Assessment of emotional reactivity produced by exposure to virtual environments in patients with eating disorders

The aim of this study was to assess the usefulness of virtual environments representing situations that are emotionally significant to subjects with eating disorders (ED). These environments may be applied with both evaluative and therapeutic aims and in simulation procedures to carry out a range of experimental studies. This paper is part of a wider research project analyzing the influence of the situation to which subjects are exposed on their performance on body image estimation tasks. Thirty female patients with eating disorders were exposed to six virtual environments: a living-room (neutral situation), a kitchen with highcalorie food, a kitchen with low-calorie food, a restaurant with high-calorie food, a restaurant with low-calorie food, and a swimming-pool. After exposure to each environment the STAI-S (a measurement of state anxiety) and the CDB (a measurement of depression) were administered to all subjects. The results show that virtual reality instruments are particularly useful for simulating everyday situations that may provoke emotional reactions such as anxiety and depression, in patients with ED. Virtual environments in which subjects are obliged to ingest high-calorie food provoke the highest levels of state anxiety and depression.

Melanin-based colorations signal strategies to cope with poor and rich environments

One hypothesis for the maintenance of genetic variation states that alternative genotypes are adapted to different environmental conditions (i.e., genotype-by-environment interaction GxE) that vary in space and time. Although GxE has been demonstrated for morphological traits, little evidence has been given whether these GxE are associated with traits used as signal in mate choice. In three wild bird species, we investigated whether the degree of melanin-based coloration, a heritable trait, covaries with nestling growth rate in rich and poor environments. Variation in the degree of reddish-brown phaeomelanism is pronounced in the barn owl (Tyto alba) and tawny owl (Strix aluco), and variation in black eumelanism in the barn owl and Alpine swift (Apus melba). Melanin-based coloration has been shown to be a criterion in mate choice in the barn owl. We cross-fostered hatchlings to test whether nestlings sired by parents displaying melanin-based colorations to different extent exhibit alternative growth trajectories when raised by foster parents in poor (experimentally enlarged broods) and rich (experimentally reduced broods) environments. With respect to phaeomelanism, barn owl and tawny owl offspring sired by redder parents grew more rapidly in body mass only in experimentally reduced broods. With respect to eumelanism, Alpine swift offspring of darker fathers grew their wings more rapidly only in experimentally enlarged broods, a difference that was not detected in reduced broods. These interactions between parental melanism and offspring growth rate indicate that individuals display substantial plasticity in response to the rearing environment which is associated with the degree of melanism: at least with respect to nestling growth, phaeomelanic and eumelanic individuals are best adapted to rich and poor environments, respectively. It now remains to be investigated why eumelanism and phaeomelanism have a different signaling function and what the lifelong consequences of these melanism-dependent allocation strategies are. This is important to fully appraise the role played by environmental heterogeneity in maintaining variation in the degree of melanin-based coloration.

Evaluation of the compliance with recommended procedures in newborns exposed to HBsAg-positive mothers: a multicenter collaborative study.

BACKGROUND: Maternal-infant transmission of hepatitis B virus (HBV) during birth carries a high risk for chronic HBV infection in infants with frequent subsequent development of chronic disease. This can be efficiently prevented by early immunization of exposed newborns. The purpose of this study was to determine the compliance with official recommendations for prevention of perinatal HBV transmission in hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) exposed infants. METHODS: Records of pregnant women at 4 sites in Switzerland, admitted for delivery in 2005 and 2006, were screened for maternal HBsAg testing. In HBsAg-exposed infants, recommended procedures (postnatal active and passive immunization, completion of immunization series, and serological success control) were checked. RESULTS: Of 27,131 women tested for HBsAg, 194 (0.73%) were positive with 196 exposed neonates. Of these neonates, 143 (73%) were enrolled and 141 (99%) received simultaneous active and passive HBV immunization within 24 hours of birth. After discharge, the HBV immunization series was completed in 83%. Only 38% of children were tested for anti-HBs afterwards and protective antibody values (>100 U/L) were documented in 27% of the study cohort. No chronically infected child was identified. Analysis of hospital discharge letters revealed significant quality problems. CONCLUSIONS: Intensified efforts are needed to improve the currently suboptimal medical care in HBsAg-exposed infants. We propose standardized discharge letters, as well as reminders to primary care physicians with precise instructions on the need to complete the immunization series in HBsAg-exposed infants and to evaluate success by determination of anti-HBs antibodies after the last dose.

Fate of Hydrophilic Nanoparticles in Biological Environments

The nanoparticles developed are based on chitosan, a biocompatible and biodegradable polysaccharide. The chitosan nanoparticles are formed in an entirely water-based process by electrostatic interactions with other biocompatible molecules. As a prerequisite to understand the fate of such nanoparticles in cells, comprehensive characterization and stability studies serve to identify quantitatively the impact of the raw material characteristics and preparation conditions on the nanoparticle characteristics. Methods included H-1 NMR spectroscopy, dilution viscometry, particle size analysis and electron microscopy. Cytotoxicity and cell uptake experiments on RAW 264.7 murine macrophages and p23 murine endothelial cells were performed to investigate the correlation with nanoparticle characteristics and effect of surface decoration with alginate. Cytotoxicity was assessed by the MTT survival test; cell uptake was monitored by fluorescent microscopy using labeled polymers.

A non-linear VAD for noisy environments

This paper deals with non-linear transformations for improving the performance of an entropy-based voice activity detector (VAD). The idea to use a non-linear transformation has already been applied in the field of speech linear prediction, or linear predictive coding (LPC), based on source separation techniques, where a score function is added to classical equations in order to take into account the true distribution of the signal. We explore the possibility of estimating the entropy of frames after calculating its score function, instead of using original frames. We observe that if the signal is clean, the estimated entropy is essentially the same; if the signal is noisy, however, the frames transformed using the score function may give entropy that is different in voiced frames as compared to nonvoiced ones. Experimental evidence is given to show that this fact enables voice activity detection under high noise, where the simple entropy method fails.

Orchestration signals in the classroom: managing the jigsaw collaborative learning flow

The orchestration of collaborative learning processes in face-to-facephysical settings, such as classrooms, requires teachers to coordinate students indicating them who belong to each group, which collaboration areas areassigned to each group, and how they should distribute the resources or roles within the group. In this paper we present an Orchestration Signal system,composed of wearable Personal Signal devices and an Orchestration Signal manager. Teachers can configure color signals in the manager so that they are transmitted to the wearable devices to indicate different orchestration aspects.In particular, the paper describes how the system has been used to carry out a Jigsaw collaborative learning flow in a classroom where students received signals indicating which documents they should read, in which group they were and in which area of the classroom they were expected to collaborate. The evaluation results show that the proposed system facilitates a dynamic, visual and flexible orchestration.

Quantitative comparison between simulations of seismic wave propagation in heterogeneous poro-elastic media and equivalent visco-elastic solids for marine-type environments

There is increasing evidence to suggest that the presence of mesoscopic heterogeneities constitutes an important seismic attenuation mechanism in porous rocks. As a consequence, centimetre-scale perturbations of the rock physical properties should be taken into account for seismic modelling whenever detailed and accurate responses of specific target structures are desired, which is, however, computationally prohibitive. A convenient way to circumvent this problem is to use an upscaling procedure to replace each of the heterogeneous porous media composing the geological model by corresponding equivalent visco-elastic solids and to solve the visco-elastic equations of motion for the inferred equivalent model. While the overall qualitative validity of this procedure is well established, there are as of yet no quantitative analyses regarding the equivalence of the seismograms resulting from the original poro-elastic and the corresponding upscaled visco-elastic models. To address this issue, we compare poro-elastic and visco-elastic solutions for a range of marine-type models of increasing complexity. We found that despite the identical dispersion and attenuation behaviour of the heterogeneous poro-elastic and the equivalent visco-elastic media, the seismograms may differ substantially due to diverging boundary conditions, where there exist additional options for the poro-elastic case. In particular, we observe that at the fluid/porous-solid interface, the poro- and visco-elastic seismograms agree for closed-pore boundary conditions, but differ significantly for open-pore boundary conditions. This is an important result which has potentially far-reaching implications for wave-equation-based algorithms in exploration geophysics involving fluid/porous-solid interfaces, such as, for example, wavefield decomposition.

Spatial learning by rats across visually disconnected environments

Two spatial tasks were designed to test specific properties of spatial representation in rats. In the first task, rats were trained to locate an escape hole at a fixed position in a visually homogeneous arena. This arena was connected with a periphery where a full view of the room environment existed. Therefore, rats were dependent on their memory trace of the previous position in the periphery to discriminate a position within the central region. Under these experimental conditions, the test animals showed a significant discrimination of the training position without a specific local view. In the second task, rats were trained in a radial maze consisting of tunnels that were transparent at their distal ends only. Because the central part of the maze was non-transparent, rats had to plan and execute appropriate trajectories without specific visual feedback from the environment. This situation was intended to encourage the reliance on prospective memory of the non-visited arms in selecting the following move. Our results show that acquisition performance was only slightly decreased compared to that shown in a completely transparent maze and considerably higher than in a translucent maze or in darkness. These two series of experiments indicate (1) that rats can learn about the relative position of different places with no common visual panorama, and (2) that they are able to plan and execute a sequence of visits to several places without direct visual feed-back about their relative position.

Collaborative quality improvement to manage pain in acute care hospitals.

Objective. Collaborative quality improvement programs have been successfully used to manage chronic diseases in adults and acute lung complications in premature infants. Their effectiveness to improve pain management in acute care hospitals is currently unknown. The purpose of this study was to determine whether a collaborative quality improvement program implemented at hospital level could improve pain management and overall pain relief. Design.To assess the effectiveness of the program, we performed a before-after trial comparing patient's self-reported pain management and experience before and after program implementation. We included all adult patients hospitalized for more than 24 hours and discharged either to their home or to a nursing facility, between March 1, 2001 and March 31, 2001 (before program implementation) and between September 15, 2005 and October 15, 2005 (after program implementation). Setting.A teaching hospital of 2,096 beds in Geneva, Switzerland. Patients.All adult patients hospitalized for more than 24 hours and discharged between 1 to 31 March 2001 (before program) and 15 September to 15 October 2005 (after program implementation). Interventions.Implementation of a collaborative quality improvement program using multifaceted interventions (staff education, opinion leaders, patient education, audit, and feedback) to improve pain management at hospital level. Outcome Measures.Patient-reported pain experience, pain management, and overall hospital experience based on the Picker Patient Experience questionnaire, perceived health (SF-36 Health survey). Results.After implementation of the program only 2.3% of the patients reported having no pain relief during their hospital stay (vs 4.5% in 2001, P = 0.05). Among nonsurgical patients, improvements were observed for pain assessment (42.3% vs 27.9% of the patients had pain intensity measured with a visual analog scale, P = 0.012), pain management (staff did everything they could to help in 78.9% vs 67.9% of cases P = 0.003), and pain relief (70.4% vs 57.3% of patients reported full pain relief P = 0.008). In surgical patients, pain assessment also improved (53.7.3% vs 37.6%) as well as pain treatment. More patients received treatments to relieve pain regularly or intermittently after program implementation (95.1% vs 91.9% P = 0.046). Conclusion.Implementation of a collaborative quality improvement program at hospital level improved both pain management and pain relief in patients. Further studies are needed to determine the overall cost-effectiveness of such programs.

QTL mapping for protein content in soybean cultivated in two tropical environments

The objectives of this study were to detect quantitative trait loci (QTL) for protein content in soybean grown in two distinct tropical environments and to build a genetic map for protein content. One hundred eighteen soybean recombinant inbred lines (RIL), obtained from a cross between cultivars BARC 8 and Garimpo, were used. The RIL were cultivated in two distinct Brazilian tropical environments: Cascavel county, in Paraná, and Viçosa county, in Minas Gerais (24º57'S, 53º27'W and 20º45'S, 42º52'W, respectively). Sixty-six SSR primer pairs and 65 RAPD primers were polymorphic and segregated at a 1:1 proportion. Thirty poorly saturated linkage groups were obtained, with 90 markers and 41 nonlinked markers. For the lines cultivated in Cascavel, three QTL were mapped in C2, E and N linkage groups, which explained 14.37, 10.31 and 7.34% of the phenotypic variation of protein content, respectively. For the lines cultivated in Viçosa, two QTL were mapped in linkage groups G and #1, which explained 9.51 and 7.34% of the phenotypic variation of protein content. Based on the mean of the two environments, two QTL were identified: one in the linkage group E (9.90%) and other in the group L (7.11%). In order for future studies to consistently detect QTL effects of different environments, genotypes with greater stability should be used.