3855 research outputs found
Sort by
The Endless Knot Podcast
No full textA podcast about language, etymology, history, literature, and the unexpected connections between them
Social anxiety disorder in adolescence and implications for school settings
No full textSocial anxiety disorder (SAD), sometimes referred to as social phobia, is a disorder in which an
individual experiences fear of negative evaluation in social situations. The disorder has an early
age of onset with approximately 60% of individuals retrospectively reporting symptom onset
prior to 17 years of age (Rosellini et al., 2013). SAD is also common with a prevalence rate of
7% in community samples of children and adolescents (Beesdo-Baum, Knappe & Pine,
2009). Although SAD can be effectively treated, many adolescents do not seek help. As a result,
they experience impaired functioning in a number of life domains such as academics and
relationships that persist into adulthood and impact their quality of life. The education system
has the potential to address the promotion, prevention, and intervention of mental health
problems such as SAD at the classroom, school, and/or community level. Suggestions for policy
and practice are discussed
Parasocial and parasocial vicarious contact effects on euro Canadians’ views of aboriginal peoples
Get PDFResearch on indirect contact suggests that actual contact with a group may not be
necessary to promote positive intergroup attitudes. The ingroup, or group with which one
identifies, may have more favourable attitudes toward the outgroup, other group, after
indirect contact. The current study examined a video intervention that consisted of a
control video (no actors), parasocial video (ingroup and outgroup actor always separate),
and parasocial vicarious video (ingroup and outgroup actor interacting). Dependent
variables were outgroup attitudes and reported efficacy of future interactions with
Aboriginal Peoples by Euro-Canadian participants. As predicted, compared to those who
viewed the parasocial video, Euro-Canadian participants who viewed the parasocial
vicarious video reported more warmth towards Aboriginal peoples. Additionally,
compared to those who viewed the control video, Euro-Canadian participants who
viewed the parasocial and parasocial vicarious videos desired less social distance from
Aboriginal Peoples. Number of outgroup friendships, as well as quality of outgroup
friendships, interact with video manipulation on outgroup attitudes. Results offer
preliminary evidence for parasocial vicarious contact to influence positive intergroup
attitudes. Further, the data suggest additional benefits of parasocial vicarious contact over
and above parasocial contact for some groups
Anthropogenic impacts on life history traits on Eastern Chipmunks (Tamias striatus)
No full textUrban centers provide unique habitats for opportunistic animal species. However, conditions in urban habitats are inherently stressful and require specialized adaptations in resident animals. Eastern chipmunks are a generalist small rodent species common in a number of different habitat types. I examined differences in behavioural traits and stress levels (chapter one), as well as body condition and parasitism rates (chapter 2) between urban and natural populations of chipmunks. I tested the hypothesis that 1), chipmunks in urban habitats would show greater levels of boldness and exploratory behaviour, 2), urban chipmunks would show greater levels of stress reflected in greater cortisol concentrations in hair and feces, 3) urban chipmunks would have a relatively poor body condition due to poor quality food and competition in urban centers, and 4) urban chipmunks would show greater parasitism rates measured in greater oocyte prevalence, richness, and abundance from fecal samples. A total of 140 individual chipmunks (80 natural and 60 urban) were sampled from natural habitats in Algonquin Provincial Park and outside of Sudbury, and urban habitats in Huntsville and Sudbury Ontario. Differences in behavioural patterns suggest urban animals may be more habituated to human presence, while body condition was significantly superior in urban animals. However, cortisol measured from hair and feces, leukocyte concentrations measured from blood and parasitism impacts did not differ between individuals from the two habitat type. Overall, chipmunks in these urban habitats have a better body condition and are more habituated to human presence than their natural conspecifics
Parallelization of Molecular-Dynamics Simulations Using Tasks
No full textCopyright: © 2015 Materials Research SocietyThis article discusses novel algorithms for molecular-dynamics (MD) simulations with short-ranged forces on modern multi- and many-core processors like the Intel Xeon Phi. A task-based approach to the parallelization of MD on shared-memory computers and a tiling scheme to facilitate the SIMD vectorization of the force calculations is described. The algorithms have been tested with three different potentials and the resulting speed-ups on Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors are shown.Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) [grant number 371446-11], Laurentian Universit
Soins palliatifs pédiatriques : une recherche documentaire sur l’accompagnement du bébé, de l’enfant, de l’adolescent et de leur entourage
No full textLe soin palliatif pédiatrique est un phénomène récent. L’objectif de cette étude documentaire
systématique, est de démystifier en quelque sorte l’accompagnement des enfants mourants et leur
entourage. La revue de la littérature montre qu’il existe trois types d’accompagnement. Le premier
accompagnement se rapporte à la détresse des enfants, des parents et des frères et soeurs. Ils sont tous
angoissés devant une situation pénible qu’ils ne peuvent contrôler. Le deuxième accompagnement
s’inscrit dans la douleur des enfants mourants. Les parents plus particulièrement ont de la peine à voir
souffrir leur enfant, ils se sentent impuissants. Le troisième accompagnement concerne le deuil et le
processus de toutes les personnes impliquées dans cette situation. Les personnes de l’entourage
immédiat ne savent pas quoi penser, quoi dire et quoi faire pour accompagner les jeunes mourants et ils
vivent, à travers le deuil anticipé de l’enfant (que ce soit un bébé, un jeune enfant ou un adolescent),
leur propre mort
Predicting Alzheimer's disease by segmenting and classifying 3D-brain MRI images using clustering technique and SVM classifiers.
No full textAlzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia affecting seniors age 65 and over. When AD is suspected, the diagnosis is usually confirmed with behavioural assessments and cognitive tests, often followed by a brain scan. Advanced medical imaging and pattern recognition techniques are good tools to create a learning database in the first step and to predict the class label of incoming data in order to assess the development of the disease, i.e., the conversion from prodromal stages (mild cognitive impairment) to Alzheimer's disease.
Advanced medical imaging such as the volumetric MRI can detect changes in the size of brain regions due to the loss of the brain tissues. Measuring regions that atrophy during the progress of Alzheimer's disease can help neurologists in detecting and staging the disease.
In this thesis, we want to diagnose the Alzheimer’s disease from MRI images. We segment brain MRI images to extract the brain chambers. Then, features are extracted from the segmented area. Finally, a classifier is trained to differentiate between normal and AD brain tissues. We discuss an automatic scheme that reads volumetric MRI, extracts the middle slices of the brain region, performs 2-dimensional (volume slices) and volumetric segmentation methods in order to segment gray matter, white matter and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), generates a feature vector that characterizes this region, creates a database that contains the generated data, and finally classifies the images based on the extracted features. For our results, we have used the MRI data sets from the Alzheimer’s disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) database1.
We assessed the performance of the classifiers by using results from the clinical tests
The geochemical behavior of metalloids and their effect on the highly siderophile elements during the crystallization of a magmatic sulfide liquid in relation to the formation of Ni-Cu-PGE magmatic sulfide deposits
No full textThe highly siderophile elements (HSE), which include Re, Au and the platinum-group elements (PGE: Ru, Rh, Pd, Os, Ir, Pt) are of scientific and economic interest because they are tracers of geological processes (e.g., planetary differentiation) or have industrial or investment value. In most ore deposits, HSE are usually mined as by-products of Ni-Cu mineralization, such as those of the Sudbury district (Canada). Although at high temperature HSE are expected to be in lattice of sulfides they are usually found as discrete phases or platinum-group minerals (PGM). Many of PGM have metalloids (As, Se, Sb, Te and Bi) as essential constituents but, despite this relationship, the role of metalloids on HSE mineralization is still unclear. This dissertation documents the results of three experimental studies undertaken to investigate the effect of metalloids on the geochemistry of HSE. The first study examined whether the metalloids can mobilize HSE in an anhydrous environment. The results show that metalloids do not transport the HSE but also that Au, Pd and Pt can be efficiently fractionated from the other HSE and transported away from a sulfide assemblage through a relatively low-porosity, low-permeability medium in absence of hydrothermal fluids. The second study investigated the solubility of metalloids in monosulfide solid solution (mss) and intermediate solid solution (iss), to asses the conditions required for the formation of immiscible metalloid liquids and their effect on HSE partitioning. The results show that the metalloids form two separate phases, one that is As-rich and strongly sequestered Pt from the sulfides and another that is Bi-Te rich and affected mostly Pd and Au. The results also show that the other HSE (Ru, Rh, Re, Os, Ir) are largely unaffected by the presence of metalloids. In addition the results show that mss can dissolve significant amounts of metalloids (hundreds of ppm) before metalloid
V
saturation can occur. The third study constrained the geochemical behavior of metalloids and HSE in a pyrite-bearing sulfide system. The results show that Co-Ni-rich and HSE bearing pyrite can form during cooling of a sulfide melt and also that the HSE partition roughly equally between mss and pyrite, whereas Pd that partitions preferentially into mss and Au partitions preferentially into iss. Moreover, pyrite showed compositional zonation of many elements similar to that documented in natural pyrite samples that are also Co-rich and HSE-bearing. Thus, identification of such pyrite in natural assemblages is consistent with a magmatic origin
A comparative study of hand-held magnetic susceptibility instruments.
Get PDFA study to compare six magnetic susceptibility (MS) instruments (the KT-10 supplied by Terraplus Inc., RT-1 produced by Fugro, SM30 produced by ZH Instruments, MS2K & MS2C produced by Bartington Instruments and MPP-EMS2+ probe produced by GDD Instruments (denoted as GDD)) was conducted to characterize the equipment on the basis of their accuracies, resolution, reproducibility, ease of use and response to drift. MS data were collected on BQ core from 3 holes, NQ core samples, 2 rock samples and 2 calibration samples at the Vale office in Thompson, Manitoba. The results show that the GDD and MS2K are most affected by temporal drift whereas the KT-10 and MS2C gave more repeatable results. The MS2C, MS2K and GDD generally gave higher susceptibility readings than the rest of the meters. It was also noted that measurements on the flat face of half-core samples were always higher compared to measurements on their respective whole core samples. There is a correlation between instruments, frequencies and sensitivities, but no relationship between frequencies of operation and temporal drift.
Keyword