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Designing an equally usable and emotionally appealing product remains a challenge for product developers, not least due to conflicting goals. Product developers need to constantly map the affective user requirements to the product, whereby the requirements for the emotional and usable product design often cannot be equally addressed. The systematic approach presented can help product developers in conflicting decision-making situations to represent these affective user requirements by selecting and prioritising context-relevant influencing factors using multi-criteria decision-making methods.
Leucine-rich glioma-inactivated 1-antibody-encephalitis is a treatable and potentially reversible cause of cognitive and psychiatric presentations, and may mimic cognitive decline, rapidly progressive dementia and complex psychosis in older patients. This aetiology is of immediate relevance given the alternative treatment pathway required, compared with other conditions presenting with cognitive deficits.
New statistical methodology, known as progression models for repeated measures (PMRM), can estimate the slowing of progression (percentage slowing or time delay) of Alzheimer’s disease from trial data on disease-modifying therapies. We compared the PMRM methodology with mixed models for repeated measures (MMRM) and Cox time-to-event analysis on simulated trial data with respect to their power and interpretability of estimates.
Methods
Two novel models were included: PMRM (estimating slowing of progression and allowing different rates across visits) and proportional-slowing PMRM. Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) Sum of Boxes score and progression to dementia as assessed by CDR global score were the primary outcomes for MMRM/PMRM and the Cox model, respectively. Subject-level placebo arm trajectories were jointly simulated based on estimated CDR mean trajectories and joint temporal correlation structure of 538 amyloid-positive patients with mild cognitive impairment who met typical disease-modifying trial inclusion criteria from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative study. Active arm trajectories were simulated to show an average 20 percent slowing of disease progression, compared with placebo, at each visit. We conducted 1,000 simulations across multiple scenarios, varying the number of patients per arm (200 to 700) and clinical trial duration (18 to 36 months).
Results
The power of PMRM models was greater than that of MMRM, and much greater than that of the Cox model whose power never exceeded 45 percent. PMRM models accurately estimated the underlying treatment effect (median 20% slowed progression, which translated to a delay in progression of 5 and 7 months at trial durations of 24 and 36 months, respectively), unlike quantifications of the MMRM (median estimated 25% reduction in decline), and the Cox model (median estimated hazard ratio of 0.9).
Conclusions
For disease-modifying therapies, PMRM estimates may have a more intuitive clinical interpretation in terms of delayed progression than MMRM or Cox models and enable a description of the amount of time spent in less severe disease stages. Among all the methods studied, PMRM offered the best combination of interpretability and power.
For any emerging pathogen, the preferred approach is to drive it to extinction with non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) or suppress its spread until effective drugs or vaccines are available. However, this might not always be possible. If containment is infeasible, the best people can hope for is pathogen transmission until population level immunity is achieved, with as little morbidity and mortality as possible.
Methods:
A simple computational model was used to explore how people should choose NPI in a non-containment scenario to minimize mortality if mortality risk differs by age.
Results:
Results show that strong NPI might be worse overall if they cannot be sustained compared to weaker NPI of the same duration. It was also shown that targeting NPI at different age groups can lead to similar reductions in the total number of infected, but can have strong differences regarding the reduction in mortality.
Conclusions:
Strong NPI that can be sustained until drugs or vaccines become available are always preferred for preventing infection and mortality. However, if people encounter a worst-case scenario where interventions cannot be sustained, allowing some infections to occur in lower-risk groups might lead to an overall greater reduction in mortality than trying to protect everyone equally.
SARS-CoV-2 rapidly spreads among humans via social networks, with social mixing and network characteristics potentially facilitating transmission. However, limited data on topological structural features has hindered in-depth studies. Existing research is based on snapshot analyses, preventing temporal investigations of network changes. Comparing network characteristics over time offers additional insights into transmission dynamics. We examined confirmed COVID-19 patients from an eastern Chinese province, analyzing social mixing and network characteristics using transmission network topology before and after widespread interventions. Between the two time periods, the percentage of singleton networks increased from 38.9$ \% $ to 62.8$ \% $$ (p<0.001) $; the average shortest path length decreased from 1.53 to 1.14 $ (p<0.001) $; the average betweenness reduced from 0.65 to 0.11$ (p<0.001) $; the average cluster size dropped from 4.05 to 2.72 $ (p=0.004) $; and the out-degree had a slight but nonsignificant decline from 0.75 to 0.63 $ (p=0.099). $ Results show that nonpharmaceutical interventions effectively disrupted transmission networks, preventing further disease spread. Additionally, we found that the networks’ dynamic structure provided more information than solely examining infection curves after applying descriptive and agent-based modeling approaches. In summary, we investigated social mixing and network characteristics of COVID-19 patients during different pandemic stages, revealing transmission network heterogeneities.
This paper investigates public attitudes towards emotional experiences in animals. We surveyed 1,000 members of the public to investigate how companion animal ownership affects the attribution of emotions to animals and beliefs about whether animals can grieve. Respondents who owned a companion animal were more likely to believe that some animals can experience grief compared with respondents that did not own a companion animal. The non-owning respondents were more likely to believe that animals do not experience emotions including: anxiety, distress or depression, do not show behavioural changes when they are experiencing grief and do not grieve as a result of separation from a conspecific. Our findings show that companion animal ownership plays a significant role in the public perception of the emotional experiences of animals and belief in the animals’ ability to grieve.
In this paper, I develop an analysis of the Italian syntax–prosody interface in Match Theory, revisiting three φ-diagnostics from previous work: word-final vowel deletion, stress retraction and final lengthening. I show that these processes sometimes diverge in their distribution, supporting the existence of two phrasal domains in Italian. These domains are analysed using prosodic recursion. I then develop a novel formulation of MatchXP, according to which only syntactic XPs with phonologically overt heads, whether lexical or functional, are visible to the syntax–prosody mapping. This formulation is argued to be superior to versions of MatchXP that only match lexical XPs or that attempt to match all XPs, at least in Italian, suggesting that implementation of syntax–prosody mapping constraints may be subject to cross-linguistic variation.
When the ticker tape was first invented in the 1860s, it promised a revolution in financial markets. Pricing information was now no longer solely the domain of the trading floor but was relayed continuously and simultaneously to ticker tapes long distances away from the stock exchange. Both nineteenth-century financiers, and the modern scholars who study them, have been enamored with the ticker tape and how it changed the way financial markets were perceived and experienced. However, a focus on how nineteenth-century financiers read and responded to the ticker tape has missed the real reordering of power that the ticker helped usher in. This article argues that between the 1860s and 1890s the London Stock Exchange and the Exchange Telegraph Company powerfully centralized their control over the distribution and transmission of financial information through the mundane infrastructures that underpinned the ticker tape system. Seeming technicalities, like the placement of batteries, the construction of electrical circuits, and the laying of wires and cables, were leveraged by these institutions to create a ticker tape system that distributed financial information unequally to financiers and investors throughout Britain. By the end of the nineteenth century, social and political questions about who should have access to financial information and markets, and on what terms, became helplessly intertwined with the mundane technicalities of the material infrastructures of modern finance.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic prompted universities across the United States to close campuses in Spring 2020. Universities are deliberating whether, when, and how they should resume in-person instruction in Fall 2020. In this essay, we discuss some practical considerations for the use of 2 potentially useful control strategies based on testing: (1) severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) testing followed by case-patient isolation and quarantine of close contacts, and (2) serological testing followed by an “immune shield” approach, that is, low social distancing requirements for seropositive persons. The isolation of case-patients and quarantine of close contacts may be especially challenging, and perhaps prohibitively difficult, on many university campuses. The “immune shield” strategy might be hobbled by a low positive predictive value of the tests used in populations with low seroprevalence. Both strategies carry logistical, ethical, and financial implications. The main nonpharmaceutical interventions will remain methods based on social distancing (eg, capping class size) and personal protective behaviors (eg, universal facemask wearing in public space) until vaccines become available, or unless the issues discussed herein can be resolved in such a way that using mass testing as main control strategies becomes viable.
Recent research about pedophilia suggested an association between pedophilia, neurocognitive disturbance and specific personality profiles. Especially neuropsychological functions associated with the prefrontal and motor processing loops showed to be impaired in pedophilia. But in most studies about pedophilia subjects were recruited from high security forensic hospitals. The results might therefore be influenced by selection bias. To overcome this bias we conducted a study that aimed to compare neurocognitive disturbance and specific personality profiles of pedophile sexual abusers, pedophile internet abusers and controls.
Methods
We included until now 5 male pedophile sexual abusers, 4 male pedophile internet abusers and 6 male control subjects. Subjects were matched for age and IQ. Personality profiles were assessed by SKID and MMPI. Response inhibition was tested in a classical Go/NoGo task.
Results
Assessments of personality profiles showed similar sub threshold profiles for the controls and the group of internet abusers while subjects from security forensic hospital setting fulfilled criteria of personality disorders. Accordingly showed the Go/NoGo task higher rates of failed response inhibition in the group of paedophilic subjects from high security forensic hospital setting and lower rates for pedophile internet abusers and/or controls.
Conclusions
Our preliminary data suggests that results of recent studies about neurocognitive disturbance and neuroimaging correlates of paedophilia might be influenced by selection bias and might rather reflect impairment of personality and social interaction in a broader sense. Future research about paedophilia should consequently aim to disentangle personality impairment from sexual orientation.
Deviant sexual preference is known as a risk factor for child abuse. Most often the examination of sexual preferences relies on interviews, self-ratings like the Multiphasic Sex Inventory or rather invasive methods like phallometry respectively the so called Abel-Screen, derived from the latest. The computer based Implicit Association Test (IAT) has proven its validity in several fields like sexism or racism by measuring the subjects attitude to certain association. Gray et al. from Cardiff published in 2005 significant associations between children and sex in pedophiles.
Methods
As part of a larger study about visual erotic stimulation of child abusers and internet sex offenders, we conducted the IAT in two different versions with visual stimuli on both child abusers and internet sex offenders as well as on male and female comparison samples. Psychological and Personality profiles were assessed by HAWIE, WCST - 64, SKID, MMPI, MSI, IPO and SCL-90 R.
Results
Preliminary data suggests discriminant validity of the IAT concerning sexual preference. In addition, tests for frontal inhibition show poor performance of child abusers in contrast to controls and internet sex offenders.
Conclusions
Our preliminary data about the IAT suggests that both child abusers and internet sex offenders display other associations on visual erotic stimulations than the comparison sample. Further research about deviant sexual preferences should take the impact of cognitive processes into consideration.
Etymologically related, the concepts of terroir and territoriality display divergent cultural histories. While one designates the palatable characteristics of place as a branded story of geographic distinction, the other imbues the soil with political meaning. This paper traces the production of eno-locality in a contested space on both sides of the Green Line in Israel/Palestine. The case of the Yatir award-winning winery shows how terroir and territory are blended in the political economy and cultural politics of colonial place-making. Located on a multiscalar frontier—climatic, geopolitical, and viticultural—Yatir Winery positions itself simultaneously within the Mediterranean transnational landscape and in a biblical site of historical authenticity. Enacting strategic regimes of signification to target the increasing demand for high-end wines on both the global and local markets, it makes a claim for place, while appropriating Palestinian land and redefining ancient Jewish heritage. The result articulates a settler colonial landscape whose symbolic and material transformations are reflected in the Israeli search for rooted identity. Analytically, we explore the power of border and frontier wines to reconfigure the differences between New World and Old World paradigms. We conclude by outlining a comparative framework of the charged relations between terroir and territory that articulates the nexus between border typologies and the colonial politics of wine.
Modern telecommunications are moving towards (massive) multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems in 5th generation (5G) technology, increasing the dimensionality of the systems dramatically. In this paper, the impairments of radio frequency (RF) power amplifiers (PAs) in a 3 × 3 MIMO system are compensated in both the time and the frequency domains. A three-dimensional (3D) time-domain memory polynomial-type model is proposed as an extension of conventional 2D models. Furthermore, a 3D frequency-domain technique is formulated based on the proposed time-domain model to reduce the dimensionality of the model, while preserving the performance in terms of model errors. In the 3D frequency-domain technique, the bandwidth of the system is split into several narrow sub-bands, and the parameters of the model are estimated for each sub-band. This approach requires less computational complexity, and also the procedure of the parameters estimation for each sub-band can be implemented independently. The device-under-test consists of three RF PAs including input and output cross-talk channels. The proposed techniques are evaluated in both behavioral modeling and digital pre-distortion (DPD) perspectives. The experimental results show that the proposed DPD technique can compensate the errors of non-linearity and memory effects in the both time and frequency domains.
Environmental factors such as sunshine hours, temperature and UV radiation (UVR) are known to influence seasonal fluctuations in vitamin D concentrations. However, currently there is poor understanding regarding the environmental factors or individual characteristics that best predict neonatal 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) concentrations. The aims of this study were to (1) identify environmental and individual determinants of 25(OH)D concentrations in newborns and (2) investigate whether environmental factors and individual characteristics could be used as proxy measures for neonatal 25(OH)D concentrations. 25-Hydroxyvitamin D3 (25(OH)D3) was measured from neonatal dried blood spots (DBS) of 1182 individuals born between 1993 and 2002. Monthly aggregated data on daily number of sunshine hours, temperature and UVR, available from 1993, were retrieved from the Danish Meteorological Institute. The individual predictors were obtained from the Danish National Birth register, and Statistics Denmark. The optimal model to predict 25(OH)D3 concentrations from neonatal DBS was the one including the following variables: UVR, temperature, maternal education, maternal smoking during pregnancy, gestational age at birth and parity. This model explained 30 % of the variation of 25(OH)D3 in the neonatal DBS. Ambient UVR in the month before the birth month was the best single-item predictor of neonatal 25(OH)D3, accounting for 24 % of its variance. Although this prediction model cannot substitute for actual blood measurements, it might prove useful in cohort studies ranking individuals in groups according to 25(OH)D3 status.
Studies have suggested that vitamin D status at birth may be associated with a range of neonatal outcomes. The aim of this study was to assess the association between neonatal 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 (25(OH)D3) concentration and gestational age, birth weight, Ponderal Index and size for gestational age. Neonatal capillary blood stored as dried blood spots was used to assess 25(OH)D3 concentrations among 2686 subjects selected from a random population sub-sample of individuals, born in Denmark from 1 May 1981 to 31 December 2002. There was an inverse association between 25(OH)D3 concentration and gestational age at birth of −0·006 (95 % CI −0·009, −0·003, P<0·001) weeks of gestation per 1 nmol/l increase in 25(OH)D3 concentration. An inverted U-shaped association between 25(OH)D3 and birth weight and Ponderal Index (P=0·04) was found, but no association with size for gestational age was shown. This study suggests that neonatal 25(OH)D3 concentration is associated with anthropometric measures at birth known to be correlated with many subsequent health outcomes such as obesity and type 2 diabetes.
The twenty-first Louis Blériot Lecture was given in Paris on 5th April 1968 under the auspices of L’Association Françaises des Ingénieurs et Techniciens de L'Aéronautique et L'Espace. The lecture “Some Thoughts about the Future of European Aeronautics” by Handel Davies, CB, MSc, CEng, FRAeS, FAIAA, was read on his behalf in French by General Lecamus, FRAeS. The Lecture was attended by the President, Mr. M. B. Morgan, CB, MA, FRAeS, the Secretary of the Society, Dr. A. M. Ballantyne, OBE, TD, PhD, by several members of Council and a large and distinguished French audience.
The Chair was taken by Monsieur Robert Blum, President of AFITAE. Following the lecture a dinner was given by AFITAE.
The paper presents a two-dimensional (2D) extended envelope memory polynomial model for concurrent dual-band radio frequency (RF) power amplifiers (PAs). The model is derived based on the physical knowledge of a dual-band RF PA. The derived model contains cross-modulation terms not included in previously published models; these terms are found to be of importance for both behavioral modeling and digital predistortion (DPD). The performance of the derived model is evaluated both as the behavioral model and DPD, and the performance is compared with state-of-the-art 2D-DPD and dual-band generalized memory polynomial (DB-GMP) models. Experimental result shows that the proposed model resulted in normalized mean square error of −51.7/−51.6 dB and adjacent channel error power ratio of −63.1/−63.4 dB, for channel 1/2, whereas the 2D-DPD resulted in the largest model error and DB-GMP resulted in model parameters that are three times more than those resulted with the proposed model with the same performance. As pre-distorter, the proposed model resulted in adjacent channel power ratio of −55.8/−54.6 dB for channel 1/2 and is 7–10 dB lower than those resulted with the 2D-DPD model and 2–4 dB lower compared with the DB-GMP model.