Multifamily group treatment for veterans with traumatic brain injury.

A common clinical problem encountered by clinicians treating veterans who incurred traumatic brain injury (TBI) while serving in Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) or in Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) is lack of knowledge about TBI on the part of the veterans' family members. Insufficient information can exacerbate marital or family conflict and lead to psychological distress and social isolation for the veteran and family, and suboptimal illness management for the veteran. To address this problem, we adapted Multifamily Group Treatment (MFGT), an evidence-based practice for treatment of serious mental illness (SMI), for treatment of OEF/OIF veterans with TBI and their families. We have implemented the adapted treatment (MFG-TBI) in four groups of veterans and families (N = 20 veterans and 20 family members) across two sites: the Durham VA Medical Center (VAMC) in North Carolina and the JJ Peters VAMC in the Bronx, New York. Adaptations focused on contents and format of the educational components, specification of a protocol for conjugal couples, and the addition of an ecomap to identify support systems during the joining (i.e. assessment) phase, a shorter (9 months) intervention duration, and a more active clinician role including use of motivational enhancement, intersession support, and coordination with other service providers. Biweekly group sessions were supervised and rated for adherence. We illustrate how MFG-TBI both educates and builds problem-solving skills with clinical examples. Suggestions for effective use of problem-solving skills with this population are offered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reconstruction of human fossils

Paleoanthropologists rarely discover complete and undamaged vertebrate fossils. The original bones may have been torn apart by carnivores, and the fossils further broken down and scattered by geological processes and weathering. A thorough study of specimens generally requires reassembling the original fossil shape as accurately as possible from the broken pieces. Furthermore, since very few fossil fragments belong to a single individual, paleoanthropologists often make composite reconstructions, using pieces that come from many individuals. Thus, reconstructing damaged fossils is somewhat like solving a 3D jigsaw puzzle, in which many of the pieces are missing or deformed. The authors consider how the Computer-Assisted Anthropology system helps paleoanthropologists reconstruct fossils electronically by providing tools to display, manipulate, and measure fossil specimens on screen. The CAA system was built using IBM Visualization Data Explorer, a toolkit for analysis and visualization. Since the CAA system works with computed tomography (CT) scans of the fossils, it can extract embedded fragments nondestructively, using image processing to segment out the matrix     

Superfaces: polygonal mesh simplification with bounded error

The algorithm presented simplifies polyhedral meshes within prespecified tolerances based on a bounded approximation criterion. The vertices in the simplified mesh are a proper subset of the original vertices. The algorithm, called Superfaces, makes two major contributions to the research in this area: it uses a bounded approximation approach, which guarantees that a simplified mesh approximates the original mesh to within a prespecified tolerance (that is, every vertex v in the original mesh will lie within a user specified distance ϵ of the simplified mesh); its face merging procedure is efficient and greedy-that is, it does not backtrack or undo any merging once completed and thus, the algorithm is practical for simplifying very large meshes