The development of widely accessible, effective psychological interventions for depression is a priority. This randomized trial provides the first controlled data on an innovative cognitive bias ...modification (CBM) training guided self-help intervention for depression.
One hundred and twenty-one consecutively recruited participants meeting criteria for current major depression were randomly allocated to treatment as usual (TAU) or to TAU plus concreteness training (CNT) guided self-help or to TAU plus relaxation training (RT) guided self-help. CNT involved repeated practice at mental exercises designed to switch patients from an unhelpful abstract thinking habit to a helpful concrete thinking habit, thereby targeting depressogenic cognitive processes (rumination, overgeneralization).
The addition of CNT to TAU significantly improved depressive symptoms at post-treatment mean difference on the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HAMD) 4.28, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.29-7.26, 3- and 6-month follow-ups, and for rumination and overgeneralization post-treatment. There was no difference in the reduction of symptoms between CNT and RT (mean difference on the HAMD 1.98, 95% CI -1.14 to 5.11), although CNT significantly reduced rumination and overgeneralization relative to RT post-treatment, suggesting a specific benefit on these cognitive processes.
This study provides preliminary evidence that CNT guided self-help may be a useful addition to TAU in treating major depression in primary care, although the effect was not significantly different from an existing active treatment (RT) matched for structural and common factors. Because of its relative brevity and distinct format, it may have value as an additional innovative approach to increase the accessibility of treatment choices for depression.
The therapeutic efficacy of anthracyclines relies on antitumor immune responses elicited by dying cancer cells. How chemotherapy-induced cell death leads to efficient antigen presentation to T cells, ...however, remains a conundrum. We found that intratumoral CD11c+CD11b+Ly6Chi cells, which displayed some characteristics of inflammatory dendritic cells and included granulomonocytic precursors, were crucial for anthracycline-induced anticancer immune responses. ATP released by dying cancer cells recruited myeloid cells into tumors and stimulated the local differentiation of CD11c+CD11b+Ly6Chi cells. Such cells efficiently engulfed tumor antigens in situ and presented them to T lymphocytes, thus vaccinating mice, upon adoptive transfer, against a challenge with cancer cells. Manipulations preventing tumor infiltration by CD11c+CD11b+Ly6Chi cells, such as the local overexpression of ectonucleotidases, the blockade of purinergic receptors, or the neutralization of CD11b, abolished the immune system-dependent antitumor activity of anthracyclines. Our results identify a subset of tumor-infiltrating leukocytes as therapy-relevant antigen-presenting cells.
► Anthracyclines induce tumor infiltration by CD11c+CD11b+Ly6Chi DC-like cells ► DC-like cell infiltration requires the release of ATP by dying tumor cells in vivo ► DC-like cells can present tumor antigens to T cells and vaccinate mice against cancer ► DC-like cells contain myeloid precursors and ATP favors their differentiation to DCs
Pupil size is correlated with a wide variety of important cognitive variables and is increasingly being used by cognitive scientists. Pupil data can be recorded inexpensively and non-invasively by ...many commonly used video-based eye-tracking cameras. Despite the relative ease of data collection and increasing prevalence of pupil data in the cognitive literature, researchers often underestimate the methodological challenges associated with controlling for confounds that can result in misinterpretation of their data. One serious confound that is often not properly controlled is
pupil foreshortening error (PFE)
—the foreshortening of the pupil image as the eye rotates away from the camera. Here we systematically map PFE using an artificial eye model and then apply a geometric model correction. Three artificial eyes with different fixed pupil sizes were used to systematically measure changes in pupil size as a function of gaze position with a desktop EyeLink 1000 tracker. A grid-based map of pupil measurements was recorded with each artificial eye across three experimental layouts of the eye-tracking camera and display. Large, systematic deviations in pupil size were observed across all nine maps. The measured PFE was corrected by a geometric model that expressed the foreshortening of the pupil area as a function of the cosine of the angle between the eye-to-camera axis and the eye-to-stimulus axis. The model reduced the root mean squared error of pupil measurements by 82.5 % when the model parameters were pre-set to the physical layout dimensions, and by 97.5 % when they were optimized to fit the empirical error surface.
Extended super BMS algebra of celestial CFT Fotopoulos, Angelos; Stieberger, Stephan; Taylor, Tomasz R. ...
The journal of high energy physics,
09/2020, Letnik:
2020, Številka:
9
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
A
bstract
We study two-dimensional celestial conformal field theory describing four- dimensional
N
=1 supergravity/Yang-Mills systems and show that the underlying symmetry is a supersymmetric ...generalization of BMS symmetry. We construct fermionic conformal primary wave functions and show how they are related via supersymmetry to their bosonic partners. We use soft and collinear theorems of supersymmetric Einstein-Yang- Mills theory to derive the OPEs of the operators associated to massless particles. The bosonic and fermionic soft theorems are shown to form a sequence under supersymmetric Ward identities. In analogy with the energy momentum tensor, the supercurrents are shadow transforms of soft gravitino operators and generate an infinite-dimensional super- symmetry algebra. The algebra of
sbms
4
generators agrees with the expectations based on earlier work on the asymptotic symmetry group of supergravity. We also show that the supertranslation operator can be written as a product of holomorphic and anti-holomorphic supercurrents.
In the United States, interest in urban agriculture has grown dramatically. While community gardens have sprouted across the landscape, home food gardens—arguably an ever-present, more durable form ...of urban agriculture—have been overlooked, understudied, and unsupported by government agencies, non-governmental organizations, and academics. In part a response to the invisibility of home gardens, this paper is a manifesto for their study in the Global North. It seeks to develop a multi-scalar and multidisciplinary research framework that acknowledges the garden’s social and ecological or material dimensions. Given the lack of existing research, we draw on the more extensive literature on home gardens in the South and community gardens in the North to develop a set of hypotheses about the social-ecological effects of urban home food gardens in the North. These gardens, we hypothesize, contribute to food security, community development, cultural reproduction, and resilience at multiple scales; conserve agrobiodiversity; and support urban biodiversity. They may also have negative ecological effects, such as stormwater nutrient loading. Because of the entanglement of the social and the ecological or material in the garden, we review three theoretical perspectives—social ecological systems theory, actor-network theory, and assemblage theory—that have been or could be applied to the multi-scalar and multidisciplinary study of the garden. We also review sampling and analytic methods for conducting home garden research. The paper concludes with a discussion of opportunities to extend the research agenda beyond descriptive analysis, the primary focus of garden research to date.
AIM: Enhanced management of areas important for marine biodiversity are now obligations under a range of international treaties. Tracking data provide unparalleled information on the distribution of ...marine taxa, but there are no agreed guidelines that ensure these data are used consistently to identify biodiversity hotspots and inform marine management decisions. Here, we develop methods to standardize the analysis of tracking data to identify sites of conservation importance at global and regional scales. LOCATION: We applied these methods to the largest available compilation of seabird tracking data, covering 60 species, collected from 55 deployment locations ranging from the poles to the tropics. METHODS: Key developments include a test for pseudo‐replication to assess the independence of two groups of tracking data, an objective approach to define species‐specific smoothing parameters (h values) for kernel density estimation based on area‐restricted search behaviour, and an analysis to determine whether sites identified from tracked individuals are also representative for the wider population. RESULTS: This analysis delineated priority sites for marine conservation for 52 of the 60 species assessed. We compiled 252 data groupings and defined 1052 polygons, between them meeting Important Bird and Biodiversity Area criteria over 1500 times. Other results showed 13% of data groups were inadequate for site definition and 10% showed some level of pseudo‐replication. Between 25 and 50 trips were needed within a data group for data to be considered at least partially representative of the respective population. MAIN CONCLUSIONS: Our approach provides a consistent framework for using animal tracking data to delineate areas of global conservation importance, allowing greater integration into marine spatial planning and policy. The approaches we describe are exemplified for pelagic seabirds, but are applicable to a range of taxonomic groups. Covering 4.3% of the oceans, the sites identified would benefit from enhanced protection to better safeguard the threatened species populations they contain.
Astronomical data does not always use Cartesian coordinates. Both all-sky observational data and simulations of rotationally symmetric systems, such as accretion and protoplanetary disks, may use ...spherical polar or other coordinate systems. Standard displays rely on Cartesian coordinates, but converting non-Cartesian data into Cartesian format causes distortion of the data and loss of detail. Here, I demonstrate a method using standard techniques from computer graphics that avoids these problems with three-dimensional data in arbitrary coordinate systems. The method adds minimum computational cost to the display process and is suitable for both realtime, interactive content, and producing fixed rendered images and videos. Proof-of-concept code is provided which works for data in spherical polar coordinates.
A reaction design is reported in which a substrate-bound chiral Lewis acid complex absorbs visible light and generates an excited state that directly reacts with a cosubstrate in a highly ...stereocontrolled fashion. Specifically, a chiral rhodium complex catalyzes visible-light-activated intermolecular 2+2 cycloadditions, providing a wide range of cyclobutanes with up to >99% ee and up to >20:1 d.r. Noteworthy is the ability to create vicinal all-carbon-quaternary stereocenters including spiro centers in an intermolecular fashion.
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