Unstable Backgrounds Research Articles

Diet structure and academic achievement of children from difficult families: a cross-sectional study of Chinese children

ObjectivesWelfare policy focuses on vulnerable populations, such as children with difficult family backgrounds. Education is a crucial way to reduce poverty. This study explored the relationship between children’s diet structure...

Coulomb branch of N=4 SYM and dilatonic scions in supergravity

We find a parametrically light dilaton in special confining theories in three dimensions. Their duals form what we call a scion of solutions to the supergravity associated with the large-$N$ limit of the Coulomb branch of the $\mathcal{N}=4$ Super-Yang-Mills theory. The supergravity description contains one scalar with bulk mass that saturates the Breitenlohner-Freedman unitarity bound. The new solutions are defined within supergravity, they break supersymmetry and scale invariance, and one dimension is compactified on a shrinking circle, yet they are completely regular. An approximate dilaton appears in the spectrum of background fluctuations (or composite states in the confining theory), and becomes parametrically light along a metastable portion of the scion of new supergravity solutions, in close proximity of a tachyonic instability. A first-order phase transition separates stable backgrounds, for which the approximate dilaton is not parametrically light, from metastable and unstable backgrounds, for which the dilaton becomes parametrically light, and eventually tachyonic.

Visual Fixations and Motion Sensitivity: Protocol for an Exploratory Study.

BackgroundMotion sensitivity after vestibular disorders is associated with symptoms of nausea, dizziness, and imbalance in busy environments. Dizziness and imbalance are reported in places such as supermarkets and shopping malls which have unstable visual backgrounds; however, the mechanism of motion sensitivity is poorly understood.ObjectiveThe main aim of this exploratory observational study is to investigate visual fixations and postural sway in response to increasingly complex visual environments in healthy adults and adults with motion sensitivity.MethodsA total of 20 healthy adults and 20 adults with motion sensitivity will be recruited for this study. Visual fixations, postural sway, and body kinematics will be measured with a mobile eye tracker device, force plate, and 3D motion capture system, respectively. Participants will be exposed to experimental tasks requiring visual fixation on letters, projected on a range of backgrounds on a large screen during quiet stance. Descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) will be calculated for each of the variables. One-way independent-measures analyses of variance will be performed to investigate the differences between groups for all variables.ResultsData collection was started in May 2019 and was completed by February 2020. It was approved by Health and Disability Ethics Committees, Ministry of Health, New Zealand on November 2, 2018 (Ethics ref: 18/CEN/193). We are currently processing the data and will begin data analysis in July 2020. We expect the results to be available for publication by the end of 2020. The trial was funded by the Neurology Special Interest Group, Physiotherapy New Zealand, and the Eisdell Moore Centre in November 2018.ConclusionsThis study will provide a detailed investigation of visual fixations in response to increasingly complex visual environments. Investigating characteristics of visual fixations in healthy adults and those with motion sensitivity will provide insight into this disabling condition and may inform the development of new intervention strategies which explicitly cater to the needs of this population.Trial RegistrationAustralian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry, ACTRN12619000254190; https://tinyurl.com/yxbn7nksInternational Registered Report Identifier (IRRID)PRR1-10.2196/16805

The disrupted sociologies of young people with harmful sexual behaviours

ABSTRACTFew studies, particularly few qualitative studies, have focused on the family and social contexts of young people with harmful sexual behaviours. This article, therefore, seeks to provide insight into the more detailed, lived experience of this group of young people. The article involved a thematic analysis of 117 cases, identified from nine services that work with children with sexual behaviour problems. While a number of young people were from stable backgrounds, others were from highly disrupted sociological situations characterised by chaotic families, erratic living situations, poor family relationships, unstable parental backgrounds, generalised neglect and abuse, sexual abuse and school/social problems. Many of these young people's lives appear to be characterised by varying degrees of liminality and chaos. Such chaos may not only be traumatic, it may potentially be traumagenic, and contribute to the emergence of sexual behaviour problems in some young people.

The Bordentown School as Institution and Idea: The Manual Training and Industrial School Honored Educational Priorities of Washington, Du Bois, and Dewey

Given its various accomplishments and distinctions, the Manual Training and Industrial School for Colored Youth in Bordentown, New Jersey (which existed from 1886-1955), is surprisingly little known in the state or among historians of education. A state-supported boarding school for boys and girls, it combined a solid academic program with practical work experience through a highly structured school day and a dedicated faculty that also lived on campus. Its mission was to direct students, many from unstable backgrounds, into stable jobs or further education. Though frequently called “Tuskegee of the North,” the school as led by long-time principal William R. Valentine was arguably influenced as much by John Dewey, who in a 1915 book about progressive education had praised another school Valentine headed earlier. As a meeting place for black cultural leaders in the state from the 1920s through the 1940s, the school also exposed its students to avenues through life that could enable them to become leaders themselves. Thus, the school can be viewed as manifesting the priorities articulated by Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, as well as by Dewey.

Multi-spectral fusion for surveillance systems

Surveillance systems such as object tracking and abandoned object detection systems typically rely on a single modality of colour video for their input. These systems work well in controlled conditions but often fail when low lighting, shadowing, smoke, dust or unstable backgrounds are present, or when the objects of interest are a similar colour to the background. Thermal images are not affected by lighting changes or shadowing, and are not overtly affected by smoke, dust or unstable backgrounds. However, thermal images lack colour information which makes distinguishing between different people or objects of interest within the same scene difficult. By using modalities from both the visible and thermal infrared spectra, we are able to obtain more information from a scene and overcome the problems associated with using either modality individually. We evaluate four approaches for fusing visual and thermal images for use in a person tracking system (two early fusion methods, one mid fusion and one late fusion method), in order to determine the most appropriate method for fusing multiple modalities. We also evaluate two of these approaches for use in abandoned object detection, and propose an abandoned object detection routine that utilises multiple modalities. To aid in the tracking and fusion of the modalities we propose a modified condensation filter that can dynamically change the particle count and features used according to the needs of the system. We compare tracking and abandoned object detection performance for the proposed fusion schemes and the visual and thermal domains on their own. Testing is conducted using the OTCBVS database to evaluate object tracking, and data captured in-house to evaluate the abandoned object detection. Our results show that significant improvement can be achieved, and that a middle fusion scheme is most effective.

Orbifolds as Melvin geometry

In this paper we explicitly show that the various noncompact abelian orbifolds are realized as special limits of parameters in type II (NSNS) Melvin background and its higher dimensional generalizations. As a result the supersymmetric ALE spaces (A-type C^2/Z_N) and nonsupersymmetric orbifolds in type II and type 0 theory are all connected with each other by the exactly marginal deformation. Our results provide new examples of the duality between type II and type 0 string theory. We also discuss the decay of unstable backgrounds in this model which include closed string tachyons.

Supersymmetric fluxbrane intersections and closed string tachyons

We consider NS-NS superstring model with several ``magnetic'' parameters $b_s$ (s=1, ...,N) associated with twists mixing a compact $S^1$ direction with angles in $N$ spatial 2-planes of flat 10-dimensional space. It generalizes the Kaluza-Klein Melvin model which has single parameter $b$. The corresponding U-dual background is a R-R type IIA solution describing an orthogonal intersection of $N$ flux 7-branes. Like the Melvin model, the NS-NS string model with $N$ continuous parameters is explicitly solvable; we present its perturbative spectrum and torus partition function explicitly for the N=2 case. For generic $b_s$ (above some critical values) there are tachyons in the $S^1$ winding sector. A remarkable feature of this model is that while in the Melvin N=1 case all supersymmetry is broken, a fraction of it may be preserved for $N >1$ by making a special choice of the parameters $b_s$. Such solvable NS-NS models may be viewed as continuous-parameter analogs of non-compact orbifold models. They and their U-dual R-R fluxbrane counterparts may have some ``phenomenological'' applications. In particular, in N=3 case one finds a special 1/4 supersymmetric R-R 3-brane background. Putting Dp-branes in flat twisted NS-NS backgrounds leads to world-volume gauge theories with reduced amount of supersymmetry. We also discuss possible ways of evolution of unstable backgrounds towards stable ones.

Home treatment in Bradford

Aims and methodWe describe a new home treatment service established In one sector of the city of Bradford.ResultsThere was a tendency for the patients hospitalised from this sector to have more unstable housing backgrounds. It was found that a higher percentage of patients with diagnoses of serious mental Illness were cared for at home.Clinical implicationsWe argue that even in the presence of home treatment, there Is a continuing need for asylum. However, we make the case that this does not always have to be provided In a medical environment.

Sequence instability and functional inactivation of murine Y chromosomes can occur on a specific genetic background.

When the Y chromosome from Mus. poschiavinus (YPos) is backcrossed onto the C57BL/6J laboratory strain, testicular dysfunction occurs at high frequencies. When five different multicopy probes from the recombinationally suppressed region of the Y chromosome were used, genomic DNAs from sibling female progeny of C57BL/6J YPos males were found to contain YPos-specific sequences ranging from trace levels to levels consistent with an intact Y chromosome. Females with a high copy number of YPos-specific sequences had a karyotype of XYPos and were sterile. Females with trace levels of these sequences were XX and fertile. Repeated sequences in the testis-determining-region (Sxr) of inactive YPos chromosomes were unstable relative to sequences in non-Sxr regions. In contrast, the YPos chromosome was stable and functioned normally in other inbred laboratory strains such as 129/Sv. The frequency and extent of YPos chromosome instability increased with successive backcrosses from stable (129/Sv) to unstable (C57BL/6J) genetic backgrounds. Traces of YPos-specific sequences were first detected in N2 female offspring of F1 males. Therefore, sequences were deleted from YPos chromosomes in the F1 male germ line and were transmitted to N2 females; inactive YPos chromosomes (XYPos females) were first detected in the N3 generation. The mouse line being derived by backcrossing the YPos chromosome onto C57BL/6J inbred strains ended in the N7 generation, since all XYPos offspring were sterile. Even stable repeated sequences from the non-Sxr regions of their inactive YPos chromosomes were precisely rearranged in these N7 offspring at high frequencies. These data are consistent with hybrid dysgenesis in mammals.

A mobile surgery for single homeless people in London.

Little is known about the social and medical characteristics of people who regularly sleep rough, or whether medical care can be targeted at these people. In 1987 a mobile surgery was used to provide primary health care at two sites in central London where many single homeless people sleep outdoors. One hundred and forty six patients were seen with illnesses ranging from scabies to osteomyelitis and tuberculosis. Sociodemographic data showed the patients to be generally an isolated group with deprived and unstable backgrounds, often compounded by alcohol abuse. Over a third of the patients from one site attended a drop in surgery for homeless people in Soho within a month after seeing a doctor in the mobile surgery. This suggests that the project can be a first step in integrating this isolated group with health care facilities.

Psychotic depressive reactions in soldiers who accidentally killed their buddies.

1. A clinical study was made of 5 soldiers who experienced psychotic depressive reactions after shooting and killing their buddies. 2. These patients showed many distortions in their basic character makeup which in most of the cases could be classified as predominantly hysterical with ingrained patterns of action-oriented behavior. 3. The patients uniformly revealed a history of borderline adjustment in civilian life, poor identifications, unstable family backgrounds, and highly ambivalent relationships with other people. 4. The severity of the reaction to the traumatic situation was explained as being related to the presence of unconscious hostility towards the buddy, which produced overwhelming guilt, and their poorly integrated, highly vulnerable personalities. The sources of the unconscious hostility were discussed. 5. The defense mechanisms utilized by the patients were discussed in terms of their efficacy, sequence, and dynamic significance.

A specific treatment for neurovegetative dystonia.

1. One can conclude from such a study that great care in interviewing individuals should be taken. Individuals from unstable backgrounds, i.e., alcoholic families, split families, religious conflicts, or orphans, should be interviewed with care. There is a tendency for these individuals to overcompensate for their poor start in life. By careful screening acute military reactions can be avoided. 2. Combined reactions are mainly a manifestation of the instinct of self-preservation. Individuals who have to struggle from the beginning have a greater drive for self-preservation as an overcompensating mechanism. 3. Functional or psychosomatic ills probably occur as an accumulation of all the stresses and strains in the patient's past history. In the treatment of our patients, Bellergal has proved to be an excellent adjunct in psychotherapy. The symptoms referable to all the organs of the body can be greatly alleviated by the judicious use of this therapeutic agent. By reducing the acute symptoms, the patient is not as aware of his bodily functions and is in a better frame of mind to respond to psychotherapy.