Lithium-induced EEG changes in patients with affective disorders

In 12 patients with affective disorders (ICD-10: F31, F32, F33), EEGs were recorded before and after 4.4 months of lithium treatment. Effects of lithium on the EEG were analyzed by power spectral analysis controlled for vigilance. We found (1) an increase in relative power in both delta and theta band which was related to the lithium plasma level, (2) a decrease in relative alpha power especially at occipital leads and (3) a reduction of the dominant alpha frequency. The changes in relative power were more pronounced in the right hemisphere, which is in contrast to the hypothesis of a site-specific localization of lithium effects only in left anterior regions. Copyright (C) 2000 S. Karger AG,Basel

Periodic motor impairments in a case of 48-hour bipolar ultrarapid cycling before and under treatment with valproate

Motor impairments of psychiatric patients can be assessed with digital recordings of handwriting tasks. The investigation of patients with bipolar affective disorders differentiates intraindividual changes related to the patient's fluctuating affective states. An unmedicated 67-year-old male with 48-hour bipolar ultrarapid cycling was investigated during 8 consecutive days of ultrarapid cycling and 4 weeks later, after remission under treatment with valproate. The handwriting skills of the patient followed the same rhythmic changes of the psychopathology in the first part of the study and a steady pattern in the second phase, after remission. Therefore, it can be assumed that the handwriting skills reflect a state marker of the disease. Poorer handwriting skills on the manic days, as compared to the depressive ones, support the hypothesis of a low arousal in manic patients. Copyright (C) 2000 S. Karger AG, Basel

Distribution of decision power in matrix organizations: A qualitative survey

Matrix organizations were successfully pioneered in the U.S. aerospace industry in the 1960s, which motivated many multinational corporations (MNCs) to implement matrices as a response to a more complex business environment. A vast number of research studies were conducted primarily seeking a single relationship between the strategy and the structure of the MNCs. The approach was mainly quantitative and consisted of studying large samples of MNCs that operated in different industries and countries. Since the late 1980s researchers have lost interest in matrix organizations of MNCs despite the fact that today most MNCs use a matrix organization. This thesis proposes to breach gaps of the present literature and addresses the questions of ‘how’ and ‘why’ German technology MNCs distribute the decision power between headquarters and local subsidiaries. The present study follows a qualitative approach. 31 semi‐structured interviews were conducted with experienced managers in order to gain deep understanding of the challenges faced and to reveal recommendations and conclusions with regard to the ideal fit between strategy and structure. As conclusion the thesis suggests the following six answers to the research questions. First this thesis shows that contemporary MNCs employ various kinds of matrix organizations simultaneously in different parts of the organization because matrices offer a flexible and effective way of concurrently balancing various competing interests. Management and staff are better prepared to mitigate the ambiguity and stress caused by matrix organizations. Both conditions were viewed as primary weaknesses of matrix organizations since its appearance in the 1960s. Second there is no permanent and universally applicable point of decision power distribution, but rather a constantly changing continuum. Decision power depends on many factors such as maturity of the product, capabilities of the local subsidiary, the national historic heritage of the MNC and the general market environment. There is always a matrix and all matrix dimensions are important because of legal, tax and national regulations or because of customers’ requests. Third this study reveals that the distribution of power is primarily applied to decisions regarding financial investments, human resources and customer strategy. These elements represent the three most important stakeholders of MNCs namely shareholders, employees and customers. The fourth assertion of this thesis suggests that MNCs implement the strategy‐structure fit primarily in the matrix dimensions products, regions and customers. This is because these matrix dimensions can be run and measured with an own Profit & Loss (P&L) statement and therefore treated as quasi-independent companies within the MNCs

ORCA-SPOT: An Automatic Killer Whale Sound Detection Toolkit Using Deep Learning

Large bioacoustic archives of wild animals are an important source to identify reappearing communication patterns, which can then be related to recurring behavioral patterns to advance the current understanding of intra-specific communication of non-human animals. A main challenge remains that most large-scale bioacoustic archives contain only a small percentage of animal vocalizations and a large amount of environmental noise, which makes it extremely difficult to manually retrieve sufficient vocalizations for further analysis – particularly important for species with advanced social systems and complex vocalizations. In this study deep neural networks were trained on 11,509 killer whale (Orcinus orca) signals and 34,848 noise segments. The resulting toolkit ORCA-SPOT was tested on a large-scale bioacoustic repository – the Orchive – comprising roughly 19,000 hours of killer whale underwater recordings. An automated segmentation of the entire Orchive recordings (about 2.2 years) took approximately 8 days. It achieved a time-based precision or positive-predictive-value (PPV) of 93.2% and an area-under-the-curve (AUC) of 0.9523. This approach enables an automated annotation procedure of large bioacoustics databases to extract killer whale sounds, which are essential for subsequent identification of significant communication patterns. The code will be publicly available in October 2019 to support the application of deep learning to bioaoucstic research. ORCA-SPOT can be adapted to other animal species

Detecting and analysing geomorphological structures in images of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko using Fourier transform

We present a method for automatised detection and analysis of quasi-periodic lineament structures from images at pixel-precision. The method exploits properties of the images' frequency domain found by using the Fourier transform. We developed this method with the goal of detecting lineament structures in an image of the Hathor cliff of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which are caused by layerings and furrows in the nucleus material. Using our method, we determined the orientation and wavelength-range of these structures. The detected layering edges have similar orientations, spatial separations of 9-20 m, and are ubiquitous throughout the image. We suggest that the layerings are a global feature of the comet nucleus that provide information about formation and evolution of comet 67P. The furrows are non-uniformly distributed throughout the image. Their orientation is broadly parallel to the direction of the local gravity vector at the Hathor cliff, with spacings similar to that of the layering structures. The furrows are interpreted as signatures of local down-slope movement of cliff material. We demonstrate that the developed method is broadly applicable to the detection and analysis of various kinds of quasi-periodic structures like geological layering, folding and faulting, and texture analysis in general. In order to facilitate the application of our method, this paper is accompanied by a demo program written in Matlab

ТЕХНОГЕННІ РОДОВИЩА ТА ЇХ КЛАСИФІКАЦІЯ

На багатьох гірничодобувних підприємствах тих, що забезпечують мінера-льною сировиною чорну і кольорову металургію України та країн СНД, виник-ла проблема з розвіданими запасами. Резерв запасів багатьох видів корисних копалини на експлуатованих родовищах недостатній для забезпечення повної проектної потужності. Стан сировинних баз багатьох найважливіших гірничо-добувних регіонів і підприємств, що діють, різко погіршав у зв'язку з висна-женням запасів, зниженням їх якісних і економічних характеристик ускладнен-ням умов відробітку в результаті тривалої і інтенсивної експлуатації раніше освоєних родовищ. Основною причиною ситуації, що створилася, можна назва-ти зниження фінансування геологорозвідувальних робіт для освоєння нових ро-довищ необхідної мінеральної сировини