School-based prevention for adolescent Internet addiction: prevention is the key. A systematic literature review

Adolescents’ media use represents a normative need for information, communication, recreation and functionality, yet problematic Internet use has increased. Given the arguably alarming prevalence rates worldwide and the increasingly problematic use of gaming and social media, the need for an integration of prevention efforts appears to be timely. The aim of this systematic literature review is (i) to identify school-based prevention programmes or protocols for Internet Addiction targeting adolescents within the school context and to examine the programmes’ effectiveness, and (ii) to highlight strengths, limitations, and best practices to inform the design of new initiatives, by capitalizing on these studies’ recommendations. The findings of the reviewed studies to date presented mixed outcomes and are in need of further empirical evidence. The current review identified the following needs to be addressed in future designs to: (i) define the clinical status of Internet Addiction more precisely, (ii) use more current psychometrically robust assessment tools for the measurement of effectiveness (based on the most recent empirical developments), (iii) reconsider the main outcome of Internet time reduction as it appears to be problematic, (iv) build methodologically sound evidence-based prevention programmes, (v) focus on skill enhancement and the use of protective and harm-reducing factors, and (vi) include IA as one of the risk behaviours in multi-risk behaviour interventions. These appear to be crucial factors in addressing future research designs and the formulation of new prevention initiatives. Validated findings could then inform promising strategies for IA and gaming prevention in public policy and education

The upgrade of the ALICE TPC with GEMs and continuous readout

The upgrade of the ALICE TPC will allow the experiment to cope with the high interaction rates foreseen for the forthcoming Run 3 and Run 4 at the CERN LHC. In this article, we describe the design of new readout chambers and front-end electronics, which are driven by the goals of the experiment. Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) detectors arranged in stacks containing four GEMs each, and continuous readout electronics based on the SAMPA chip, an ALICE development, are replacing the previous elements. The construction of these new elements, together with their associated quality control procedures, is explained in detail. Finally, the readout chamber and front-end electronics cards replacement, together with the commissioning of the detector prior to installation in the experimental cavern, are presented. After a nine-year period of R&D, construction, and assembly, the upgrade of the TPC was completed in 2020.publishedVersio

Medical Near-Infrared Imaging

Introduction The use of near-infrared light in functional medical imaging has gained increasing interest during recent years. Techniques using near-infrared light for imaging can be used to study, e.g., hemodynamic responses on the cortex. Brain activation measurements can be performed using, e.g., MEG or fMRI, which, however, require heavy instrumentation. In medical near-infrared imaging, the instrumentation can be made quite small in size and the costs can also be kept relatively low, which makes portable devices and the use of the technique for long-time monitoring possible. Due to no significant interference with biomagnetic measurements, the method can be combined with other modalities. Therefore, near-infrared imaging is an interesting alternative in performing or verifying brain activation measurements. In the following, we first describe the principal idea of medical near-infrared imaging and spectroscopy. We then outline the different measurement techniques and some aspect

A new framework for selecting environmental surrogates

Surrogate concepts are used in all sub-disciplines of environmental science. However, controversy remains regarding the extent to which surrogates are useful for resolving environmental problems. Here, we argue that conflicts about the utility of surrogates (and the related concepts of indicators and proxies) often reflect context-specific differences in trade-offs between measurement accuracy and practical constraints. By examining different approaches for selecting and applying surrogates, we identify five trade-offs that correspond to key points of contention in the application of surrogates. We then present an 8-step Adaptive Surrogacy Framework that incorporates cross-disciplinary perspectives from a wide spectrum of the environmental sciences, aiming to unify surrogate concepts across disciplines and applications. Our synthesis of the science of surrogates is intended as a first step towards fully leveraging knowledge accumulated across disciplines, thus consolidating lessons learned so that they may be accessible to all those operating in different fields, yet facing similar hurdles

School-based prevention for adolescent Internet addiction: prevention is the key. A systematic literature review

Adolescents’ media use represents a normative need for information, communication, recreation and functionality, yet problematic Internet use has increased. Given the arguably alarming prevalence rates worldwide and the increasingly problematic use of gaming and social media, the need for an integration of prevention efforts appears to be timely. The aim of this systematic literature review is (i) to identify school-based prevention programmes or protocols for Internet Addiction targeting adolescents within the school context and to examine the programmes’ effectiveness, and (ii) to highlight strengths, limitations, and best practices to inform the design of new initiatives, by capitalizing on these studies’ recommendations. The findings of the reviewed studies to date presented mixed outcomes and are in need of further empirical evidence. The current review identified the following needs to be addressed in future designs to: (i) define the clinical status of Internet Addiction more precisely, (ii) use more current psychometrically robust assessment tools for the measurement of effectiveness (based on the most recent empirical developments), (iii) reconsider the main outcome of Internet time reduction as it appears to be problematic, (iv) build methodologically sound evidence-based prevention programmes, (v) focus on skill enhancement and the use of protective and harm-reducing factors, and (vi) include IA as one of the risk behaviours in multi-risk behaviour interventions. These appear to be crucial factors in addressing future research designs and the formulation of new prevention initiatives. Validated findings could then inform promising strategies for IA and gaming prevention in public policy and education

Thermal transport in free-standing silicon membranes: influence of dimensional reduction and surface nanostructures

Nanostructuring provides a viable route to improve the thermoelectric performance of materials, even of those that in bulk form have very low figure of merit. This strategy would potentially enable the fabrication of thermoelectric devices based on silicon, the cheapest, most integrable and easiest to dope Earth-abundant semiconductor. A drastic reduction of the thermal conductivity, which would lead to a proportional enhancement of the figure of merit, was observed for silicon low-dimensional nanostructures, such as nanowires and ultra-thin membranes. Here we provide a detailed analysis of the phononic properties of the latter, and we show that dimensionality reduction alone is not sufficient to hinder heat transport to a great extent. In turn, the presence of surface roughness at the nanoscale reduces the thermal conductivity of sub-10 nm membranes up to 10 times with respect to bulk

Correction of the baseline fluctuations in the GEM-based ALICE TPC

To operate the ALICE Time Projection Chamber in continuous mode during the Run 3 and Run 4 data-taking periods of the Large Hadron Collider, the multi-wire proportional chamber-based readout was replaced with gas-electron multipliers. As expected, the detector performance is affected by the so-called common-mode effect, which leads to significant baseline fluctuations. A detailed study of the pulse shape with the new readout has revealed that it is also affected by ion tails. Since reconstruction and data compression are performed fully online, these effects must be corrected at the hardware level in the FPGA-based common readout units. The characteristics of the common-mode effect and of the ion tail, as well as the algorithms developed for their online correction, are described in this paper. The common-mode dependencies are studied using machine-learning techniques. Toy Monte Carlo simulations are performed to illustrate the importance of online corrections and to investigate the performance of the developed algorithms.To operate the ALICE Time Projection Chamber in continuous mode during the Run~3 and Run~4 data-taking periods of the Large Hadron Collider, the multi-wire proportional chamber-based readout was replaced with gas-electron multipliers. As expected, the detector performance is affected by the so-called common-mode effect, which leads to significant baseline fluctuations. A detailed study of the pulse shape with the new readout has revealed that it is also affected by ion tails. Since reconstruction and data compression are performed fully online, these effects must be corrected at the hardware level in the FPGA-based common readout units. The characteristics of the common-mode effect and of the ion tail, as well as the algorithms developed for their online correction, are described in this paper. The common-mode dependencies are studied using machine-learning techniques. Toy Monte Carlo simulations are performed to illustrate the importance of online corrections and to investigate the performance of the developed algorithms