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Many approaches for reducing unwanted behavior use punishment, extinction, or noncontingent reinforcement. Other methods focus on teaching and reinforcing alternative behaviors that can replace the unwanted behavior. Another strategy can be to change the stimulus control of the unwanted behavior. The present study investigated if conditional discrimination training using positive reinforcement could reduce undesirable behaviors in a pet dog. After conditional discrimination training, two unwanted behaviors (jumping and mouthing) occurred reliably in the presence of new discriminative stimuli, while other behaviors occurred in the presence of the discriminative stimuli that had previously produced these unwanted behaviors. This experiment demonstrates that conditional discrimination training can be an effective way to control the frequency of an unwanted behavior by controlling the frequency of the presentation of a discriminative stimulus.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS A variety of auto-antibody assays are available as part of the clinical care of patients with liver disease. We sought to better understand the clinical utility of immune serological testing in patients with primary biliary cholangitis (PBC). METHODS We retrospectively analysed data from 2846 patients investigated for liver disease at a UK liver centre between 2001 and 2017. A total of 499 patients with PBC were identified. Immune serology results were examined for their diagnostic utility and prognostic significance to predict transplant-free survival. RESULTS Antimitochondrial antibodies (AMAs) were specific (94.5%) and sensitive (85.6%) for PBC; antinuclear antibodies (ANAs) against glycoprotein 210 (gp210) and sp100 were specific (>98%) but not sensitive (

College sports are a multi-billion dollar industry that influence the financial decisions of colleges and universities throughout the United States. One such decision is the implementation of manda...

Objective Behçet’s disease (BD) is a multisystem autoinflammatory disease characterised by mucosal ulceration, ocular, neural, joint and skin inflammation. The cause of BD is not known but there is a strong genetic association with HLA-B*51, IL10 and IL23R. Neutrophils are a first line of defence against invading pathogens and have been described as activated in patients with BD. Neutrophils can now be separated into different subsets, such as low density (LDN) and normal density (NDN) that have diverse functional roles. We wished to address neutrophil heterogeneity in patients with BD. MethodsPeripheral blood neutrophils were obtained from 32 BD patients and 37 healthy aged-matched controls. Percoll isolation was used to isolate all neutrophils, while Ficol-Hypaque was used to obtain LDN and NDN. Phagocytic capacity and production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), and neutrophil extracellular traps (NET) stimulated with phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA) and Escherichia coli (E.coli) were assessed in both groups. Results We have demonstrated reduced phagocytic capacity and ROS production but greater NET production by total neutrophils stimulated with PMA or E.coli from BD patients in comparison with healthy controls. Patients with BD had elevated numbers of LDN and lower number of NDN compared with healthy controls. However, both neutrophil subsets showed the same reduced ROS production and phagocytic function as total neutrophils in both 41 groups. Conclusion Our novel findings indicate that the neutrophil population in BD is heterogeneous and the increased number of LDN in combination with greater NET production may contribute to the inflammatory response and pathogenesis.

Background An article published by Sidpra J et al, in ADC in July 2020 reported an increase of approximately 1500% in the incidence of abusive head trauma (AHT) in children, understandably shocking paediatricians nationally. Objectives We wanted to see the impact of lockdown on referrals made to our hospital (University Hospital of North Tees, Stockton, UK) for children suspected to have non-accidental injuries (NAI) or AHT. Methods We audited the records of children referred with suspected NAI during the first lockdown period (23rd of March to 4th of July 2020) and compared it with the preceding year (23rd of March to 4th of July 2019) As children under two are more likely to suffer AHT, these cases were identified by two auditors and then a single auditor reviewed these case records in detail. Results Total of thirty-one children in 2019 & twenty-five in 2020 were referred for Child Protection Medical Assessments. Eleven children - six in 2019 and five in 2020 - were less than two years old. Of these, four were girls and seven boys. Five children were less than three months old Nine children were referred with suspicious bruising, one was the sibling of an index child with NAI and for one, an allegation was made of rough handling. Two children with skull fractures and one with a rib fracture (on follow up scan) were identified on radiological investigations. Hematological investigations and ophthalmic findings were unremarkable for all the children. All children were seen within 24 hours of a referral being made. In all cases, an interim report was provided on the same day and a final report within seven working days. All children were investigated as per RCPCH guidelines. Seven out of eleven children referred for NAI assessment were concluded to have probable non-accidental injuries – three in 2019, and four in 2020. Our neighbouring hospital received five and four referrals for suspected NAI in children under 2 years old in the same period of time in 2019 and 2020 respectively. One of these children in 2020 had retinal haemorrhages associated with AHT and a skull fracture. Conclusions Our audit of children referred for NAI medical assessment does not suggest any significant difference between numbers in 2019 and 2020. This is in contrast with what colleagues from UCL, London have reported, and surprising given the high levels of socioeconomic deprivation in our area, which is usually associated with a higher incidence of child abuse. In order to understand national trends, we recommend other areas of the United Kingdom to review their data to establish whether this pandemic and associated lockdowns are impacting children in Teesside differently.

Background Granular dystrophy is the most common stromal dystrophy. To perform automated segmentation of corneal stromal deposits, we trained and tested a deep learning (DL) algorithm from patients with corneal stromal dystrophy and compared its performance with human segmentation. Methods In this retrospective cross-sectional study, we included slit-lamp photographs by sclerotic scatter from patients with corneal stromal dystrophy and real-world slit-lamp photographs via various techniques (diffuse illumination, tangential illumination, and sclerotic scatter). Our data set included 1007 slit-lamp photographs of semi-automatically generated handcraft masks on granular and linear lesions from corneal stromal dystrophy patients (806 for the training set and 201 for test set). For external test (140 photographs), we applied the DL algorithm and compared between automated and human segmentation. For performance, we estimated the intersection of union (IoU), global accuracy, and boundary F1 (BF) score for segmentation. Results In 201 internal test set, IoU, global accuracy, and BF score with 95 % confidence Interval were 0.81 (0.79–0.82), 0.99 (0.98–0.99), and 0.93 (0.92–0.95), respectively. In 140 heterogenous external test set as a real-world data, those were 0.64 (0.61–0.67), 0.95 (0.94–0.96), and 0.70 (0.64–0.76) via DL algorithm and 0.56 (0.51–0.61), 0.95 (0.94–0.96), and 0.70 (0.65–0.74) via human rater, respectively. Conclusions We developed an automated segmentation DL algorithm for corneal stromal deposits in patients with corneal stromal dystrophy. Segmentation on corneal deposits was accurate via the DL algorithm in the well-controlled dataset and showed reasonable performance in a real-world setting. We suggest this automatic segmentation of corneal deposits helps to monitor the disease and can evaluate possible new treatments.

Contains fulltext : 214189.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) Human visual perception is modulated by both temporal and spatial contexts. One type of modulation is apparent in the temporal context effect (TCE): In the presence of a constant luminance patch (a long flash), the perceived brightness of a short flash increases monotonically with onset asynchrony. The aim of the current study was to delineate the neural correlates of this illusory effect, particularly focusing on its dynamic neural representation among visual cortical areas. We reconstructed sources of magnetoencephalographic (MEG) data recorded from observers (6 male and 9 female human adults) experiencing the TCE. Together with retinotopic mapping, signals from different occipital lobe areas were extracted to investigate whether different visual areas have differential representation of the onset vs. offset synchronized short flashes. From the data, TCE related responses were observed in LO and V4 in the time window of 200-250 m s, while neuronal responses to physical luminances were observed in the early time window at around 100 m s across early visual cortex, such as V1 and V2, also in V4 and VO. Based on these findings, we suggest that two distinct processes might be involved in brightness coding: one bottom-up process which is stimulus energy driven and responds fast, and another process which may be broadly characterized as top-down or lateral, is context driven, and responds slower. For both processes, we found that V4 might play a critical role in dynamically integrating luminances into brightness perception, a finding that is consistent with the view of V4 as a bottom-up and top-down integration complex. 7 p.

System logs provide invaluable resources for understanding system behavior and detecting anomalies on high performance computing (HPC) systems. As HPC systems continue to grow in both scale and complexity, the sheer volume of system logs and the complex interaction among system components make the traditional manual problem diagnosis and even automated line-by-line log analysis infeasible or ineffective. In this paper, we present a System Log Event Block Detection (SLEBD) framework that identifies groups of log messages that follow certain sequence but with variations, and explore these event blocks for event-based system behavior analysis and anomaly detection. Compared with the existing approaches that analyze system logs line by line, SLEBD is capable of characterizing system behavior and identifying intricate anomalies at a higher (i.e., event) level. We evaluate the performance of SLEBD by using syslogs collected from production supercomputers. Experimental results show that our framework and mechanisms can process streaming log messages, efficiently extract event blocks and effectively detect anomalies, which enables system administrators and monitoring tools to understand and process system events in real time. Additionally, we use the identified event blocks and explore deep learning algorithms to model and classify event sequences.

System logs provide invaluable resources for understanding system behavior and detecting anomalies on high performance computing (HPC) systems. As HPC systems continue to grow in both scale and complexity, the sheer volume of system logs and the complex interaction among system components make the traditional manual problem diagnosis and even automated line-by-line log analysis infeasible or ineffective. In this paper, we present a System Log Event Block Detection (SLEBD) framework that identifies groups of log messages that follow certain sequence but with variations, and explore these event blocks for event-based system behavior analysis and anomaly detection. Compared with the existing approaches that analyze system logs line by line, SLEBD is capable of characterizing system behavior and identifying intricate anomalies at a higher (i.e., event) level. We evaluate the performance of SLEBD by using syslogs collected from production supercomputers. Experimental results show that our framework and mechanisms can process streaming log messages, efficiently extract event blocks and effectively detect anomalies, which enables system administrators and monitoring tools to understand and process system events in real time. Additionally, we use the identified event blocks and explore deep learning algorithms to model and classify event sequences.

Prosthetic devices are not meeting the needs of people with upper limb amputations. Due to controlsidelimitations, prosthetic wrists cannot yet be fully articulated. This study sought to determine which wrist motions users felt were most important for completing activities of daily living. We specifically invstigated whether adding a combinationof flexion and deviation known as the Dart Thrower's Motion to a prosthetic wrist would help improve functionality.Fifteen participants with a trans-radial amputation, aged 25-64 years, who use a prosthesis completed an online survey and answered interview questions to determine which types of tasks pose particular challenges. Participants were asked what kinds of improvements they would like to see in a new prosthesis. A subset of five participants were interviewed in-depth to provide further information about difficulties they face using their device.The survey showed that participants had difficulty performing activities of daily living that involve a combination of wrist flexion and deviation known as the "Dart Throwers Motion". Interview responses confirmed that users have difficulty performing these tasks, especially those that require tools. Additionally, users said that they were more interested in having flexion and deviation than rotation in a prosthetic wrist.This research indicates that including the Dart Thrower's Motion in future designs of prosthetic wrists would improve these devices and people with upper limb amputations would be excited to see this improvement in their devices. Implications for Rehabilitation • Over one third of people with upper limb amputations do not use a prosthesis because prosthetic devices do not meet their needs.• The number of motions possible in state of the art prosthetic devices is limited by the small number of control sites available.• The Dart Thrower?s Motion is a wrist motion used for many activities of daily living but unavailable in commercial prosthetics leading many prosthetics users to have difficulty with these tasks.• Prosthetic use, and therefore quality of life, could be improved by including the Dart Thrower's Motion in a prosthesis.

This paper presents a two-stage optimization approach to mitigate the rapid voltage fluctuations and minimize the power losses of distribution systems due to the high penetration of photovoltaic (PV) generation. The first stage is a day-ahead optimal strategy which aims to minimize the total voltage deviations and power losses within the constraints of the daily maximum allowable number of operations of the on-load tap changers (OLTCs) and shunt capacitors (SCs). The second stage is a real-time inverter reactive power control to compensate for the uncertainties of PV output and load demand. As a part of the real-time control, an artificial neural network (ANN) approach is used to estimate the system states. In both stages, the optimization problems are formulated as nonlinear optimization problems and solved with direct search algorithms. The real-time optimization method is tested using a Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) simulation platform. A modified IEEE 34-node test feeder is applied to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

In this paper, we present the Hardware-In-The-Loop (HIL) usage of a new simulation approach recently introduced by the authors and discuss the programmable logic interface required for the HIL simulation of high switching frequency power electronics converters. As a test case, we simulate a notional ship power system where one converter is externally controlled using the developed HIL simulation platform. The ship system is composed of eight converters all operating at 100kHz, the real-time simulation is performed using a FPGA-based platform and a 50 nanosecond simulation time step.

Peters et al. use intracranial recordings and machine-learning techniques to show that human subjects under-use decision-incongruent evidence in the brain when computing perceptual confidence.

In this paper, the use of Power Hardware-in-the-Loop (PHIL) is presented for analyzing, testing, and characterizing a commercial single-phase grid-tied PV micro-inverter in a laboratory environment. The PHIL set-up used is composed of a real-time system (RTS), device (micro-inverter) under test (DUT), four-quadrant amplifiers for grid simulation, solar array simulator (SAS), and data acquisition hardware and software. Using this set-up, the micro-inverter operation was tested against manufacturer claims of performance, IEEE 1547, and additional operating conditions so to fully characterize the device.

Motion Induced Blindness (MIB) is a well-established visual phenomenon whereby highly salient targets disappear when viewed against a moving background mask. No research has yet explored whether contracting and expanding optic flow can also trigger target disappearance. We explored MIB using mask speeds corresponding to driving at 35, 50, 65 and 80 km/h in simulated forward (expansion) and backward (contraction) motion as well as 2-D radial movement, random, and static mask motion types. Participants (n = 18) viewed MIB targets against masks with different movement types, speed, and target locations. To understand the relationship between saccades, pupil response and perceptual disappearance, we ran two additional eye-tracking experiments (n = 19). Target disappearance increased significantly with faster mask speeds and upper visual field target presentation. Simulated optic flow and 2-D radial movement caused comparable disappearance, and all moving masks caused significantly more disappearance than a static mask. Saccades could not entirely account for differences between conditions, suggesting that self-motion optic flow does cause MIB in an artificial setting. Pupil analyses implied that MIB disappearance induced by optic flow is not subjectively salient, potentially explaining why MIB is not noticed during driving. Potential implications of MIB for driving safety and Head-Up-Display (HUD) technologies are discussed.

Background A marked response to dopamine replacement therapy is important in supporting a diagnosis of idiopathic Parkinson9s disease (PD). The aim of the study was to compare PD patients9 subjective rating of improvement with measured improvement on a number of scales. Methods People with clinically defined PD were identified from a prospective long term follow-up study of incident parkinsonian patients. Changes in the Unified Parkinson9s Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) (activities of daily living and motor subsections), timed tests and Parkinson9s Disease Questionnaire, full version, between assessments immediately before starting adequate dopamine replacement and the two subsequent follow-up assessments (mean 6 and 12 months after baseline) were calculated. These were compared with the patients9 own subjective ratings of improvement (nil, slight, moderate, good, excellent). Results 133 patients were included (mean age 71 years, 56% men). Thirty-eight patients were treated with a dopamine agonist and 95 with l-dopa (median l-dopa equivalent dose 300 mg). Most patients showed improvements in their measured scores but there was no statistically significant association between these scores and the patient subjective response, except for the motor UPDRS at the first follow-up. A third of those who showed no improvement in their motor UPDRS at the first follow-up rated their improvement as moderate or better, while 29% of those whose motor UPDRS improved by over 50% said they had no or slight improvement. Conclusion PD patients9 subjective ratings of their degree of improvement often do not accurately reflect the degree of objective change in parkinsonian impairment or disability. Clinicians should record a simple measure of motor impairment before and after treatment to assess treatment response more accurately.

Background: Under-nutrition is a recognized non-motor symptom of Parkinson's disease (PD). The aim of this retrospective study was to conduct an audit of recorded weight loss prior to death in people with PD and to identify whether weight loss was a predictor of death. Methods: An audit of the medical records of people with PD was conducted. Patients were included if they were under the care of the North Tyneside General Hospital PD team, had a diagnosis of idiopathic PD, and died between 1 January 2008 and 31 December 2010. To assess whether there was a significant association between clinically significant weight loss and mortality, values of 5% and 10% weight loss from earliest available post-diagnosis baseline assessment were chosen as cut-offs. Results: Data were available on 55 patients. Although females were more likely to have 10% weight loss than men, the difference was not significant. The odds of a female with weight loss surviving beyond 1 year were 23.4 (95% confidence interval (CI) 3.9–139.9) times better than those of a male for 5% weight loss and 10.0 (95% CI 1.8–55.6) times better than those of a male for 10% weight loss. These results were significant. Conclusions: Outcomes for males with PD who have clinically important weight loss are poorer than for females. Nurses and other health workers should be aware of the need to monitor weight in people with PD.

One of the greatest challenges facing microbial fuel cells (MFCs) in large scale applications is the high cost of electrode material. We demonstrate here that recycled tire crumb rubber coated with graphite paint can be used instead of fine carbon materials as the MFC anode. The tire particles showed satisfactory conductivity after 2–4 layers of coating. The specific surface area of the coated rubber was over an order of magnitude greater than similar sized graphite granules. Power production in single chamber tire-anode air-cathode MFCs reached a maximum power density of 421 mW m−2, with a coulombic efficiency (CE) of 25.1%. The control graphite granule MFC achieved higher power density (528 mW m−2) but lower CE (15.6%). The light weight of tire particle could reduce clogging and maintenance cost but posts challenges in conductive connection. The use of recycled material as the MFC anodes brings a new perspective to MFC design and application and carries significant economic and environmental benefit potentials.

Schools today struggle to prepare students for the moral and performance character challenges they will face in the 21st Century. Whether it is bolstering academic performance, reducing dropout, or improving integrity and safety, developing the character and culture of excellence and ethics is a critical need of schools—and yet they must do so with limited time and money amid a sea of competing priorities and mandates, and without the aid of required curricula, training and coaching. In this article, we describe the Power2Achieve Program, a student-centered, teacher-delivered program for developing the character and culture needed for success in school, work and beyond. We lay out the key theoretical and practical features of the program, describe how it aligns with and enhances other current school improvement pedagogies, and present our research approach for continuous improvement and assessment of impact.

The first page of Millery Polyne’s new book opens with a disclaimer: “The title of this book may be misleading” (xi), he writes, and it is true. Despite the name, neither Polyne nor the 14 other co...

Social evaluative threat (SET) is a potent stressor in humans that causes autonomic changes, endocrine responses, and multiple health problems. Neuroimaging has recently begun to elucidate the brain correlates of SET, but as yet little is known about the mediating cortical-brainstem pathways in humans. This paper replicates and extends findings in a companion paper (Wager et al., 2009) using an independent cohort of participants and different image acquisition parameters. Here, we focused specifically on relationships between the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), midbrain periaqueductal gray (PAG), and heart rate (HR). We applied multi-level path analysis to localize brain mediators of SET effects on HR and self-reported anxiety. HR responses were mediated by opposing signals in two distinct sub-regions of the MPFC—increases in rostral dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (rdACC) and de-activation in ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). In addition, HR responses were mediated by PAG. Additional path analyses provided support for two cortical–subcortical pathways: one linking vmPFC, PAG, and HR, and another linking rdACC, thalamus, and HR. PAG responses were linked with HR changes both before and during SET, whereas cortical regions showed stronger connectivity with HR during threat. Self-reported anxiety showed a partially overlapping, but weaker, pattern of mediators, including the vmPFC, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, and lateral frontal cortex, as well as substantial individual differences that were largely unexplained. Taken together, these data suggest pathways for the translation of social threats into both physiological and experiential responses, and provide targets for future research on the generation and regulation of emotion.