Operating-system support for distributed multimedia

Multimedia applications place new demands upon processors, networks and operating systems. While some network designers, through ATM for example, have considered revolutionary approaches to supporting multimedia, the same cannot be said for operating systems designers. Most work is evolutionary in nature, attempting to identify additional features that can be added to existing systems to support multimedia. Here we describe the Pegasus project's attempt to build an integrated hardware and operating system environment from\ud the ground up specifically targeted towards multimedia

Test of BPA\u27s estrogenic effects on brain aromatase expression, neural activity, and locomotive behavior in zebrafish larvae

Bisphenol A (BPA) is a well-known endocrine disrupting chemical that mimics the effects of estrogens. Aromatase B (Cyp19a1b) is a brain-specific enzyme that converts testosterone to estrogen and is highly upregulated in response to estrogen receptor activation localized to radial glial cells. During embryonic zebrafish development, there is a small window of time denoted by an increase in neurogenesis and estrogen receptor activity. Previous studies have demonstrated that a low dose BPA exposure (0.1µM) during this window causes hyperlocomotion in larval zebrafish, yet no further explanation for this behavior change has been described. The purpose of this study was to identify whether (0.1µM) BPA exposure during this developmental window could be influencing Ca2+ dynamics, and if this correlated to swim activity changes. Two transgenic zebrafish lines, Cyp19a1b:GFP and Elavl3:GCaMP, were used in order to measure changes caused by BPA exposure. Confocal microscopy imaging techniques quantified Cyp19a1b expression in radial glia and dynamic GCaMP expression in neurons over time but did not find significant effects between BPA-treated and control-treated groups for either measurement. Furthermore, swim activity tests failed to replicate the difference in time spent swimming between BPA and control groups

Alien Registration- Mcauley, Hugh J. (Portland, Cumberland County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/21303/thumbnail.jp

Failure to apply signal detection theory to the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia may misdiagnose amusia

This article considers a signal detection theory (SDT) approach to evaluation of performance on the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia (MBEA). One hundred fifty-five individuals completed the original binary response version of the MBEA (n = 62) or a confidence rating version (MBEA-C; n = 93). Confidence ratings afforded construction of empirical receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curves and derivation of bias-free performance measures against which we compared the standard performance metric, proportion correct (PC), and an alternative signal detection metric, d ′. Across the board, PC was tainted by response bias and underestimated performance as indexed by Az , a nonparametric ROC-based performance measure. Signal detection analyses further revealed that some individuals performing worse than the standard PC-based cutoff for amusia diagnosis showed large response biases. Given that PC is contaminated by response bias, this suggests the possibility that categorizing individuals as having amusia or not, using a PC-based cutoff, may inadvertently misclassify some individuals with normal perceptual sensitivity as amusic simply because they have large response biases. In line with this possibility, a comparison of amusia classification using d ′- and PC-based cutoffs showed potential misclassification of 33% of the examined cases

Interventions for treating pain and disability in adults with complex regional pain syndrome - An overview of systematic reviews

This article is available open access through the publisher’s website at the link below. Copyright © 2013 The Cochrane Collaboration.Background - There is currently no strong consensus regarding the optimal management of complex regional pain syndrome although a multitude of interventions have been described and are commonly used. Objectives - To summarise the evidence from Cochrane and non-Cochrane systematic reviews of the effectiveness of any therapeutic intervention used to reduce pain, disability or both in adults with complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS). Methods - We identified Cochrane reviews and non-Cochrane reviews through a systematic search of the following databases: Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects (DARE), Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid EMBASE, CINAHL, LILACS and PEDro. We included non-Cochrane systematic reviews where they contained evidence not covered by identified Cochrane reviews. The methodological quality of reviews was assessed using the AMSTAR tool. We extracted data for the primary outcomes pain, disability and adverse events, and the secondary outcomes of quality of life, emotional well being and participants' ratings of satisfaction or improvement. Only evidence arising from randomised controlled trials was considered. We used the GRADE system to assess the quality of evidence. Main results - We included six Cochrane reviews and 13 non-Cochrane systematic reviews. Cochrane reviews demonstrated better methodological quality than non-Cochrane reviews. Trials were typically small and the quality variable. There is moderate quality evidence that intravenous regional blockade with guanethidine is not effective in CRPS and that the procedure appears to be associated with the risk of significant adverse events. There is low quality evidence that bisphosphonates, calcitonin or a daily course of intravenous ketamine may be effective for pain when compared with placebo; graded motor imagery may be effective for pain and function when compared with usual care; and that mirror therapy may be effective for pain in post-stroke CRPS compared with a 'covered mirror' control. This evidence should be interpreted with caution. There is low quality evidence that local anaesthetic sympathetic blockade is not effective. Low quality evidence suggests that physiotherapy or occupational therapy are associated with small positive effects that are unlikely to be clinically important at one year follow up when compared with a social work passive attention control. For a wide range of other interventions, there is either no evidence or very low quality evidence available from which no conclusions should be drawn. Authors' conclusions - There is a critical lack of high quality evidence for the effectiveness of most therapies for CRPS. Until further larger trials are undertaken, formulating an evidence-based approach to managing CRPS will remain difficult

The rich-club phenomenon across complex network hierarchies

The so-called rich-club phenomenon in a complex network is characterized when nodes of higher degree (hubs) are better connected among themselves than are nodes with smaller degree. The presence of the rich-club phenomenon may be an indicator of several interesting high-level network properties, such as tolerance to hub failures. Here we investigate the existence of the rich-club phenomenon across the hierarchical degrees of a number of real-world networks. Our simulations reveal that the phenomenon may appear in some hierarchies but not in others and, moreover, that it may appear and disappear as we move across hierarchies. This reveals the interesting possibility of non-monotonic behavior of the phenomenon; the possible implications of our findings are discussed.Comment: 4 page