Modeling psychotherapy outcome as an event in time: An application of multistage analysis.

Standard survival analysis (SA) and multistate analysis (MSA) are methods for modeling categorical psychotherapy outcome events over time. The underlying principles, mathematical details, and indications for using each technique are discussed, and data from an anorexia nervosa psychotherapy outcome study comparing psychodynamic psychotherapy with psychodynamic psychotherapy plus cognitive–behavioral techniques are used to illustrate the use of SA and MSA techniques. MSA includes multiple competing outcome states in a single model. A single MSA model includes reaching target weight and treatment dropout before reaching target weight as competing events. It is concluded that MSA is an informative analytic technique in the domain of psychotherapy research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Natural hormone patterns of meat from steers and bulls depending on slaughter age

 Natural patterns of steroid hormones (androgens, progestogens and corticoids), their precursors and metabolites were analysed in 48 beef samples with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Muscle tissue samples were taken from steers (n=23) and bulls (n=25) of the breed German Simmental, which were slaughtered at different ages (151–705 days of age). Concentrations of testosterone, dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), progesterone, cortisol and cortisone in beef from steers were not dependent on age, whereas pregnenolone, androstenedione and epitestosterone increased significantly with increasing slaughter age (r=0.48, P<0.05;r=0.60, P<0.01 and r=0.62, P<0.001, respectively). The concentrations of the metabolite androsterone tended to increase as well. The differences were not significant, however, due to the high level of variability. In beef from bulls cortisone concentrations were inversely correlated with increasing slaughter age (r=–0.47, P<0.05). The decrease from day 175 to day 260 was significant. Testosterone was positively correlated with increasing age (r=0.46, P<0.05). The tissue concentrations at the different slaughter ages did not differ significantly, however. The Δ5-precursors pregnenolone and DHEA tended to show a minimum at the age of 370 days, followed by a significant increase. No age dependence of the progesterone, androstenedione, androsterone, epitestosterone and cortisol concentrations could be detected. Analysis of steroid hormone concentrations may form part of a reliable method for estimating the age of slaughtered cattle. In this study, the age of samples was estimated to within ± an average of 10 weeks. Received: 29 December 1997 / Revised version: 1 March 1998     

抑制微溶盐在供水过程中沉淀

本发明提供了一种通过抑制垢在供水过程中沉淀防止含水系统中垢沉淀的方法和装置,该装置包括：（1）一种电解电池流动连接到该系统,包括①接收供水的槽,该槽中的铜表面形成一种电池阴极;②在槽内具有被处理后的锌表面的元件,并且形成电池的阳极;（2）一种控制设备用于控制来自电源的电流（I）;（3）一个流量计,用于测量供水流速与进入系统的水流速有关的流速,其中控制设备被设计用于根据流速控制电流,     

The results of performance measurements of field‐aged crystalline silicon photovoltaic modules

This paper presents the results of electrical performance measurements of 204 crystalline silicon‐wafer based photovoltaic modules following long‐term continuous outdoor exposure. The modules comprise a set of 53 module types originating from 20 different producers, all of which were originally characterized at the European Solar Test Installation (ESTI), over the period 1982–1986. The modules represent diverse generations of PV technologies, different encapsulation and substrate materials. The modules electrical performance was determined according to the standards IEC 60891 and the IEC 60904 series, electrical insulation tests were performed according to the recent IEC 61215 edition 2. Many manufacturers currently give a double power warranty for their products, typically 90% of the initial maximum power after 10 years and 80% of the original maximum power after 25 years. Applying the same criteria (taking into account modules electrical performance only and assuming 2·5% measurement uncertainty of a testing lab) only 17·6% of modules failed (35 modules out of 204 tested). Remarkably even if we consider the initial warranty period i.e. 10% of P_max after 10 years, more than 65·7% of modules exposed for 20 years exceed this criteria. The definition of life time is a difficult task as there does not yet appear to be a fixed catastrophic failure point in module ageing but more of a gradual degradation. Therefore, if a system continues to produce energy which satisfies the user need it has not yet reached its end of life. If we consider this level arbitrarily to be the 80% of initial power then all indications from the measurements and observations made in this paper are that the useful lifetime of solar modules is not limited to the commonly assumed 20 year. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Using the Concept of Intelligent Agents in Fault Management of Distributed Services

This paper proposes the application of conceptsfrom the area of intelligent agents to overcomedeficiencies of existing management architecturesregarding distribution of functionality and flexibility. Its main contribution is the proposal of amethodology for a flexible, distributed realization ofcomplex management tasks. The main application areas aredistributed services which are complex pieces of software, distributed across variousheterogeneous end systems in a network. Mostly, theyrely on the provision of other services as well. Theapproach relies on well-known concepts, such ascooperative distributed problem solving and intelligentagents, and offers a framework to combine these twoconcepts, providing a step on the roadmap to a flexible,distributed management architecture. The assessment of the approach is displayed throughout thepaper by scenarios from the area of nontime criticalfault management.     

Reactive scheduling: improving the robustness of schedules and restricting the effects of shop floor disturbances by fuzzy reasoning

Practical scheduling usually has to reach to many unpredictable events and uncertainties in the production environment. Although often possible in theory, it is undesirable to reschedule from scratch in such cases. Since the surrounding organization will be prepared for the predicted schedule, it is important to change only those features of the schedule that are necessary.We show how, on one side, fuzzy logic can be used to support the construction of schedules that are robust with respect to changes due to certain types of event. On the other side, we show how a reaction can be restricted to a small environment by means of fuzzy constraints and a repair-based problem-solving strategy.We demonstrate the proposed representation and problem-solving method by introducing a scheduling application in a steelmaking plant. We construct a preliminary schedule by taking into account only the most likely duration of operations. This schedule is iteratively "repaired" until some threshold evaluation is found. A repair is found with a local search procedure based on Tabu Search. Finally, we show which events can lead to reactive scheduling and how this is supported by the repair strategy.     

Density-Dependence of Surface Transport in Tellurium-Enriched Nanograined Bulk Bi2Te3

Three-dimensional topological insulators (3D TI) exhibit conventional parabolic bulk bands and protected Dirac surface states. A thorough investigation of the different transport channels provided by the bulk and surface carriers using macroscopic samples may provide a path toward accessing superior surface transport properties. Bi₂Te₃ materials make promising 3D TI models; however, due to their complicated defect chemistry, these materials have a high number of charge carriers in the bulk that dominate the transport, even as nanograined structures. To partially control the bulk charge carrier density, herein the synthesis of Te-enriched Bi₂Te₃ nanoparticles is reported. The resulting nanoparticles are compacted into nanograined pellets of varying porosity to tailor the surface-to-volume ratio, thereby emphasizing the surface transport channels. The nanograined pellets are characterized by a combination of resistivity, Hall- and magneto-conductance measurements together with (THz) time-domain reflectivity measurements. Using the Hikami-Larkin-Nagaoka (HLN) model, a characteristic coherence length of ≈200 nm is reported that is considerably larger than the diameter of the nanograins. The different contributions from the bulk and surface carriers are disentangled by THz spectroscopy, thus emphasizing the dominant role of the surface carriers. The results strongly suggest that the surface transport carriers have overcome the hindrance imposed by nanoparticle boundaries.     

Advanced mask aligner lithography (AMALITH) for thick photoresist

Advanced mask aligner lithography (AMALITH) is a holistic approach to improve shadow printing (contact and proximity lithography) in mask aligners. AMALITH is based on two tools, the MO Exposure Optics^®, a new illumination system allow shaping the angular spectrum of the illumination light, and LAB, a software tool for full 3D simulation of the shadow printing process. MO Exposure Optics^® is provided by SUSS MicroTec AG (http://www.suss.com), as an upgrade for all current and older mask aligner models. MO Exposure Optics^® decouples the illumination from lamp misplacement (self-calibrated light source), improves the light uniformity, provides telecentric illumination and enables customized illumination in mask aligners. LAB is a software tool provided by GenISys GmbH (http://www.genisys-gmbh.com), and allows simulating the complete chain from illumination, mask pattern, photoresist and resist processing. The combination of both tools allows optimizing mask aligner lithography beyond today’s limits.