Mindfulness-based stress reduction for the treatment of adolescent psychiatric outpatients: A randomized clinical trial.

Research has shown that mindfulness-based treatment interventions may be effective for a range of mental and physical health disorders in adult populations, but little is known about the effectiveness of such interventions for treating adolescent conditions. The present randomized clinical trial was designed to assess the effect of the mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program for adolescents age 14 to 18 years with heterogeneous diagnoses in an outpatient psychiatric facility (intent-to-treat N = 102). Relative to treatment-as-usual control participants, those receiving MBSR self-reported reduced symptoms of anxiety, depression, and somatic distress, and increased self-esteem and sleep quality. Of clinical significance, the MBSR group showed a higher percentage of diagnostic improvement over the 5-month study period and significant increases in global assessment of functioning scores relative to controls, as rated by condition-na?ve clinicians. These results were found in both completer and intent-to-treat samples. The findings provide evidence that MBSR may be a beneficial adjunct to outpatient mental health treatment for adolescents. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hybrid of artificial immune system and particle swarm optimization-based support vector machine for Radio Frequency Identification-based positioning system

This study intends to propose a hybrid of artificial immune system (AIS) and particle swarm optimization (PSO)-based support vector machine (SVM) (HIP–SVM) for optimizing SVM parameters, and applied it to radio frequency identification (RFID)-based positioning system. In order to evaluate HIP–SVM’s capability, six benchmark data sets, Australian, Heart disease, Iris, Ionosphere, Sonar and Vowel, were employed. The computational results showed that HIP–SVM has better performance than AIS-based SVM and PSO-based SVM. HIP–SVM was also applied to classify RSSI for indoor positioning. The experiment results indicated that HIP–SVM can achieve highest accuracy compared to those of AIS–SVM and PSO–SVM. It demonstrated that RFID can be used for storing information and in indoor positioning without additional cost.     

Second International Symposium on Ceramic Materials and Components for Engines

Abstract

Multi-scale characterisation using TEM, EELS and 3D FIB reconstruction was carried out on both pre-transition and post-transition oxides grown in high-temperature water. 3-D characterisation of cracks using high resolution FIB sequential sectioning gave a quantitative measure of crack density over time. There is no sudden burst of cracking occurring at the kinetic transition. On the nanometre scale, Fresnel contrast was used to reveal porosity of 1 – 3 nm in size in the oxide, which develops during growth from isolated pores to a connected network. Quantification of oxygen concentration using STEM-EELS has identified a suboxide, ZrO, layer tens of nanometres thick at the metal – oxide interface.     

Automated extraction of welds from digitized radiographic images based on mlp neural networks

It is desired to automate inspection of welding flaws. Automated extraction of welds forms the first step in developing an automated weld inspection system. This article presents a multilayered perceptron (MLP) based procedure for extracting welds from digitized radiographic images. The procedure consists of three major components: feature extraction, MLP-based object classification, and postprocessing. For each object in the line image extracted from the whole image, four features are defined: the peak position (x1), the width (x2), the mean square error between the object and its Gaussian intensity plot (x3), and the peak intensity (x4). Fiftyone training samples were used to train MLP neural networks. The training of MLP classifiers is discussed. Trained MLP neural networks are subsequently used to test unlearned feature patterns and to identify whether the patterns are welds or not. Postprocessing is performed to remove noises (misclassified nonweld objects) and restore the continuity of weld line (discontinuity due to missed weld objects). Test results show that the procedure can successfully extract all welds (100%) from 25 radiographic images.     

嵌入式设计：随着标准一起变小

在减小工业、医疗、消费应用及其它空间关键应用的尺寸方面，压力持续不断，引发了形状系数极小的嵌入式计算平台的新潮流。由于采用开放标准和专有设计，这些新平台为系统设计者提供了日益增多的现成计算和外设模块，以便简化尺寸受限的应用。尽管它们尺寸紧凑，但这些微型系统组件充分利用新计算元件、串行通信和智能散热技术，以交付强大的处理能力和I／O性能。     

Insulin receptor substrate-2 in the ventral tegmental area regulates behavioral responses to cocaine.

Neurotrophic factor signaling modulates cellular and behavioral responses to drugs of abuse. Among other biochemical adaptations, chronic exposure to abused drugs decreases the expression of insulin receptor substrate-2 (IRS-2; a protein involved in neurotrophic signaling) in the ventral tegmental area (VTA), a neural substrate for many drugs of abuse. Using viral-mediated gene transfer to locally alter the activity of IRS-2, the authors show that overexpression of IRS-2 in the VTA results in an enhanced preference for environments previously paired with cocaine, as measured by the place conditioning paradigm, whereas blockade of IRS-2 activity results in avoidance of cocaine-paired compartments. In addition, IRS-2 overexpression leads to enhanced cocaine-induced locomotor activity, and blockade of IRS-2 expression significantly blunts behavioral responses to cocaine. These results demonstrate that levels of IRS-2 in the VTA regulate responsiveness to the behavioral effects of cocaine. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)