Filial therapy with Chinese parents: Effects on parental empathic interactons, parental acceptance of child and parental stress.

Determined the effectiveness of a 10-wk filial therapy training model as an intervention method for Chinese parents living in the US. Results of the analyses of covariance reveal that the Chinese parents in the experimental group had a significant increase in their level of empathic interactions with their children; a significant increase in their attitude of acceptance toward their children; and a significant reduction in their level of stress related to parenting. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Surgical treatment and outcome in patients with a hepatocellular carcinoma greater than 10 cm in diameter

BACKGROUND: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) over 10 cm in diameter at the time of diagnosis continues to account for a number of patients undergoing hepatic resection. This study evaluated the clinicopathological features and outcome following surgery for large HCC. METHODS: Forty patients with a large HCC (greater than 10 cm) (group 1) resected between 1991 and 1996 were studied retrospectively. They were compared with 245 patients who had smaller HCCs (10 cm or less) (group 2). RESULTS: No patient in group 1 had hepatitis C infection compared with 22.9 per cent in group 2 (P=0.001). Patients in group 1 were significantly younger, had higher alpha-fetoprotein levels (16750 versus 1864 ng/ml; P < 0.001), better liver function, a higher incidence of multiple tumours (27 of 40 versus 42.0 per cent; P=0.003) and venous invasion (35 of 40 versus 52.2 per cent; P < 0.001), and underwent more major resections (37 of 40 versus 26.5 per cent; P < 0.001) than those in group 2. Morbidity and mortality rates and hospital stay were comparable in the two groups. For group 1, the 1-, 3- and 5-year disease-free survival rates were 42, 30 and 28 per cent respectively. Multiple tumours, venous invasion and impaired liver function were factors associated with recurrence. CONCLUSION: Large HCC had specific clinicopathological features. In selected patients, resection is safe and offers the chance of long-term disease-free survival.     

Tamoxifen downregulates TGF-beta production in keloid fibroblasts

BACKGROUND: It has recently been suggested that primary lactase deficiency might have been selected for by malaria, as occurred for beta-thalassaemia and glucose 6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency. However, recently we have found that the prevalence of primary lactase deficiency in the area of Sassari (Northern Sardinia), where, in the past, there was intermediate malarial endemicity, is comparable to that observed in the adult population from other areas of Southern Italy where malaria was less endemic. AIMS: To address the problem further, we have determined the prevalence of primary lactase deficiency, glucose 6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency deficiency and beta-thalassaemia trait in the populations of three Sardinian villages which differ in altitude above sea-level, socioeconomic features, history of endemic malaria and prevalence of b-thalassaemia and glucose 6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency. SUBJECTS: We tested 138 adult males: 53 were from Fonni (a non-malarial mountain village, with a strong pastoral tradition), 38 from Lodé (a village with a similar pastoral tradition, but high malarial endemicity in the past) and 47 from Terralba (a lowland fishing village with an agricultural tradition and heavy malarial morbidity and mortality). METHODS: A blood sample was obtained in all subjects for determination of HbA2 and glucose 6-phosphate dehydrogenase activity. Lactase deficiency was assessed by measuring breath hydrogen production after oral administration of lactose (50 g), by gas-chromatography. RESULTS: The frequencies of glucose 6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency and of beta-thalassaemia trait in the non-malarial village of Fonni were strikingly low, compared to frequencies found in the two villages (Terralba and Lodé) with a very high past malarial morbidity. In contrast, there was no significant difference in the prevalence of lactase deficiency in the three groups of subjects from the three villages. CONCLUSIONS: These data obtained in Northern Sardinia do not support the hypothesis of a selection of primary lactase deficiency by malaria. For definitive conclusions, however, the malaria hypothesis should be tested in other parts of the world.     

A 90-nm logic technology featuring strained-silicon

A leading-edge 90-nm technology with 1.2-nm physical gate oxide, 45-nm gate length, strained silicon, NiSi, seven layers of Cu interconnects, and low-/spl kappa/ CDO for high-performance dense logic is presented. Strained silicon is used to increase saturated n-type and p-type metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) drive currents by 10% and 25%, respectively. Using selective epitaxial Si/sub 1-x/Ge/sub x/ in the source and drain regions, longitudinal uniaxial compressive stress is introduced into the p-type MOSEFT to increase hole mobility by >50%. A tensile silicon nitride-capping layer is used to introduce tensile strain into the n-type MOSFET and enhance electron mobility by 20%. Unlike all past strained-Si work, the hole mobility enhancement in this paper is present at large vertical electric fields in nanoscale transistors making this strain technique useful for advanced logic technologies. Furthermore, using piezoresistance coefficients it is shown that significantly less strain (/spl sim/5 /spl times/) is needed for a given PMOS mobility enhancement when applied via longitudinal uniaxial compression versus in-plane biaxial tension using the conventional Si/sub 1-x/Ge/sub x/ substrate approach.     

Efficient fine granularity scalability using adaptive leaky factor

Fine Granularity Scalability (FGS) video coding has been adopted by the MPEG-4 standard for video streaming applications. In this paper, we propose a novel FGS coding scheme, which applied adaptive leaky factors for the enhancement layer prediction to further improve the coding efficiency of FGS. A flexible method that can dynamically determine the leaky factors according to the network conditions is also presented. With the proposed method, a better trade-off between the coding efficiency and drifting reduction can be achieved, and the coding performance is further improved compared with using a fixed leaky factor. Experimental results show that the proposed method can further improve the coding efficiency over a wide range of bitrate and packet loss ratio, and still keep the original characteristics, such as fine granularity, and bandwidth adaptation.     

A novel sliding-mode observer for indirect position sensing ofswitched reluctance motor drives

A switched reluctance motor (SRM) drive generally requires a rotor position sensor for commutation and current control. However, the use of this position sensor increases both cost and size of the motor drive and causes limitations for industrial applications. In this paper, a novel indirect position sensing technique, namely, the sliding-mode observer, is proposed for SRM drives. The corresponding design approach and operating performance are provided to illustrate the fast convergence and high robustness of the observer against disturbances and variations     

First Harmonic (2f) Characterisation of Resonant Frequency and Q-Factor of Micromechanical Transducers

In this paper, the response to the first harmonic component (2f) of the electrostatic force in single terminal driven electrostatic comb-drive and parallel-plate drive was used as a signal to extract device parameters, namely, the Q-factor and resonant frequency instead of the fundamental (1f) resonance response. It is shown that the difficulty in motional measurement due to electrical cross-talk (parasitics) using 1f measurement can be overcome with a higher signal-to-noise ratio of the 2f signal. Both atmospheric (low-Q) and reduced pressure environment were investigated using off-chip electronics and lock-in amplifier. The measurements were done on the electrostatic comb-drive and capacitive parallel plate sensing plates that form the two core modules of a yaw rate sensor (dual-axis resonator). The effects of AC and DC bias voltages on the measured response have been investigated. Experimental amplitude and phase response data have been analysed using the Lorentzian curve-fit, Resonance Curve Area (RCA) method, the half-power bandwidth method (3 dB) and the Nyquist plot for data fitting and determination of the Q-factor and resonance frequency.     

Performance evaluation of random power capture on mobile communications

Power assignment schemes are man‐made methods to enhance the capture effect of radio communications. In a previous study, Wen and Yang investigated the combined capture effect of the fixed power assignment scheme, Rayleigh fading, and near–far effect on the performance of packet radios. The performance analysis was limited to an infinite population environment. This assumption is reasonable for a conventional packet radio system with a vast service area. However, for a cellular mobile system, a finite population model should be used. In this paper, we analyse the combined natural and man‐made capture effect on the performance of a cellular system with finite population in each cell. A random power assignment scheme is adopted to produce the man‐made capture. The system throughput and delay are carried out by a Markov model. Some numerical calculations are used to demonstrate the degree of performance improvement. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hot-carrier degradation of submicrometer p-MOSFETs withthermal/LPCVD composite oxide

It is shown that while gate oxides containing thermal/LPCVD composite oxide have lower defect densities than gates using only thermal oxides, they are more susceptible to hot-carrier degradation. The hot-carrier-induced degradation of composite oxides is worse in p-channel MOSFETs than in n-channel MOSFETs. This sensitivity of p-channel MOSFETs is caused by higher electron trapping levels in LPCVD oxides. For 150-Å gate technology, the hot-carrier-degradation resistance of thermal/LPCVD composite gate oxides with a 70-Å or thicker thermal oxide layer approaches that of high-quality pure thermal oxide     

A multi-objective adaptive immune algorithm for multi-application NoC mapping

Current SoC design trends are characterized by the integration of larger amount of IPs targeting a wide range of application fields. Such multi-application systems are constrained by a set of requirements. In such scenario network-on-chips (NoC) are becoming more important as the on-chip communication structure. Designing an optimal NoC for satisfying the requirements of each individual application requires the specification of a large set of configuration parameters leading to a wide solution space. It has been shown that IP mapping is one of the most critical parameters in NoC design, strongly influencing the SoC performance. IP mapping has been solved for single application systems using single and multi-objective optimization algorithms. In this paper we propose the use of a multi-objective adaptive immune algorithm (M²AIA), an evolutionary approach to solve the multi-application NoC mapping problem. Latency and power consumption were adopted as the target multi-objective functions. To compare the efficiency of our approach, our results are compared with those of the genetic and branch and bound multi-objective mapping algorithms. We tested 11 well-known benchmarks, including random and real applications, and combines up to 8 applications at the same SoC. The experimental results showed that the M²AIA decreases in average the power consumption and the latency 27.3 and 42.1 % compared to the branch and bound approach and 29.3 and 36.1 % over the genetic approach.