Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessment in Music Therapy with Clients Suffering from Dementia

"Music therapy for demented people with behaviour disturbances Kridthuset, Gentofte Municipality's Residential Home for Elderly People". This was the title of a project, which I conducted in 2000 and completed with the publication of a report (MunkMadsen, 2001a). This project was made possible with financial support from Marie Dubronn Hoff Fund. The report describes the background, methodologies and results of the project. In addition, there is an appendix with case studies of 10 individual musical therapies. In connection to the abovementioned project I have developed an assessment model to systematise the observations in music therapy with people suffering from dementia. I am hereby describing the model's structure and application. A music therapy assessment protocol with demented clients must in most situations, stretch over a minimum of 3-4 sessions. Objectives of such an assessment could be: ■ to find out the client's resources • to pinpoint the problem areas and try out possibilities to help the consequential emerging drawbacks ■ to try out possibilities to compensate the reduced or lost functions • to find music therapy techniques that can be applied in a long term musical therapy progress or in a daily nursing situation. It is also possible that music therapy assessment could be integrated as part of the diagnostic process. However, I have no personal experience in this aspect. The assessment model presented here is meant to be used by the practising music therapist, partly as a kind of "inner reminder" during a music therapy session, partly as a structure for memorandum after the sessions. It can be used when qualitative observation/description of both the client and the music therapy process is desired. The characterisations in the model should, for instance, help to describe the character of a condition or activity, its quality, coherence, transformation, as well as the clients' reactions. This kind of descriptive assessment can also be used to identify areas where quantitative observation is desired. An example could be to research prevalence of eye contact during singing in comparison with during interview. Therefore, video recording or the participation of an outside observer is necessary.
H∞ state feedback controller design with mixed frequency specifications

This paper is concerned with the H∞ control problem for linear continuous-time systems in mixed frequencies ranges. A state feedback controller is designed such that the resulting closed-loop system is asymptotically stable and satisfies entire frequency and finite frequency H∞ performance respectively. Then a sufficient condition for the existence of the controller is derived in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Compared with the existing result, our design procedure reduces the conservatism and improves the performance in the multi-objective setting. Finally a numerical example is given to illustrate the effect of the proposed method.
The Overview of Meningitis and its Treatment Corresponding

Meningitis is generally an infection involving the inflammation of the meninges which is becoming an increasingly common non-infectious disease. Patients with meningitis must be given treatment within a rapid period of time as delay in treatment causes various serious complications. Studies have shown that meningitis has a high mortality rate in most countries and therefore, in our research paper, we aim to discover and explore more about the causative agents of meningitis, both classic signs and uncommon symptoms of meningitis, ways to diagnose infection of meningitis, risk factors for meningitis and also the therapies available to combat meningitis. In order to achieve the objectives above, we took several approaches to gain answers and explanations to our questions. First of all, we derived many research journals from the internet that were related to the field of our study. We analyzed the findings of these medical journals and focused on the selected topics we were assigned to. Also, we searched for related information from other published medical books. Upon completion of all the procedures, we found that meningitis could be classified into several groups based on their causative microorganisms. We also discovered that the empiric therapy for most meningitis cases were mostly third generation antibiotics as they could penetrate the CSF. Lumbar puncture may also be conducted to discover the causative agent of meningitis in a patient. Also, there were many drugs in the market available for the treatment of meningitis. This discovery enables us to determine the drugs for empirical therapy of meningitis and the specific drugs used after the causative agent of meningitis has been identified. In conclusion, this research study has increased our understanding of meningitis.
Age of blood and adverse outcomes in a maternity population

In recent times there has been debate around whether longer storage time of blood is associated with increased rates of adverse outcomes after transfusion. It is unclear whether results focused on cardiac or critically ill patients apply to a maternity population. This study investigates whether older blood is associated with increased morbidity and readmission in women undergoing obstetric transfusion.
An Rfmems Switched Capacitor Array for a Tunable Band Pass Filter

In this paper, we present an RFMEMS switched capacitor array, which is proposed as a RF component to achieve various kinds of tunable RF filters. Our RFMEMS switched capacitor array consists of RFMEMS direct contact switches and metal-insulator-metal capacitors. In order to obtain reliable capacitors, the metal sacrificial layer for the RFMEMS switch fabrication is also applied to the capacitor implementation. We have achieved a C- to Ku-band tunable band pass filter by using the RFMEMS switched capacitor array. The capacitance of capacitor is designed corresponding to each tuning state of the band pass filter, which is selected by the RFMEMS switch operation. The insertion losses of the band pass filter were 7.1dB, 4.9 dB and 6.2 dB at 8 GHz, 12 GHz and 16 GHz, respectively.
Security of Attachment and the Social Development of Cognition. Essays in Developmental Psychology.

The Origins of Bowlby's Attachment Theory. Security of Attachment: Correlates and Consequences. Security of Attachment and Early Cognitive Development. Is Security of Attachment Related to an Infant's Style of Language Acquisition? Symbolic Play and Security: A Meeting of Minds? Security of Attachment and Maternal Sensitivity Within a Tutoring Context. Security of Attachment and the Understanding of Other Minds. Implications and Applications.
"All roads lead to Rome": optimistic recovery for distributed iterative data processing

Executing data-parallel iterative algorithms on large datasets is crucial for many advanced analytical applications in the fields of data mining and machine learning. Current systems for executing iterative tasks in large clusters typically achieve fault tolerance through rollback recovery. The principle behind this pessimistic approach is to periodically checkpoint the algorithm state. Upon failure, the system restores a consistent state from a previously written checkpoint and resumes execution from that point. We propose an optimistic recovery mechanism using algorithmic compensations. Our method leverages the robust, self-correcting nature of a large class of fixpoint algorithms used in data mining and machine learning, which converge to the correct solution from various intermediate consistent states. In the case of a failure, we apply a user-defined compensate function that algorithmically creates such a consistent state, instead of rolling back to a previous checkpointed state. Our optimistic recovery does not checkpoint any state and hence achieves optimal failure-free performance with respect to the overhead necessary for guaranteeing fault tolerance. We illustrate the applicability of this approach for three wide classes of problems. Furthermore, we show how to implement the proposed optimistic recovery mechanism in a data flow system. Similar to the Combine operator in MapReduce, our proposed functionality is optional and can be applied to increase performance without changing the semantics of programs. In an experimental evaluation on large datasets, we show that our proposed approach provides optimal failure-free performance. In the absence of failures our optimistic scheme is able to outperform a pessimistic approach by a factor of two to five. In presence of failures, our approach provides fast recovery and outperforms pessimistic approaches in the majority of cases.
Endothelin-1 receptor blockade induces upregulation of renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system expression in terms of blood pressure regulation

Objective. To compare the level of expression of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS) in mice with or without the endothelin-1 receptor antagonist bosentan and to examine the potential value in blood pressure regulation. Materials and methods. Bosentan (10 mg/kg/d) and placebo were given to two groups of male C57BL/6 mice (n=5) from ages 6 to 12 weeks. The mRNAs of liver, kidney and lung were isolated for Northern blot analysis. A further 15 male C57BL/6 mice were divided into three groups (n=5): mice in group A were given the angiotensin II type 1 receptor blocker valsartan (10 mg/kg/d); mice in group B were given bosentan (10 mg/kg/d); and mice in group C were given both valsartan and bosentan (10 mg/ kg/d for each drug). All mice were administered the drugs from 6 to 12 weeks of age and had their systolic blood pressure (SBP) measured at the end of the drug treatments. Results. Northern blot analysis demonstrated that the expression levels of angiotensinogen in liver (p=0.0126), renin in kidney (p=0.002), and angiotensin-converting enzyme in lung (p=0.0041) were upregulated in mice treated with bosentan. No difference in SBP was found among the groups before drug administration. Six weeks after monotherapy with valsartan, SBP was slightly lowered (126±2 vs. 122±3 mmHg, p=0.0381). Monotherapy with bosentan also had a small effect on SBP (126±2 vs. 122±3 mmHg, p=0.0381), whereas dual blockade with valsartan and bosentan significantly lowered SBP (127±3 vs. 103±3 mmHg, p<0.001). Conclusions. We conclude that RAAS components are upregulated under endothelin blockade. Dual blockade of the RAAS and endothelin system is beneficial for blood pressure control.
A particle filter based fusion framework for video-radio tracking in smart spaces

One of the main issues for Ambient Intelligence (AmI) systems is to continuously localize the user and to detect his/her identity in order to provide dedicated services. A video-radio fusion methodology, relying on the Particle Filter algorithm, is here proposed to track objects in a complex extensive environment, exploiting the complementary benefits provided by both systems. Visual tracking commonly outperforms radio localization in terms of precision but it is inefficient because of occlusions and illumination changes. Instead, radio measurements, gathered by a user's radio device, are unambiguously associated to the respective target through the "virtual" identity (i.e. MAC/IP addresses). The joint usage of the two data typologies allows a more robust tracking and a major flexibility in the architectural setting up of the AmI system. The method has been extensively tested in a simulated and off-line framework and on real world data proving its effectiveness.
A Novel Approach for Speeding Up RBF-Based Interpolation Methods

A popular and effective method for interpolation of data is by means of radial basis functions, but the most significant drawback of this method, which made researchers unwilling to use it for practical purposes, is its severe computational cost. Introduction of different methods by the researchers active in this field, however, has alleviated this problem. This paper presents a new method for reducing the computational cost of radial basis function interpolation, which is intrinsically different from those in common use (such as center reduction and fast multipole method), and can actually be regarded as a divide and conquer solution. Also, some experiments are provided which demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed approach.
Monitoring and assessing the use of ICT in education

This chapter documents how Australia has had an increasingly complex perspective on the broad issue of monitoring and assessing the use of technology in education. In particular, the Australian experience documents how to monitor technology use in schools in the context of a complex governance system, as a true recognition of the variance in scope and depth that technology-based innovations have across schools and territories. In addition, the chapter elaborates how Australia is addressing the need for substantial progress in the collection of evidence concerning how young people become equipped with digital literacy skills and, in a broader sense, with 21st century skills.
A statistical approach to root system classification

Plant root systems have a key role in ecology and agronomy. In spite of fast increase in root studies, still there is no classification that allows distinguishing among distinctive characteristics within the diversity of rooting strategies. Our hypothesis is that a multivariate approach for “plant functional type” identification in ecology can be applied to the classification of root systems. The classification method presented is based on a data-defined statistical procedure without a priori decision on the classifiers. The study demonstrates that principal component based rooting types provide efficient and meaningful multi-trait classifiers. The classification method is exemplified with simulated root architectures and morphological field data. Simulated root architectures showed that morphological attributes with spatial distribution parameters capture most distinctive features within root system diversity. While developmental type (tap vs. shoot-borne systems) is a strong, but coarse classifier, topological traits provide the most detailed differentiation among distinctive groups. Adequacy of commonly available morphologic traits for classification is supported by field data. Rooting types emerging from measured data, mainly distinguished by diameter/weight and density dominated types. Similarity of root systems within distinctive groups was the joint result of phylogenetic relation and environmental as well as human selection pressure. We concluded that the data-define classification is appropriate for integration of knowledge obtained with different root measurement methods and at various scales. Currently root morphology is the most promising basis for classification due to widely used common measurement protocols. To capture details of root diversity efforts in architectural measurement techniques are essential.
EXPLORING THE POTENTIAL OF ART-BASED EDUCATION FOR ADOLESCENTS WITH LEARNING DISABILITIES: A CASE STUDY OF ENGAGEMENT IN LEARNING THROUGH THE ARTS

Title of Document: EXPLORING THE POTENTIAL OF ARTBASED EDUCATION FOR ADOLESCENTS WITH LEARNING DISABILITIES: A CASE STUDY OF ENGAGEMENT IN LEARNING THROUGH THE ARTS Golnar Abedin, Doctor of Philosophy, 2010 Directed By: Professor Carol Anne Spreen, Department of Leadership, Foundations, & Policy, University of Virginia The purpose of this study was to explore the benefits of arts-based education for adolescents with learning disabilities (LD) placed in an inclusion program. The goal was to examine the potential of arts education as an inclusive curricular component that enhances students’ engagement in learning. The study is framed within the education policy context in which many LD adolescents are at risk of dropping out of school due to the large gap between their basic skills and the expectations of standards-based curriculum. A quality arts program at a public charter school was chosen as the site for this case study that involved investigating seven LD adolescents’ engagement in their music and drama classes during an eight-week curriculum unit through qualitative research methods. Based on the application of the social-constructivist theoretical framework, students’ individual learning profiles, as well as environmental aspects of learning in the arts such as teachers’ pedagogical styles and the classroom context informed the findings of this study. Students’ narrative accounts regarding their experiences in arts education classrooms served as the primary source of information for the themes in the findings. Interviews with parents, teachers, and the school director were used to gain a comprehensive understanding of students’ strengths and weaknesses in learning and to gain insights into the place of the arts in their overall educational opportunities. Qualitative methods of analysis were used to derive three over-arching themes based on students’ experiences learning in the arts. The themes included 1. ) “It feels like you open up to yourself,” (The Importance of Nonverbal, Embodied Engagement in Learning); 2. ) “You get to create what’s your own;” “it has some thought part of it centered near you,” (Student Ownership of the Learning Process); 3. ) “In arts there is no wrong answer;” “it’s a safer social environment,” (Social and Environmental Context of Learning). These themes showed the importance of successful learning experiences for adolescents with LD within a diverse school curriculum that offers them multiple modes of engagement and expression. Participation in arts education classes enhanced LD students' self-efficacy beliefs and motivation, providing them with inclusive and meaningful educational opportunities. EXPLORING THE POTENTIAL OF ART-BASED EDUCATION FOR ADOLESCENTS WITH LEARNING DISABILITIES: A CASE STUDY OF ENGAGEMENT IN LEARNING THROUGH THE ARTS
When to Use Linear Models for Color Calibration

With the advent of vector-space approaches, linear estimation techniques can be used in various ways for different imaging scenarios. We compare two methods for constructing linear models for surface reflectance spectra, the PrincipalComponents Analysis (PCA) and the One-Mode Analysis (OMA) [1] applied in simulating image capture under a number of realistic lighting conditions. We demonstrate that successfully using such methods depends on the exact problem at hand.
Modulated dispersion explains changes in arrhythmia vulnerability during premature stimulation of the heart.

BACKGROUND Previously, we have shown that a premature stimulus can significantly modulate spatial gradients of ventricular repolarization (ie, modulated dispersion), which result from heterogeneous electrophysiological properties between cells. The role modulated dispersion may play in determining electrical instability in the heart is unknown. METHODS AND RESULTS To determine if premature stimulus-induced changes in repolarization are a mechanism that governs susceptibility to cardiac arrhythmias, optical action potentials were recorded simultaneously from 128 ventricular sites (1 cm2) in 8 Langendorff-perfused guinea pig hearts. After baseline pacing (S1), a single premature stimulus (S2) was introduced over a range of S1S2 coupling intervals. Arrhythmia vulnerability after each premature stimulus was determined by measurement of a modified ventricular fibrillation threshold (VFT) during the T wave of each S2 beat (ie, S2-VFT). As the S1S2 interval was shortened to an intermediate value, spatial gradients of repolarization and vulnerability to fibrillation decreased by 51+/-9% (mean+/-SEM) and 73+/-45%, respectively, compared with baseline levels. As the S1S2 interval was further shortened, repolarization gradients increased above baseline levels by 54+/-30%, which was paralleled by a corresponding increase (37+/-8%) in vulnerability. CONCLUSIONS These data demonstrate that modulation of repolarization gradients by a single premature stimulus significantly influences vulnerability to ventricular fibrillation. This may represent a novel mechanism for the formation of arrhythmogenic substrates during premature stimulation of the heart.
Agendas and Instability in American Politics

Draft chapter for inclusion in The Oxford Handbook of the Classics of Public Policy and Administration, edited by Steven Balla, Martin Lodge and Edward Page, under contract with Oxford University Press. The twenty or so years since its first publication of Agendas and Instability in American Politics by Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones presents a timely opportunity to review the classic status of the book at it moves from being an innovative approach in public policy to one that is introduced as part of the canon. To achieve this aim in this chapter, I elaborate the factors that made the book so important at the time it originally came out in print, in particular the way Baumgartner and Jones responded and reacted to the contemporary intellectual agenda, and also the readiness of scholars for a book that pushed forward the study of agenda setting. After presenting a summary of the book’s arguments and empirical work, I assess the value of the book for students and scholars of public policy reading it in any period.
Failure to thrive in a population context: two contrasting studies of feeding and nutritional status

Although failure to thrive (FTT) is generally thought to be a nutritional problem, dietary intake in children with FTT has been little researched. We describe two community-based studies of dietary intake and eating behaviour in FTT. The first study of ninety-seven children with FTT identified by population screening found that only a minority of case children were associated with neglect, organic illness or deprivation, even though dietary information suggested an underlying nutritional cause in the majority. Limited case-control data suggested significantly delayed weaning and less liking for food in general among the case children. The second study found diminished appetite, delayed progression onto solid foods and fewer foods eaten by forty-four children referred with FTT compared with forty-five controls, but was unable to detect a significant difference in energy intake, even allowing for varying body composition and other confounding variables. This study also revealed the bias introduced by recruiting case children by referral rather than screening, and that despite rigorous matching procedures the controls were not representative of the general population. These studies suggest a wide range of differences in eating behaviour and feeding patterns between children with FTT and controls, but suggest that measurements of nutrient totals may not be robust. Studies of FTT based on referred children can be misleading, as can comparison with controls, unless allowance can be made for important confounding social variables.
Anomaly Detection Through a Bayesian Support Vector Machine

This paper investigates the use of a one-class support vector machine algorithm to detect the onset of system anomalies, and trend output classification probabilities, as a way to monitor the health of a system. In the absence of “unhealthy” (negative class) information, a marginal kernel density estimate of the “healthy” (positive class) distribution is used to construct an estimate of the negative class. The output of the one-class support vector classifier is calibrated to posterior probabilities by fitting a logistic distribution to the support vector predictor model in an effort to manage false alarms.