion by NMR

CCR7 is required for the in vivo function of CD4+ CD25+ regulatory T cells

CCR7-mediated migration of naive T cells into the secondary lymphoid organs is a prerequisite for their encounter with mature dendritic cells, the productive presentation of cognate antigen, and consequent T cell proliferation and effector differentiation. Therefore, CCR7 was suggested to play an important role in the initiation of adaptive immune responses. In this study, we show that primary immunity can also develop in the absence of CCR7. Moreover, CCR7-deficient knockout (KO) mice display augmented immune responses. Our data cumulatively suggest that enhanced immunity in CCR7 KO mice is caused by the defective lymph node (LN) positioning of FoxP3(+) CD4(+) CD25(+) regulatory T cells (T reg cells) and the consequent impediment of their function. The FoxP3(+) T reg cells express CCR7 and, after their adoptive transfer, migrate into the LNs of wild-type mice. Here, they proliferate in situ upon antigen stimulation and inhibit the generation of antigen-specific T cells. Conversely, transferred CCR7-deficient T reg cells fail to migrate into the LNs and suppress antigen-induced T cell responses. The transfer of combinations of naive and T reg cells from wild-type and CCR7 KO mice into syngeneic severe combined immunodeficient mice directly demonstrates that CCR7-deficient T reg cells are less effective than their wild-type counterparts in preventing the development of inflammatory bowel diseas

Experimental control of a cupola furnace

In this paper the authors present some final results from a research project focused on introducing automatic control to the operation of cupola iron furnaces. The main aim of this research is to improve the operational efficiency and performance of the cupola furnace, an important foundry process used to melt iron. Previous papers have described the development of appropriate control system architectures for the cupola. In this paper experimental data is used to calibrate the model, which is taken as a first-order multivariable system with time delay. Then relative gain analysis is used to select loop pairings to be used in a multiloop controller. The resulting controller pairs melt rate with blast volume, iron temperature with oxygen addition, and carbon composition with metal-to-coke ratio. Special (nonlinear) filters are used to compute melt rate from actual scale readings of the amount of iron produced and to smooth the temperature measurement. The temperature and melt rate loops use single-loop PI control. The composition loop uses a Smith predictor to discount the deadtime associated with mass transport through the furnace. Experiments conducted at the Department of Energy Albany Research Center`s experimental research cupola validate the conceptual controller design and provide proof-of-concept of the idea of controlling a foundry cupola

Quantum Corrections in Two-Dimensional Non-Supersymmetric Heterotic Strings

We study quantum corrections for a family of 24 non-supersymmetric heterotic strings in two dimensions. We compute their genus two cosmological constant using the hyperelliptic formalism and the genus one two-point functions for the massless states. From here we get the mass corrections to the states in the massless sector and discuss the role of the infrared divergences that appear in the computation. We also study some tree-level aspects of these theories and find that they are classified not only by the corresponding Niemeier lattice but also by their {\it hidden} right-moving gauge symmetry.Comment: Minor changes. The discussion on the infrared divergences has been expanded and typos have been corrected. Final version to be published in Nucl. Phys. B. 40 pages. LaTeX, epsf. 4 Postscript figures in uuencoded fil

Secondary Electron Yield Measurements of Fermilab's Main Injector Vacuum Vessel

We discuss the progress made on a new installation in Fermilab's Main Injector that will help investigate the electron cloud phenomenon by making direct measurements of the secondary electron yield (SEY) of samples irradiated in the accelerator. In the Project X upgrade the Main Injector will have its beam intensity increased by a factor of three compared to current operations. This may result in the beam being subject to instabilities from the electron cloud. Measured SEY values can be used to further constrain simulations and aid our extrapolation to Project X intensities. The SEY test-stand, developed in conjunction with Cornell and SLAC, is capable of measuring the SEY from samples using an incident electron beam when the samples are biased at different voltages. We present the design and manufacture of the test-stand and the results of initial laboratory tests on samples prior to installation.Comment: 3 pp. 3rd International Particle Accelerator Conference (IPAC 2012) 20-25 May 2012, New Orleans, Louisian

Dual Isomonodromic Deformations and Moment Maps to Loop Algebras

The Hamiltonian structure of the monodromy preserving deformation equations of Jimbo {\it et al } is explained in terms of parameter dependent pairs of moment maps from a symplectic vector space to the dual spaces of two different loop algebras. The nonautonomous Hamiltonian systems generating the deformations are obtained by pulling back spectral invariants on Poisson subspaces consisting of elements that are rational in the loop parameter and identifying the deformation parameters with those determining the moment maps. This construction is shown to lead to ``dual'' pairs of matrix differential operators whose monodromy is preserved under the same family of deformations. As illustrative examples, involving discrete and continuous reductions, a higher rank generalization of the Hamiltonian equations governing the correlation functions for an impenetrable Bose gas is obtained, as well as dual pairs of isomonodromy representations for the equations of the Painleve transcendents $P_{V}$ and $P_{VI}$.Comment: preprint CRM-1844 (1993), 28 pgs. (Corrected date and abstract.

Evaluation of the performance of a lateral flow device for quantitative detection of anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG

Introduction: The AbC-19™ lateral flow immunoassay (LFIA) performance was evaluated on plasma samples from a SARS-CoV-2 vaccination cohort, WHO international standards for anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG (human), individuals ≥2 weeks from infection of RT-PCR confirmed SARS-CoV-2 genetic variants, as well as microorganism serology. Methods: Pre-vaccination to three weeks post-booster samples were collected from a cohort of 111 patients (including clinically extremely vulnerable patients) from Northern Ireland. All patients received Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccination for the first and second dose, and Pfizer-BioNTech for the third (first booster). WHO international standards, 15 samples from 2 variants of concern (Delta and Omicron) and cross-reactivity with plasma samples from other microorganism infections were also assessed on AbC-19™. Results: All 80 (100%) participants sampled post-booster had high positive IgG responses, compared to 38/95 (40%) participants at 6 months post-first vaccination. WHO standard results correlated with information from corresponding biological data sheets, and antibodies to all genetic variants were detected by LFIA. No cross-reactivity was found with exception of one (of five) Dengue virus samples. Conclusion: These findings suggest BNT162b2 booster vaccination enhanced humoral immunity to SARS-CoV-2 from pre-booster levels, and that this antibody response was detectable by the LFIA. In combination with cross-reactivity, standards and genetic variant results would suggest LFIA may be a cost-effective measure to assess SARS-CoV-2 antibody status

Monitoring Handbook 6: Analyzing and interpreting monitoring data

The basic purpose of data analysis is to identify patterns of change in your indicator over time, and to evaluate these changes. Without doing some kind of analysis, it will be difficult for you to know the effect your project is actually having. The data analysis techniques presented in this handbook are not difficult. Most of them can be easily done using little more than a calculator and scratch paper. If necessary, there are resources listed in the handbook for additional assistance analyzing your data