Imagined positive emotions and inhibitory control: The differentiated effect of pride versus happiness.

Inhibitory control is a cognitive mechanism that contributes to successful self-control (i.e., adherence to a long-term goal in the face of an interfering short-term goal). This research explored the effect of imagined positive emotional events on inhibition. The authors proposed that the influence of imagined emotions on inhibition depends on whether the considered emotion corresponds to the attainment of a long-term goal (i.e., pride) or a short-term goal (i.e., happiness). The authors predicted that in an antisaccade task that requires inhibition of a distractor, imagining a happiness-eliciting event is likely to harm inhibitory processes compared with imagining a pride-eliciting event, because the former but not the latter primes interfering short-term goals. The results showed that imagining a happiness-eliciting event decreased inhibition relative to imagining a pride-eliciting event. The results suggest a possible mechanism underlying the role of imagined positive emotions in pursuit of goals that require self-control. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hybrid pore formation by directed insertion of α-haemolysin into solid-state nanopores

Most experiments on nanopores have concentrated on the pore-forming protein α-haemolysin (αHL) and on artificial pores in solid-state membranes. While biological pores offer an atomically precise structure and the potential for genetic engineering, solid-state nanopores offer durability, size and shape control, and are also better suited for integration into wafer-scale devices. However, each system has significant limitations: αHL is difficult to integrate because it relies on delicate lipid bilayers for mechanical support, and the fabrication of solid-state nanopores with precise dimensions remains challenging. Here we show that these limitations may be overcome by inserting a single αHL pore into a solid-state nanopore. A double-stranded DNA attached to the protein pore is threaded into a solid-state nanopore by electrophoretic translocation. Protein insertion is observed in 30-40% of our attempts, and translocation of single-stranded DNA demonstrates that the hybrid nanopore remains functional. The hybrid structure offers a platform to create wafer-scale device arrays for genomic analysis, including sequencing.     

Economic design of offline inspections for a batch production process

We consider a batch production process that can be either stable or unstable, in which inspection is performed offline after production of the batch is completed. The quality of a batch can be estimated with a desired level of certainty by inspecting only a sample of its units. In order to minimise the expected total cost per batch, which includes the costs of inspection, of false acceptance and of false rejection, we propose an economic inspection plan in which only a fraction of the batches, rather than each batch, is inspected. We prove that the expected total cost is a strictly quasiconvex function of the inspection interval. We establish necessary and sufficient conditions for the optimal inspection interval to be finite and propose an efficient algorithm to obtain its value. We demonstrate for the case of a single-sampling plan where the proposed economic approach outperforms the common procedure of inspecting every batch, and the proposed algorithm is very efficient.     

Solid State and Gas Phase NMR Studies of Immobilized Catalysts and Catalytic Active Nanoparticles

In the current study two new classes of stabile, catalytic active nanomaterials are investigated. The first class of nanoparticles consists of an inner metal core. To stabilize their structure the metal core is surrounded by organic ligands or embedded in a polymer. The second class consists of catalysts immobilized on mesoporous silica supports of SBA-3 type silica. Employing a combination of ¹H, ²H, ¹³C and ²⁹Si-solid state NMR spectroscopy the structure of the catalysts is analyzed. As a simple model for the catalytic properties of the particles, the activation of ²H₂ gas on the surface of the particles is studied. Employing ¹H and ²H gas phase NMR the kinetics of simple catalytic model reactions is studied. Employing ²H-NMR solid state NMR spectroscopy, the interaction of the metal surface with the substrate is characterized and kinetic data, which characterize the mobility of the deuterium on the surface, are extracted. For the interpretation of these data, parallel NMR studies of model η²-bound transition metal complexes are employed, which allow, owing to their simpler geometry and higher sensitivity, a quantitative modeling of the spin dynamics in the NMR experiment.     

Evaluation of registration methods on thoracic CT: the EMPIRE10 challenge

EMPIRE10 (Evaluation of Methods for Pulmonary Image REgistration 2010) is a public platform for fair and meaningful comparison of registration algorithms which are applied to a database of intrapatient thoracic CT image pairs. Evaluation of nonrigid registration techniques is a nontrivial task. This is compounded by the fact that researchers typically test only on their own data, which varies widely. For this reason, reliable assessment and comparison of different registration algorithms has been virtually impossible in the past. In this work we present the results of the launch phase of EMPIRE10, which comprised the comprehensive evaluation and comparison of 20 individual algorithms from leading academic and industrial research groups. All algorithms are applied to the same set of 30 thoracic CT pairs. Algorithm settings and parameters are chosen by researchers expert in the configuration of their own method and the evaluation is independent, using the same criteria for all participants. All results are published on the EMPIRE10 website (http://empire10.isi.uu.nl). The challenge remains ongoing and open to new participants. Full results from 24 algorithms have been published at the time of writing. This paper details the organization of the challenge, the data and evaluation methods and the outcome of the initial launch with 20 algorithms. The gain in knowledge and future work are discussed.     

The role of visual working memory in attentive tracking of unique objects.

When tracking moving objects in space humans usually attend to the objects’ spatial locations and update this information over time. To what extent do surface features assist attentive tracking? In this study we asked participants to track identical or uniquely colored objects. Tracking was enhanced when objects were unique in color. The benefit was greater when the distance between distractors and targets was smaller, but was eliminated when the objects changed colors 1 to 4 times per second, even though at any instant they were always uniquely colored. In addition, tracking uniquely colored objects impaired a secondary color-memory task more than tracking identical objects, and holding several colors in working memory eliminated the advantage of tracking uniquely colored objects. Contrary to previous studies showing that feature information is poorly retained during tracking, these findings indicate that surface properties are stored in visual working memory to facilitate tracking performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Active learning: When is more better? The case of resident physicians’ medical errors.

An active learning climate facilitates new knowledge acquisition by encouraging employees to ask questions, seek feedback, reflect on potential results, explore, and experiment. These activities, however, also increase a learner’s chances of erring. In high-reliability organizations, any error is unacceptable and may well be life threatening. The authors use the example of resident physicians to suggest that by adjusting the conditions of priority of safety and managerial safety practices, organizations can balance these potentially conflicting activities. Participants in the study were 123 residents from 25 medical wards. Results demonstrated that the positive linear relationship between priority of safety and safety performance, demonstrated in earlier studies, existed only when the active learning climate was low. When the active learning climate was high, results demonstrated a U-shaped curvilinear relationship between priority of safety and number of errors. In addition, high managerial safety practices mitigated the number of errors as a result of the active learning climate. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

C-Reactive Protein Velocity (CRPv) as a New Biomarker for the Early Detection of Acute Infection/Inflammation

C-reactive protein (CRP) is considered a biomarker of infection/inflammation. It is a commonly used tool for early detection of infection in the emergency room or as a point-of-care test and especially for differentiating between bacterial and viral infections, affecting decisions of admission and initiation of antibiotic treatments. As C-reactive protein is part of a dynamic and continuous inflammatory process, a single CRP measurement, especially at low concentrations, may erroneously lead to a wrong classification of an infection as viral over bacterial and delay appropriate antibiotic treatment. In the present review, we introduce the concept of C-reactive protein dynamics, measuring the velocity of C-reactive protein elevation, as a tool to increase this biomarker’s diagnostic ability. We review the studies that helped define new metrics such as estimated C-reactive protein velocity (velocity of C-reactive protein elevation from symptoms’ onset to first C-reactive protein measurement) and the measured C-reactive protein velocity (velocity between sequential C-reactive protein measurements) and the use of these metrics in different clinical scenarios. We also discuss future research directions for this novel metric.     

Single machine batch scheduling to minimize total completion time and resource consumption costs

In this paper we study the single-machine batch scheduling problem under batch availability, where both setup and job processing times are controllable by allocating a continuously divisible nonrenewable resource. Under batch availability a set of jobs is processed contiguously and completed together, when the processing of the last job in the batch is finished. We present polynomial time algorithms to find the job sequence, the partition of the job sequence into batches and the resource allocation, which minimize the total completion time or the total production cost (inventory plus resource costs).     

Cover Picture: Fabrication and Characterization of Three‐Dimensional Silver‐Coated Polymeric Microstructures (Adv. Funct. Mater. 13/2006)

Kuebler and co‐workers report on p. 1739 a method for preparing conductive and optically reflective silver‐coated polymeric microstructures having virtually any 3D form. Shown are reflection images of a silvered five‐layer simple‐cubic lattice having a period of 2.4 μm (background) and a macroscopic silvered polymer film (inset). To prepare metallopolymeric microstructures, 3D polymeric scaffolds are first created by multiphoton direct laser writing, then functionalized with gold particles, and metallized using nucleated electroless silver deposition. A method is reported for fabricating complex 3D silver‐coated polymeric microstructures. The approach is based on the creation of a crosslinked polymeric microscaffold via patterned multiphoton‐initiated polymerization followed by surface‐nucleated electroless deposition of silver. The conductivity and reflectivity of the resulting silver–polymer composites and the nanoscale morphology of the deposited silver are characterized. Sub‐micrometer thick layers of silver can be controllably deposited onto surfaces, including those of 3D microporous forms without occluding the interior of the structure. The approach is general for silver coating crosslinked polymeric structures based on acrylate, methacrylate, and epoxide resins and provides a new path to complex 3D micrometer‐scale devices with electronic, photonic, and electromechanical function.