Social desirability, psychological distress, and consumer satisfaction with mental health treatment.

The purpose of the present study was to determine the strength of the relationship between social desirability, psychological distress, and consumer satisfaction with mental health treatment. More specifically, our goal was to assess whether socially desirable responding accounts for much more variance in reports of client satisfaction than in self-reports of psychological distress. The sample consisted of 82 clients in therapy at the Center for Eclectic Psychology, a clinic affiliated with a large francophone university. Subjects completed the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding, the Symptom Checklist-10, and the Client Satisfaction Questionnaire. Correlational analyses revealed that both consumer satisfaction reports and psychological distress scores were contaminated by socially desirable responding. These findings are discussed in terms of the validity of client satisfaction measures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

D? dopamine receptor mediation of social and nonsocial emotional reactivity in mice: Effects of housing and strain difference in motor activity.

The study examined the effects of isolation housing and the role of D? dopamine receptors on isolation-induced social and nonsocial (acoustic startle) reactivity in mice high (C57BL/6) and low (A) in motor activity. Isolation housing had no effect on acoustic startle but increased strain-specific forms of social reactivity. The D? agonist dihydrexidine (DHX) increased acoustic startle in isolated mice of both strains, but this effect was more pronounced in C57BL/6 mice. In this strain, DHX and the D? agonist SKF-81297 increased locomotor forms of social reactivity (e.g., escape, jump), whereas the D? antagonist SCH-23390 increased stationary reactivity (e.g., freezing). In A mice, DHX and SKF-81297 increased and decreased stationary reactivity, respectively, whereas SCH-23390 had no effect on these behaviors. Administration of SKF-81297 after pretreatment with SCH-23390 or the D? antagonist sulpiride confirmed the importance of D? receptors in mediating specific forms of social reactivity in C57BL/6 mice. These results suggest an important relationship between social reactivity and motor activity and an important, albeit strain-dependent, role for D? receptors in mediating specific emotional behaviors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Heuristics for tactical time slot management: a periodic vehicle routing problem view

In this study, we consider a tactical problem where a time slot schedule for delivery service over a given planning horizon must be selected in each zone of a geographical area. A heuristic search evaluates each schedule selection by constructing a corresponding tactical routing plan of minimum cost based on demand and service time estimates. At the end, the schedule selection leading to the best tactical routing plan is selected. The latter can then be used as a blueprint when addressing the operational problem (i.e., when real customer orders are received and operational routes are constructed). We propose two heuristics to address the tactical problem. The first heuristic is a three‐phase approach: a periodic vehicle routing problem (PVRP) is first solved, followed by a repair phase and a final improvement phase where a vehicle routing problem (VRP) with time windows is solved for each period of the planning horizon. The second heuristic tackles the problem as a whole by directly solving a PVRP with time windows. Computational results compare the two heuristics under various settings, based on instances derived from benchmark instances for the VRP with time windows.     

Guest Editors' Introduction: Advanced Heuristics in Transportation and Logistics

Transportation and logistics organizations often face large-scale combinatorial problems on both operational and strategic levels. By exploiting problem-specific characteristics, classical heuristic methods--such as constructive and iterative local search methods--aim at a relatively limited exploration of the search space, thereby producing acceptable-quality solutions in modest computing times. In a major departure from a classical heuristic, a metaheuristic method exploits not only the problem characteristics but also ideas based on artificial intelligence methodologies, such as different types of memory structures and learning mechanisms, as well as analogies with optimization methods found in nature. Solutions produced by metaheuristics typically are of a much higher quality than those obtained with classical heuristic approaches.This article is part of a special issue on advanced heuristics in transportation and logistics.     

A technique to measure trap characteristics in CCD's using X-rays

An important type of radiation damage in CCD's used for X-ray spectroscopy is the degradation of charge transfer efficiency (CTE). Traps associated with radiation-induced defects are the basic cause of the damage. Here, we describe a method to extract trap characteristics using small charge packets produced by individual X-ray photon interactions in rectangular imaging CCD's. The method applies the principles of trap occupancy to the framestore CCD configuration, and uses data from CCD's operating in their normal transfer mode. We have measured trap characteristics in radiation damaged CCD's in a range of operating temperatures from 170-200 K, and have found that these data compare well to the expected phosphorus-vacancy (P-V) trap characteristics     

Le niveau de satisfaction des cas d'abandon dans un service universitaire de psychologie.

The purpose of this study was to compare the satisfaction level of drop-out cases and completers in a university psychology clinic. We also investigated the reasons given for dropping out of treatment and the subsequent help-seeking behaviour of these patients. The sample consisted of 43 drop-out cases and a comparison group of 15 patients who remained in treatment for 20 sessions. The drop-out cases were divided into three groups: spontaneous dropouts (n = 15), early drop-outs (n = 15), and late drop-outs (n = 13). The results indicated a significant difference between the satisfaction level of drop-out cases and completers. It was also found that the main reasons given for quitting treatment were mostly related to the amount of help received and unconfirmed expectancies. These findings are discussed, as are methodological issues raised by this study. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Les qualités psychométriques de la version canadienne-fran?aise du Questionnaire de Satisfaction du Consommateur de services psychothérapeutiques (QSC-8 et QSC-18B).

Studied the psychometric validity, the internal consistency, the factorial structure, and the discriminant properties of the Canadian-French version of an instrument designed to measure client satisfaction with psychotherapeutic services. Human subjects: 126 male and female French-Canadian adults (aged 19–67 yrs). All Ss had received treatment for dysthymic disorders, emotional problems, or mild personality disorders. Ss were interviewed by telephone during the week in which they initially sought treatment and at the end of treatment. During the course of treatment, the Questionnaire d'Auto-évaluation de la Détresse Psychologique ("Self-Report Questionnaire of Psychologic Distress") (SCL-10) by T. D. Nguyen et al (1983) and the Psychiatric Symptom Inventory (1974) by L. Derogatis et al were administered. At the end of treatment, the Canadian-French version of the CSQ for psychotherapeutic services by Sabourin et al (1987) was administered during a telephone interview. The results were analyzed statistically according to client satisfaction, demographic factors, utilization of psychiatric services, and efficacy of treatment. The psychometric validity of the CSQ was determined. (English abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the evaluation of telecommunications network reliability usingrouting models

A reliability measure that takes into account routing and rerouting policies after failures as well as the capacity of the network to satisfy its demand is proposed. The measure, based on the evaluation of the lost call traffic, needs resolution of a routing model for the states of perfect functioning as well as the most probable failure states. A type of routing model useful for network planning is also proposed. The model is closer to reality and easier to implement than the other classical multicommodity formulations. A convex-simplex implementation with a reoptimization feature explicitly adapted to the proposed model is used     

Reinforcement learning based routing in wireless mesh networks

This paper addresses the problem of efficient routing in backbone wireless mesh networks (WMNs) where each mesh router is equipped with multiple radio interfaces and a subset of nodes serve as gateways to the Internet. Most routing schemes have been designed to reduce routing costs by optimizing one metric, e.g., hop count and interference ratio. However, when considering these metrics together, the complexity of the routing problem increases drastically. Thus, an efficient and adaptive routing scheme that takes into account several metrics simultaneously and considers traffic congestion around the gateways is needed. In this paper, we propose an adaptive scheme for routing traffic in WMNs, called Reinforcement Learning-based Distributed Routing (RLBDR), that (1) considers the critical areas around the gateways where mesh routers are much more likely to become congested and (2) adaptively learns an optimal routing policy taking into account multiple metrics, such as loss ratio, interference ratio, load at the gateways and end-to end delay. Simulation results show that RLBDR can significantly improve the overall network performance compared to schemes using either Metric of Interference and Channel switching, Best Path to Best Gateway, Expected Transmission count, nearest gateway (i.e., shortest path to gateway) or load at gateways as a metric for path selection.     

宽带革命不仅是速度的革命,更是内容的革命

1前言如果你认为宽带革命是一场关于传输速度的革命,你的观点有待商榷.真正的宽带革命是关于内容的.宽带技术的进步使传输的速度更快,服务质量更高,并产生内容存贮或缓存的新模式和新的计算设备.但这些技术本身不是革命,它们只是使宽带革命的到来成为可能.