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Journal articles on the topic 'Neighborhood refinement'
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1
Walton, Emily. "“It's Not Just a Bunch of Buildings”: Social Psychological Investment, Sense of Community, and Collective Efficacy in a Multiethnic Low–Income Neighborhood." City & Community 15, no. 3 (September 2016): 231–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cico.12189.
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This analysis of social life in a poor, multiethnic public housing neighborhood presents an opportunity for refinement of social disorganization theory. Drawing on data from interviews, focus groups, and participant observations among residents, I find that this neighborhood exhibits substantial collective efficacy, despite social disorganization theory's predictions that the structural conditions of high poverty and racial and ethnic diversity result in low collective efficacy. I explicate two social psychological investment strategies—sense of ownership and symbolic representation—that appear to facilitate a sense of community and ultimately collective efficacy, helping to explain this apparent anomaly. I argue that even in the presence of structural disadvantage, having a strong sense of community provides a basis for beneficial action on behalf of the collective because it constitutes a source of shared expectations about values and norms in the neighborhood. These findings suggest refinements to the social disorganization framework, but also provide foundational ideas for policy interventions that may improve the social lives of residents in disadvantaged neighborhoods.
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McCormack, Gavin R., Autumn Nesdoly, Dalia Ghoneim, and Tara-Leigh McHugh. "Realtors’ Perceptions of Social and Physical Neighborhood Characteristics Associated with Active Living: A Canadian Perspective." International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 17, no. 23 (December 7, 2020): 9150. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17239150.
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Realtors match home-seekers with neighborhoods that have built and social characteristics they desire to pursue active lifestyles. Studies have yet to explore realtors’ perspectives on neighborhood design that supports active living. Using qualitative description, our study was to explore the perceptions and understandings of neighborhood design (walkability, healthy, bike-ability, vibrancy, and livability) among urban residential realtors. Nineteen (6 men; 13 women; average age 48 years) self-identified residential realtors from Calgary, Edmonton, and Lethbridge (Canada) completed semi-structured telephone interviews. Content analysis identified themes from the interview data. Specifically, walkability was described as: perceived preferences, destinations and amenities, and connections; a healthy community was described as: encourages outdoor activities, and promotes social homogeneity; bike-ability was described as: bike-ability attributes, and was controversial; vibrancy was described as: community feel, and evidence of life; and livability was described as: subjective, and preferences and necessities. Our findings can inform the refinement of universal definitions and concepts used to in neighborhood urban design.
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Kwon, Ern, Jinkee Lee, Gun Kwon, and Mi Kim. "A Refinement of Schwarz–Pick Lemma for Higher Derivatives." Mathematics 7, no. 1 (January 13, 2019): 77. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/math7010077.
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In this paper, a Schwarz–Pick estimate of a holomorphic self map f of the unit disc D having the expansion f ( w ) = c 0 + c n ( w − z ) n + … in a neighborhood of some z in D is given. This result is a refinement of the Schwarz–Pick lemma, which improves a previous result of Shinji Yamashita.
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ALZIARY, B., and P. L. LIONS. "A GRID REFINEMENT METHOD FOR DETERMINISTIC CONTROL AND DIFFERENTIAL GAMES." Mathematical Models and Methods in Applied Sciences 04, no. 06 (December 1994): 899–910. http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/s0218202594000492.
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We develop here a simple method for the computation of value functions of deterministic optimal control or differential games problems which allows to refine locally a grid and reduce memory space. Given an approximation of optimal trajectories, one can solve the associated Hamilton-Jacobi equation in a tubular neighborhood with state-constraints boundary conditions. We study here the validity of such an approach and we illustrate it on various examples.
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Haffert, S. Y., E. H. Por, C. U. Keller, M. A. Kenworthy, D. S. Doelman, F. Snik, and M. J. Escuti. "The Single-mode Complex Amplitude Refinement (SCAR) coronagraph." Astronomy & Astrophysics 635 (March 2020): A56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201731615.
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We present the monochromatic lab verification of the newly developed SCAR coronagraph that combines a phase plate (PP) in the pupil with a microlens-fed single-mode fiber array in the focal plane. The two SCAR designs that have been measured, create respectively a 360 degree and 180 degree dark region from 0.8–2.4λ∕D around the star. The 360 SCAR has been designed for a clear aperture and the 180 SCAR has been designed for a realistic aperture with central obscuration and spiders. The 360 SCAR creates a measured stellar null of 2–3 × 10−4, and the 180 SCAR reaches a null of 1 × 10−4. Their monochromatic contrast is maintained within a range of ±0.16λ∕D peak-to-valley tip-tilt, which shows the robustness against tip-tilt errors. The small inner working angle and tip-tilt stability makes the SCAR coronagraph a very promising technique for an upgrade of current high-contrast instruments to characterize and detect exoplanets in the solar neighborhood.
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Koz, Alper, and Ufuk Efe. "Geometric- and Optimization-Based Registration Methods for Long-Wave Infrared Hyperspectral Images." Remote Sensing 13, no. 13 (June 24, 2021): 2465. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rs13132465.
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Registration of long-wave infrared (LWIR) hyperspectral images with their thermal and emissivity components has until now received comparatively less attention with respect to the visible near and short wave infrared hyperspectral images. In this paper, the registration of LWIR hyperspectral images is investigated to enhance applications of LWIR images such as change detection, temperature and emissivity separation, and target detection. The proposed approach first searches for the best features of hyperspectral image pixels for extraction and matching in the LWIR range and then performs a global registration over two-dimensional maps of three-dimensional hyperspectral cubes. The performances of temperature and emissivity features in the thermal domain along with the average energy and principal components of spectral radiance are investigated. The global registration performed over whole 2D maps is further improved by blockwise local refinements. Among the two proposed approaches, the geometric refinement seeks the best keypoint combination in the neighborhood of each block to estimate the transformation for that block. The alternative optimization-based refinement iteratively finds the best transformation by maximizing the similarity of the reference and transformed blocks. The possible blocking artifacts due to blockwise mapping are finally eliminated by pixelwise refinement. The experiments are evaluated with respect to the (i) utilized similarity metrics in the LWIR range between transformed and reference blocks, (ii) proposed geometric- and optimization-based methods, and (iii) image pairs captured on the same and different days. The better performance of the proposed approach compared to manual, GPU-IMU-based, and state-of-the-art image registration methods is verified.
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Singh, Saransh, Farangis Ram, and Marc De Graef. "Application of forward models to crystal orientation refinement." Journal of Applied Crystallography 50, no. 6 (November 3, 2017): 1664–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1107/s1600576717014200.
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Two approaches are proposed for the refinement of electron diffraction pattern indexing. The approaches require two basic ingredients: an accurate physics-based forward model and an algorithm to search the local orientation neighborhood. Forward models for electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) and electron channeling pattern (ECP) modalities are coupled with either a multi-resolution brute-force search algorithm or a bound optimization by quadratic approximation algorithm. The efficacy of the methods is evaluated for varying levels of error in the pattern projection center. The EBSD modality shows an orientation improvement when the projection center error is within ±1% of the full detector width, whereas the ECP modality shows improvement up to a ±5% error. The algorithms are applied to an experimental EBSD scan for partially recrystallized 90/10 brass; the results show that the refinement is necessary to remove the artifacts introduced by the discrete sampling nature of the dictionary indexing method. Finally, a pattern center correction factor is derived for orientations obtained from dictionary indexing for large-area EBSD scans.
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Sinai, Ya G., and A. B. Soshnikov. "A refinement of Wigner's semicircle law in a neighborhood of the spectrum edge for random symmetric matrices." Functional Analysis and Its Applications 32, no. 2 (April 1998): 114–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/bf02482597.
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Kuprat, Andrew, Denise George, Eldon Linnebur, Harold Trease, and R. Kent Smith. "Moving Adaptive Unstructured 3-D Meshes in Semiconductor Process Modeling Applications." VLSI Design 6, no. 1-4 (January 1, 1998): 373–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/1998/15828.
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The next generation of semiconductor process and device modeling codes will require 3-D mesh capabilities including moving volume and surface grids, adaptive mesh refinement and adaptive mesh smoothing. To illustrate the value of these techniques, a time dependent process simulation model was constructed using analytic functions to return time dependent dopant concentration and time dependent SiO2 volume and surface velocities. Adaptive mesh refinement and adaptive mesh smoothing techniques were used to resolve the moving boron dopant diffusion front in the Si substrate. The adaptive mesh smoothing technique involves minimizing the L2 norm of the gradient of the error between the true dopant concentration and the piecewise linear approximation over the tetrahedral mesh thus assuring that the mesh is optimal for representing evolving solution gradients. Also implemented is constrained boundary smoothing, wherein the moving SiO2/Si interface is represented by moving nodes that correctly track the interface motion, and which use their remaining degrees of freedom to minimize the aforementioned error norm. Thus, optimal tetrahedral shape and alignment is obtained even in the neighborhood of a moving boundary. If desired, a topological “reconnection” step maintains a Delaunay mesh at all times. The combination of adaptive refinement, adaptive smoothing, and mesh reconnection gives excellent front tracking, feature resolution, and grid quality for finite volume/finite element computation.
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Wang, Cai Ling, Chun Xia Zhao, and Jing Yu Yang. "Local Upsampling Fourier Transform for High Accuracy Image Rotation Estimation." Advanced Materials Research 268-270 (July 2011): 1488–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/amr.268-270.1488.
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A high accuracy rotation angle estimation algorithm based on Local Upsampling Fourier Transform (LUFT) is developed in this paper. The LUFT uses a hierarchical strategy to estimate the rotation, which consists of a transformation of rotation to translation, a fast coarse rotation estimation and a robust refinement stage as well. The coarse rotation is estimated through the conventional Phase Only Correlation (POC), then, it is refined by the resampling technique within a local neighborhood in frequency domain. Furthermore, as will be shown in many experiments, the LUFT can achieve high accuracy rotation estimation, where the accuracy is tunable to some extent. Specially, it is efficient and robust to noise.
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Tatar, N., M. Saadatseresht, and H. Arefi. "THE EFFECT OF SHADOW AREA ON SGM ALGORITHM AND DISPARITY MAP REFINEMENT FROM HIGH RESOLUTION SATELLITE STEREO IMAGES." ISPRS - International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences XLII-4/W4 (September 27, 2017): 281–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-xlii-4-w4-281-2017.
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Semi Global Matching (SGM) algorithm is known as a high performance and reliable stereo matching algorithm in photogrammetry community. However, there are some challenges using this algorithm especially for high resolution satellite stereo images over urban areas and images with shadow areas. As it can be seen, unfortunately the SGM algorithm computes highly noisy disparity values for shadow areas around the tall neighborhood buildings due to mismatching in these lower entropy areas. In this paper, a new method is developed to refine the disparity map in shadow areas. The method is based on the integration of potential of panchromatic and multispectral image data to detect shadow areas in object level. In addition, a RANSAC plane fitting and morphological filtering are employed to refine the disparity map. The results on a stereo pair of GeoEye-1 captured over Qom city in Iran, shows a significant increase in the rate of matched pixels compared to standard SGM algorithm.
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TESDALL, ALLEN M. "HIGH RESOLUTION SOLUTIONS FOR THE SUPERSONIC FORMATION OF SHOCKS IN TRANSONIC FLOW." Journal of Hyperbolic Differential Equations 08, no. 03 (September 2011): 485–506. http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/s0219891611002470.
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We present numerical solutions of two problems for the unsteady transonic small disturbance equations whose solutions contain shocks. The first problem is a two-dimensional Riemann problem with initial data corresponding to a slightly supersonic flow hitting the corner of an expanding duct at t = 0. The second problem is a boundary value problem that describes steady transonic flow over an airfoil. In both cases, the solutions contain regions of supersonic and subsonic flow, and an expansion wave interacts with a sonic line to produce a shock. We use high resolution methods, together with local grid refinement, to investigate the nature of the solution in the neighborhood of the point where the shock forms. We find that the shock originates in the supersonic region as originally proposed by Guderley, and very close to, but not at, the sonic line.
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Zhu, Qing, Feng Wang, Han Hu, Yulin Ding, Jiali Xie, Weixi Wang, and Ruofei Zhong. "Intact Planar Abstraction of Buildings via Global Normal Refinement from Noisy Oblique Photogrammetric Point Clouds." ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information 7, no. 11 (November 6, 2018): 431. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijgi7110431.
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Oblique photogrammetric point clouds are currently one of the major data sources for the three-dimensional level-of-detail reconstruction of buildings. However, they are severely noise-laden and pose serious problems for the effective and automatic surface extraction of buildings. In addition, conventional methods generally use normal vectors estimated in a local neighborhood, which are liable to be affected by noise, leading to inferior results in successive building reconstruction. In this paper, we propose an intact planar abstraction method for buildings, which explicitly handles noise by integrating information in a larger context through global optimization. The information propagates hierarchically from a local to global scale through the following steps: first, based on voxel cloud connectivity segmentation, single points are clustered into supervoxels that are enforced to not cross the surface boundary; second, each supervoxel is expanded to nearby supervoxels through the maximal support region, which strictly enforces planarity; third, the relationships established by the maximal support regions are injected into a global optimization, which reorients the local normal vectors to be more consistent in a larger context; finally, the intact planar surfaces are obtained by region growing using robust normal and point connectivity in the established spatial relations. Experiments on the photogrammetric point clouds obtained from oblique images showed that the proposed method is effective in reducing the influence of noise and retrieving almost all of the major planar structures of the examined buildings.
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ILLE, SEBASTIAN. "THE DYNAMICS OF NORMS AND CONVENTIONS UNDER LOCAL INTERACTIONS AND IMITATION." International Game Theory Review 16, no. 03 (May 6, 2014): 1450001. http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/s0219198914500017.
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Restricting the analysis to general 2×2 coordination games, this article shows how under certain conditions, it is highly likely that individuals coordinate on a (pay-off) efficient through risk inferior convention. This contrasts with other equilibrium refinement criteria, such as risk dominance or stochastic stability. Here it is assumed that players are situated on a toroidal regular lattice, interact only locally and, in each period, imitate the last period's most successful player in their neighborhood. If the set of observable players by an individual and the set that he interacts with are both identical and small, pay-off dominance plays the major role in defining the long-term convention. As the latter set of players increases, a risk dominant but pay-off inferior convention becomes more likely. The model also shows that the interaction of two player types in a nonsymmetric game potentially leads to nonegalitarian conventions.
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Arimoto, Suguru, and Tomohide Naniwa. "Learning control for robot motion under geometric end-point constraint." Robotica 12, no. 2 (March 1994): 101–8. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0263574700016684.
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SUMMARYLearning control is a new approach to the probelm of skill refinement for robotic manipulators. It is considered to be a mathematical model of motor program learning for skilled motions in the central nervous system.This paper proposes a class of learning control algorithms for improving operations of the robot arm under a geometrical end-point constraint at the next trial on the basis of the previous operation data. The command input torque is updated by a linear modification of present joint velocity errors deviated from the desired velocity trajectory in addition to the previous input. It is shown that motion trajectories approach an e-neighborhood of the desired one in the sense of squared integral norm provided the local feedback loop consists of both position and velocity feedbacks plus a feedback term of the error force vector between the reactive force and desired force on the end-point constrained surface. It is explored that various passivity properties of residual error dynamics of the manipulator play a crucial role in the proof of uniform boundedness and convergence of position and velocity trajectories.
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Turrell, Gavin, Michele Haynes, Martin O’Flaherty, Nicola Burton, Katrina Giskes, Billie Giles-Corti, and Lee-Ann Wilson. "Test-Retest Reliability of Perceptions of the Neighborhood Environment for Physical Activity by Socioeconomic Status." Journal of Physical Activity and Health 8, no. 6 (August 2011): 829–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1123/jpah.8.6.829.
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Background:Further development of high quality measures of neighborhood perceptions will require extensions and refinements to our existing approaches to reliability assessment. This study examined the test-retest reliability of perceptions of the neighborhood environment by socioeconomic status (SES).Methods:Test and retest surveys were conducted using a mail survey method with persons aged 40 to 65 years (n = 222, 78.2% response rate). SES was measured using the respondent’s education level and the socioeconomic characteristics of their neighborhood of residence. Reliability was assessed using intraclass correlations (ICC) estimated with random coefficient models.Results:Overall, the 27 items had moderate-to-substantial reliability (ICC = 0.41−0.74). Few statistically significant differences were found in ICC between the education groups or neighborhoods, although the ICCs were significantly larger among the low SES for items that measured perceptions of neighborhood greenery, interesting things to see, litter, traffic volume and speed, crime, and rowdy youth on the streets.Conclusion:For the majority of the items, poor reliability and subsequent exposure misclassification is no more or less likely among low educated respondents and residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods. Estimates of the association between neighborhood perceptions and physical activity therefore are likely to be similarly precise irrespective of the respondent’s socioeconomic background.
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Bartels, Sören, and Marijo Milicevic. "Primal-dual gap estimators for a posteriori error analysis of nonsmooth minimization problems." ESAIM: Mathematical Modelling and Numerical Analysis 54, no. 5 (July 28, 2020): 1635–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/m2an/2019074.
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The primal-dual gap is a natural upper bound for the energy error and, for uniformly convex minimization problems, also for the error in the energy norm. This feature can be used to construct reliable primal-dual gap error estimators for which the constant in the reliability estimate equals one for the energy error and equals the uniform convexity constant for the error in the energy norm. In particular, it defines a reliable upper bound for any functions that are feasible for the primal and the associated dual problem. The abstract a posteriori error estimate based on the primal-dual gap is provided in this article, and the abstract theory is applied to the nonlinear Laplace problem and the Rudin–Osher–Fatemi image denoising problem. The discretization of the primal and dual problems with conforming, low-order finite element spaces is addressed. The primal-dual gap error estimator is used to define an adaptive finite element scheme and numerical experiments are presented, which illustrate the accurate, local mesh refinement in a neighborhood of the singularities, the reliability of the primal-dual gap error estimator and the moderate overestimation of the error.
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Fahmy, Mohammad, Hisham Kamel, Hany Mokhtar, Ibrahim Elwy, Ahmed Gimiee, Yasser Ibrahim, and Marwa Abdelalim. "On the Development and Optimization of an Urban Design Comfort Model (UDCM) on a Passive Solar Basis at Mid-Latitude Sites." Climate 7, no. 1 (December 24, 2018): 1. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/cli7010001.
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Urban climatology is a complex field owed to the intersecting parameters. In city planning, neighborhood fabric and vegetation plays a great role in modifying arid microclimates. This work presents an approach to enable urban designers to find the optimum land use parameters to achieve pedestrian thermal comfort. In this study, a model was developed based on ENVI-met simulations of two urban and suburban sites in Cairo, Egypt. Initial design parameters were; compactness degree, grass coverage, leaf area density, trees ground coverage, and asphalt and buildings areas. After regression analysis, the step-wise algorithm succeeded in creating the best fit of 94% R2 and 92% adjusted R2. The suggested Urban Design Comfort Model (UDCM) was examined using MATLAB to find the optimum design parameters. Optimum values were applied to generate primitive urban configurations using Grasshopper. The primitives were simulated again in ENVI-met to validate UDCM. The resulted value of Physiological Equivalent Temperature, PET at peak time was reduced from the initial result of ENVI-met (42.3 °C) in both sites to reach (38.7 °C) then (36.8 °C) after refinement with extra foliage. This approach, as a tool for urban designers, not only facilitates and speeds up urban form design process on a passive basis, but also provides deep insights on the development of UDCM considering all different city transects rather than two.
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Luo, Huiyuan, Guangliang Han, Peixun Liu, and Yanfeng Wu. "Salient Region Detection Using Diffusion Process with Nonlocal Connections." Applied Sciences 8, no. 12 (December 6, 2018): 2526. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/app8122526.
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Diffusion-based salient region detection methods have gained great popularity. In most diffusion-based methods, the saliency values are ranked on 2-layer neighborhood graph by connecting each node to its neighboring nodes and the nodes sharing common boundaries with its neighboring nodes. However, only considering the local relevance between neighbors, the salient region may be heterogeneous and even wrongly suppressed, especially when the features of salient object are diverse. In order to address the issue, we present an effective saliency detection method using diffusing process on the graph with nonlocal connections. First, a saliency-biased Gaussian model is used to refine the saliency map based on the compactness cue, and then, the saliency information of compactness is diffused on 2-layer sparse graph with nonlocal connections. Second, we obtain the contrast of each superpixel by restricting the reference region to the background. Similarly, a saliency-biased Gaussian refinement model is generated and the saliency information based on the uniqueness cue is propagated on the 2-layer sparse graph. We linearly integrate the initial saliency maps based on the compactness and uniqueness cues due to the complementarity to each other. Finally, to obtain a highlighted and homogeneous saliency map, a single-layer updating and multi-layer integrating scheme is presented. Comprehensive experiments on four benchmark datasets demonstrate that the proposed method performs better in terms of various evaluation metrics.
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Hekler, Eric B., Matthew P. Buman, William L. Haskell, Terry L. Conway, Kelli L. Cain, James F. Sallis, Brian E. Saelens, Lawrence D. Frank, Jacqueline Kerr, and Abby C. King. "Reliability and Validity of CHAMPS Self-Reported Sedentary-to-Vigorous Intensity Physical Activity in Older Adults." Journal of Physical Activity and Health 9, no. 2 (February 2012): 225–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1123/jpah.9.2.225.
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Background:Recent research highlights the potential value of differentiating between categories of physical activity intensities as predictors of health and well-being. This study sought to assess reliability and concurrent validity of sedentary (ie, 1 METs), low-light (ie, >1 and ≤2 METs; eg, playing cards), high-light (ie, >2 and <3 METs; eg, light walking), moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA, ≥3 METs), and “total activity” (≥2 METs) from the CHAMPS survey. Further, this study explored over-reporting and double-reporting.Methods:CHAMPS data were gathered from the Seniors Neighborhood Quality of Life Study, an observational study of adults aged 65+ years conducted in 2 US regions.Results:Participants (N = 870) were 75.3 ± 6.8 years old, with 56% women and 71% white. The CHAMPS sedentary, low-light, high-light, total activity, and MVPA variables had acceptable test-retest reliability (ICCs 0.56−0.70). The CHAMPS high-light (ρ = 0.27), total activity (ρ = 0.34), and MVPA (ρ = 0.37) duration scales were moderately associated with accelerometry minutes of corresponding intensity, and the sedentary scale (ρ = 0.12) had a lower, but significant correlation. Results suggested that several CHAMPS items may be susceptible to over-reporting (eg, walking, housework).Conclusions:CHAMPS items effectively measured high-light, total activity, and MVPA in seniors, but further refinement is needed for sedentary and low-light activity.
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Frank, Gail C., Erika Centinaje, Natalia Gatdula, Melawhy Garcia, Selena T. Nguyen-Rodriguez, Mara Bird, and R. Britt Rios-Ellis. "Culturally Relevant Health Education: A Foundation for Building Cultural Competence of Health Professionals." Californian Journal of Health Promotion 19, no. 1 (September 8, 2021): 13–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.32398/cjhp.v19i1.2643.
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Background: Professionals educating ethnic minority populations should employ a cultural focus during development, training, refinement and implementation stages of an intervention. Purpose: This manuscript posits that the skill of developing a culturally relevant curriculum supports the increase of cultural competence proficiency of professionals, while promoting health equity. Methods: A community-based participatory research-trained staff, recruited 378 families with 2 to 8-year-old children. Eight intergenerational focus groups were conducted at neighborhood facilities. Graduate fellows conducted reviews of literature and health directives to conceptualize the curriculum. Spanish-speaking students and promotoras (community health workers) having participants’ confidence, presented healthy lifestyle information and taught practical skills to each group of 12-16 low-income Latino families from Long Beach, CA. With attention to participants’ preferred language, educational level, cultural beliefs, practices and food preferences, the intervention demonstrates a culturally relevant curriculum. Hands-on activities and motivational interviewing questions enriched the 4-hour intervention delivered in Spanish. Results: Graduate fellows’ cultural competence increased. More than 97% of participants reported sessions beneficial to their families’ health with 84% attending all sessions/assessments. Participants found the content easy to understand and helpful to eat healthier and be more active. Conclusion: Sanos y Fuertes is a model for developing a culturally relevant, family-based healthy lifestyle educational curriculum and building culturally competent health professionals.
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Gaf-Deac, Ioan. "ABOUT THE OF DISCIPLINARY CONTENT OF DOXASTIC MANAGEMENT." Annals of "Spiru Haret". Economic Series 16, no. 2 (July 7, 2016): 23. http://dx.doi.org/10.26458/1622.
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The article stated, in substance, that by accepting the hypothesis of continuing transformation of content and configuration "small worlds", along with developments in technology and behavioral sciences, necessarily supported the finding that mutations endo-exogenous influences organizational entity as a whole his notable consequences on management. Doxastic management is a new epistemological covered by copyright scientifically in 2013 (Ioan Gaf-Deac, Fundamentals of Doxastic Management, FMP, Bucharest, 2013, 508 pp., ISBN 978-606-93321-5-3). It appears that is not yet discerned neighborhood structure between the model, physical reality and metaphysical reality. It also considers that the segment infinite / finite (physical reality model) possible site management, doxastic operating, new emphases on the horizon iterative expected idealization /aspirate. Quasi-complete objectification management decisions can be obtained by iterations and iteration as long as no detectable only certainty in the construction of finite elements, quasi-infinitesimal. Such a view is advanced through the management ranks to the original formula, for the first time, relying on conceptual refinement that pervades the environment, economic and social-productive, generally classified as systemic, for the beginning of the XXI century. Etymological explanatory are described aspects of doxastic and believe that management is global doxastic depositary of conceptual management. Describe the elements that define managerial complexity in terms of using new information technologies, shaping the early conceptual management and doxastic formulas disciplinary explanatory content doxastic management reflected in the conceptual doxometric premises management.
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Cui, Bin, Yonghong Zhang, Li Yan, Jujie Wei, and Hong’an Wu. "An Unsupervised SAR Change Detection Method Based on Stochastic Subspace Ensemble Learning." Remote Sensing 11, no. 11 (June 1, 2019): 1314. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rs11111314.
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As synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is playing an increasingly important role in Earth observations, many new methods and technologies have been proposed for change detection using multi-temporal SAR images. Especially with the development of deep learning, numerous methods have been proposed in recent years. However, the requirement to have a certain number of high-quality samples has become one of the main reasons for the limited development of these methods. Thus, in this paper, we propose an unsupervised SAR change detection method that is based on stochastic subspace ensemble learning. The proposed method consists of two stages: The first stage involves the automatic determination of high-confidence samples, which includes a fusion strategy and a refinement process; and the second stage entails using the stochastic subspace ensemble learning module, which contains three steps: obtaining the subsample sets, establishing and training a two-channel network, and applying the prediction results and an ensemble strategy. The subsample sets are used to solve the problem of imbalanced samples. The two-channel networks are used to extract high-dimensional features and learn the relationship between the neighborhood of the pixels in the original images and the labels. Finally, by using an ensemble strategy, the results predicted by all patches reclassified in each network are integrated as the detection result. The experimental results of different SAR datasets prove the effectiveness and the feasibility of the proposed method.
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Towns, Juell, Patrice Fuller, Edline Francois, Raina L. Croff, and Jeffrey Kaye. "WALKING AND TALKING ABOUT WHAT USED TO BE: THE SHARP NEIGHBORHOOD WALKING PROGRAM FOR OLDER AFRICAN AMERICANS." Innovation in Aging 3, Supplement_1 (November 2019): S517. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igz038.1907.
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Abstract The Sharing History through Active Reminiscence and Photo-Imagery (SHARP) study aims to preserve African American cognitive health through neighborhood walking and social engagement in a way that celebrates Black culture. For 6 months, African Americans aged 55+ (2016 n=19; 2017 n=21) grouped in triads walked 1-mile routes accessible via the SHARP application. Routes included historical image prompts about Portland, Oregon’s historically Black neighborhoods. Participant focus groups at months 1, 3, and 6 drove program development and refinements, and provided valuable insight into the program’s meaning for participants. Discussions were thematically coded. Emergent themes included “suggested improvements,” “technology,” “mental health impact,” “cultural incongruence,” and “cultural significance.” Participants suggested improvements to the application’s navigational aspects and expressed willingness to engage technology despite initial apprehension. The triadic structure and place-based memory prompts aided reminiscence, allowing participants to make meaningful links between their own life experiences and their walking partners’. Neighborhood walking brought to the surface participant concerns about a lack of understanding between African American generations, and between long-time residents and whiter, wealthier demographics moving in. Some participants found it emotionally taxing to walk in the now gentrified historically Black neighborhoods, but still saw the program overall as useful, interesting, and necessary--to their physical and cognitive health, to their mental health as they processed neighborhood changes and community loss, and as an important contribution to preserving community history. Addressing individual health alongside pressing issues affecting older African Americans’ sense of well-being and community may make cognitive health programs more meaningful and applicable.
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Schneider, Bohdan, Jean-Christophe Gelly, Alexandre de Brevern, and Jiří Černý. "Local dynamics of proteins and DNA evaluated from crystallographic B-factors." Acta Crystallographica Section A Foundations and Advances 70, a1 (August 5, 2014): C1513. http://dx.doi.org/10.1107/s2053273314084861.
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Temperature displacement factors also known as B-factors provide information about local dynamics of atoms. Because dynamic behavior of biomolecules is as important as their static molecular structures we decided to analyze B-factors in almost a thousand non-redundant crystal structures of protein-DNA complexes from a well-curated dataset described in Schneider et al. Nucleic Acids Research, 42 (2014). Biopolymer residues, amino acids and nucleotides, were classified according to their molecular neighborhood as solvent-accessible, solvent-inaccessible (buried, i. e. forming the protein core), or lying at protein-protein or protein-DNA interfaces. In addition, water molecules were labeled as solely bound to the biopolymer surface as the first hydration shell or as water bridges binding protein and DNA molecules. Distributions of scaled B-factors for these types of residues confirmed several expected features of protein and DNA dynamics but they also revealed some surprising facts. Solvent-accessible amino acids have B-factors larger than residues at both biomolecular interfaces and amino acids forming protein core are restricted in their movement the most. A really unique feature of the buried amino acids is that their side chains are restricted in their movements more than the main chains. Protein interior is therefore packed significantly better than protein-protein or protein-DNA interfaces. Low values of B-factors of the waters bridging protein and DNA molecules contrast with extremely high values of DNA phosphates. Characteristic features distinguishing different types of residues quickly vanish in structures with lower resolution and some of the observed trends are a likely consequence of improper refinement protocols that may need rectifying. Acknowledgments. This study was supported by BIOCEV CZ.1.05/1.1.00/02.0109 from the ERDF and by grant P305/12/1801 from the Czech Science Foundation.
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Bartonova, Alena, and Milena Jovasevic-Stojanovic. "Integrated assessment and management of ambient particulate matter: International perspective and current research in Serbia." Chemical Industry and Chemical Engineering Quarterly 18, no. 4-2 (2012): 605–15. http://dx.doi.org/10.2298/ciceq121125124b.
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Air pollution mitigation is a necessity in Serbia, due to its high levels of criteria pollutants in ambient environment. Successful implementation of mitigation measures requires access to sufficient information from national research, and well running and efficient local participatory processes. To support air pollution mitigation in the West Balkan region, the WeBIOPATR project started a series of bi-annual conferences in 2007. They bring together an inter-disciplinary research community and local and national administrations from Serbia and its neighborhood, to present research results from Serbia and countries all over the world, and to share knowledge and best practices of mitigation. The conferences promote research that may support integrated assessment of particulate matter, and further refinement of the ?Pressures-State-Impact? (PSI) part of the ?Drivers-Pressures-State-Impact-Response? (DPSIR) framework. Integrated approach needs to be underpinned by solid disciplinary research covering e.g. air quality monitoring technologies, atmospheric and further ambient composition, atmospheric modeling, biological effects and human health. WeBIOPATR conferences report on recently performed studies of particulate matter in Serbia and abroad. Through the breadth of subjects and audience, they bring together a wide inter-disciplinary and cross-sectoral expertise in support of translation of research to practice. They also allow to present examples of successful mitigation achieved with the help of strong local participatory environmental governance, demonstrating the increasing recognition of the need to involve both public and private actors. This paper gives the main features of a full chain approach and elements of integrated approach to particulate matter research, summarizes the proceedings of the 3rd WeBIOPATR conference, and in addition, reviews the results of particulate matter monitoring and source identification studies in Serbia since the monitoring start ten years ago.
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Narendran, P., and V. Thiagarasu. "Segmentation of 3D Brain Structures in MRI Images." Asian Journal of Computer Science and Technology 8, no. 2 (May 5, 2019): 13–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.51983/ajcst-2019.8.2.2147.
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The main topic of this paper is to segment brain tumors, their components (edema and necrosis) and internal structures of the brain in 3D MR images. For tumor segmentation, we propose a framework that is a combination of region-based and boundary-based paradigms. In this framework, we first segment the brain using a method adapted for pathological cases and extract some global information on the tumor by symmetry based histogram analysis. The second step segments the tumor and its components. For this, we propose a new and original method that combines region and boundary information in two phases: initialization and refinement. For initialization, which is mostly region-based, we present two new methods. The first one is a new fuzzy classification method which combines the membership, typicality and neighborhood information of the voxels. The second one relies on symmetry-based histogram analysis. The initial segmentation of the tumor is refined relying on boundary information of the image. This method is a deformable model constrained by spatial relations. The spatial relations are obtained based on the initial segmentation and surrounded tissues of the tumor. The proposed method can be used for a large class of tumors in any modality of MR images. To segment a tumor and its components automatically the proposed framework needs only a contrast enhanced T1-weighted image and a FLAIR image. In the case of a contrast enhanced T1-weighted image only, some user interaction will be needed. To refine the initial segmentation, we use a deformable model which is again constrained by the fused spatial relations of the structure. This method was also evaluated on 10 contrast enhanced T1-weighted images to segment the ventricles, caudate nucleus and thalamus.
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Chaiko, Mark A. "A Finite-volume Approach for Simulation of Liquid-column Separation in Pipelines." Journal of Fluids Engineering 128, no. 6 (March 26, 2006): 1324–35. http://dx.doi.org/10.1115/1.2353271.
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A finite-volume approach, based on the MUSCL-Hancock method, is presented and applied to liquid-column separation transients in pipelines. In the mathematical model, sudden closure of a valve on the downstream end of a pipeline initiates the hydraulic transient, while a head tank maintains constant upstream pressure. The two-phase fluid is treated as a homogeneous mixture, and changes in fluid pressure are assumed to occur at constant entropy. Effects of pipe elasticity on wave propagation speed are included in the model by coupling the circumferential stress-strain relation for the pipe wall to the local fluid pressure. In regions of the domain where the solution is smooth, second-order accuracy is achieved by means of data reconstruction based on sloping-difference formulas. Slope limiting prevents the development of spurious oscillations in the neighborhood of steep wave fronts. Data reconstruction leads to a piece-wise linear representation of the solution, which is discontinuous across cell boundaries. In order to advance the solution in time, a Riemann problem is solved on each cell junction to obtain mass and momentum flux contributions. A splitting technique, which separates flux terms from gravity and frictional effects, allows the compatibility equations for the Riemann problem to be expressed as total differentials of fluid velocity and an integral that depends only on the fluid pressure. Predictions for large-amplitude pressure pulses caused by liquid-column separation and rejoining are compared against experimental data available in the literature. Amplitude and timing of the predicted pressure response shows reasonably good agreement with experimental data even when as few as 20–40 computational cells are used to describe axial variations in fluid conditions along a pipeline of approximately 35m in length. An advantage of the current method is that it does not give rise to spurious oscillations when grid refinement is performed. The presence of nonphysical oscillations has been a drawback of a commonly used method based on discrete vapor cavities and characteristic treatment of wave propagation.
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McEntee, Mindy L., Alison Cantley, Emily Foreman, Vincent Berardi, Christine B. Phillips, Jane C. Hurley, Melbourne F. Hovell, Steven Hooker, and Marc A. Adams. "Effects of Goal Type and Reinforcement Type on Self-Reported Domain-Specific Walking Among Inactive Adults: 2×2 Factorial Randomized Controlled Trial." JMIR Formative Research 4, no. 12 (December 4, 2020): e19863. http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/19863.
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Background WalkIT Arizona was a 2×2 factorial trial examining the effects of goal type (adaptive versus static) and reinforcement type (immediate versus delayed) to increase moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) among insufficiently active adults. The 12-month intervention combined mobile health (mHealth) technology with behavioral strategies to test scalable population-health approaches to increasing MVPA. Self-reported physical activity provided domain-specific information to help contextualize the intervention effects. Objective The aim of this study was to report on the secondary outcomes of self-reported walking for transportation and leisure over the course of the 12-month WalkIT intervention. Methods A total of 512 participants aged 19 to 60 years (n=330 [64.5%] women; n=425 [83%] Caucasian/white, n=96 [18.8%] Hispanic/Latinx) were randomized into interventions based on type of goals and reinforcements. The International Physical Activity Questionnaire-long form assessed walking for transportation and leisure at baseline, and at 6 months and 12 months of the intervention. Negative binomial hurdle models were used to examine the effects of goal and reinforcement type on (1) odds of reporting any (versus no) walking/week and (2) total reported minutes of walking/week, adjusted for neighborhood walkability and socioeconomic status. Separate analyses were conducted for transportation and leisure walking, using complete cases and multiple imputation. Results All intervention groups reported increased walking at 12 months relative to baseline. Effects of the intervention differed by domain: a significant three-way goal by reinforcement by time interaction was observed for total minutes of leisure walking/week, whereas time was the only significant factor that contributed to transportation walking. A sensitivity analysis indicated minimal differences between complete case analysis and multiple imputation. Conclusions This study is the first to report differential effects of adaptive versus static goals for self-reported walking by domain. Results support the premise that individual-level PA interventions are domain- and context-specific and may be helpful in guiding further intervention refinement. Trial Registration Preregistered at clinicaltrials.gov: (NCT02717663) https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02717663 International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID) RR2-10.1016/j.cct.2019.05.001
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Schaffer, Christopher J., William A. Gallus, and Moti Segal. "Improving Probabilistic Ensemble Forecasts of Convection through the Application of QPF–POP Relationships." Weather and Forecasting 26, no. 3 (June 1, 2011): 319–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/2010waf2222447.1.
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Abstract Four new approaches of postprocessing quantitative precipitation forecasts (QPFs) from model ensemble output were used to generate probability of precipitation (POP) tables in order to develop a forecasting method that could outperform a traditional method that relies upon calibration of POP forecasts derived using equal weighting of ensemble members. Early warm season 10-member ensemble output from the NOAA Hazardous Weather Testbed Spring Experiments was used, with 29 cases serving as a training set to create the POP tables and 20 cases used as a test set. The new approaches use QPF–POP relationships based on two properties termed precipitation amount characteristic (PAC) and ensemble member agreement. Exploratory results are presented for 20-km grid spacing and selectively for 4-km grid spacing. In the first approach, POPs were based on a binned PAC and the number of ensemble members with 6-h precipitation accumulations greater than given thresholds. In a second approach, a neighborhood method was used to find the number of points in a given neighborhood area around each of the domain grid points with precipitation amounts greater than a given threshold, while also considering the binned PAC representative of the neighborhood. A third approach synthesized the previous methods and led to an increase in skill relative to the individual methods, and a fourth approach using a combination of methods produced forecasts with even greater skill. All of the forecasts from the four approaches were improved statistically significantly compared to the calibrated traditional method’s forecasts at 20-km grid spacing. The second approach on its own showed skill comparable to that obtained by a traditional calibrated 10-member ensemble, so adopting this approach alone could potentially save computer resources that could then be used for model refinements, only sacrificing the increased skill that could have been obtained by using the fourth approach.
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Zheng, Hai Chen, Cheng Qin Chen, Lei Tang, and Yong Qiang He. "Research on the Spatial Construction Strategy of Traditional Settlements for the Tujia Nationality." Applied Mechanics and Materials 357-360 (August 2013): 120–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/amm.357-360.120.
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The River Bend region of Hou’xi town in Chongqing Municipality is one of the Tujia neighborhoods; the spatial construction of the whole village has been made to face a crisis due to lack of basic research on the traditional settlement space and the interests driven in recent years. The reasons for the disorder and lack of the charm of the new settlement space were analyzed, and the construction policies of traditional settlements were combed based on field research from the perspective of Architecture and Landscape Architecture by the methods of combining quantitative and qualitative. The conclusion shows that the village building should respect and protect their traditional styles; the problems what the current village construction face are solved through the integration of the layout of public resources, the improvement of the traffic situation, the construction of the unique style and the transformation of the refinement.
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Perchoux, Camille, Basile Chaix, Ruben Brondeel, and Yan Kestens. "Residential buffer, perceived neighborhood, and individual activity space: New refinements in the definition of exposure areas – The RECORD Cohort Study." Health & Place 40 (July 2016): 116–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2016.05.004.
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Wirt, D. P., T. M. Grogan, R. B. Nagle, J. G. Copeland, L. C. Richter, C. S. Rangel, M. Schuchardt, J. Fosse, and J. M. Layton. "A comprehensive immunotopographic map of human thymus." Journal of Histochemistry & Cytochemistry 36, no. 1 (January 1988): 1–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/36.1.2961798.
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We have achieved a comprehensive immunotopographic mapping of human thymus by using a large battery of monoclonal antibodies and the methodological refinement of comparative serial tissue section immunohistochemistry, allowing analysis of multiple phenotypes in the same tissue site. Previous immunohistochemical studies of thymus have concentrated on the majority T-cell and epithelial cell populations. Besides demonstrating the complexity of T-cell antigenic expression (e.g., simultaneous cortical expression of Leu 2, Leu 3, CALLA, Tdt, and Leu 6), we delineate surprisingly complex B-cell zones (e.g., septal B-follicles with DRC+C3d+ dendritic cells and zonal maturation of B-cells). Whereas septal B-follicles were found in 25% of cases, medullary B-cells were universally present as a substantial minority component. This expanded immunotopographic knowledge of the complex T-, B-, epithelial, and reticulum cell neighborhoods suggests that the thymus is an organ capable of a broad repertoire of immunological responses, not limited to T-cell development.
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Fierro, Alexandre O., Yunheng Wang, Jidong Gao, and Edward R. Mansell. "Variational Assimilation of Radar Data and GLM Lightning-Derived Water Vapor for the Short-Term Forecasts of High-Impact Convective Events." Monthly Weather Review 147, no. 11 (October 22, 2019): 4045–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/mwr-d-18-0421.1.
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Abstract The assimilation of water vapor mass mixing ratio derived from total lightning data from the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) within a three-dimensional variational (3DVAR) system is evaluated for the analysis and short-term forecast (≤6 h) of a high-impact convective event over the northern Great Plains in the United States. Building on recent work, the lightning data assimilation (LDA) method adjusts water vapor mass mixing ratio within a fixed layer depth above the lifted condensation level by assuming nearly water-saturated conditions at observed lightning locations. In this algorithm, the total water vapor mass added by the LDA is balanced by an equal removal outside observed lightning locations. Additional refinements were also devised to partially alleviate the seasonal and geographical dependence of the original scheme. To gauge the added value of lightning, radar data (radial velocity and reflectivity) were also assimilated with or without lightning. Although the method was evaluated in quasi–real time for several high-impact weather events throughout 2018, this work will focus on one specific, illustrative severe weather case wherein the control simulation—which did not assimilate any data—was eventually able to initiate and forecast the majority of the observed storms. Given a relatively reasonable forecast in the control experiment, the GLM and radar assimilation experiments were still able to improve the short-term forecast of accumulated rainfall and composite radar reflectivity further, as measured by neighborhood-based metrics. These results held whether the simulations made use of one single 3DVAR analysis or high-frequency (10 min) successive cycling over a 1-h period.
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Hoteit, Hussein, and Adwait Chawathé. "Making Field-Scale Chemical Enhanced-Oil-Recovery Simulations a Practical Reality With Dynamic Gridding." SPE Journal 21, no. 06 (June 23, 2016): 2220–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.2118/169688-pa.
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Summary Many improved-oil-recovery (IOR)/enhanced-oil-recovery (EOR) processes such as chemical, miscible, and steamflooding are often associated with complex flow mechanisms that manifest at the displacement front. Viscous fingering, polymer/surfactant dilution, and mixing effects are some of these mechanisms. Accurate modeling of these phenomena requires simulations on high-resolution grids to properly capture the physics in the vicinity of the displacement front. Unfortunately, high grid resolutions incur longer simulation times. Thus, past efforts at running full-field gas or chemical EOR (CEOR) simulations were frequently deemed impractical. The advancement in computational power from software, hardware, and parallelism has indeed pushed the limits toward higher-resolution simulations. However, this may not be practical in work flows that require simulations on many models to manage uncertainties. Dynamic gridding is one approach that attempts to adjust the grid resolution as needed during the run time. No a priori knowledge is assumed regarding the fluid-flow pathways. The simulator can track the location of the displacement front, refine the neighborhood cells, and later coarsen them back as the front progresses. The advantage is reducing the number of gridblocks and, therefore, the computational time, compared with the fully refined grid, while preserving the fluid-flow physics. Although this technology is not new in reservoir simulation, there are persisting challenges in the existing methods related to the computational overhead associated with cell remapping, transmissibility recalculation, and grid upscaling and downscaling. A new dynamic-gridding functionality has successfully been implemented into our in-house simulator. The key achievements are: (1) eliminating grid remapping and transmissibility recalculation at the run time, (2) capturing heterogeneity associated with all levels of grid refinements, (3) modeling complex geology with nonuniform gridding, and (4) tracking multiple fronts associated with surfactant–polymer (SP) and chase-water slugs. We discuss how we overcame the bottlenecks to leverage this technology from prototypes to complex cases. We also demonstrate our method on prototypes and field cases under CEOR recovery processes.
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Hirsch, Jana A., Kari A. Moore, Jesse Cahill, James Quinn, Yuzhe Zhao, Felicia J. Bayer, Andrew Rundle, and Gina S. Lovasi. "Business Data Categorization and Refinement for Application in Longitudinal Neighborhood Health Research: a Methodology." Journal of Urban Health, October 1, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11524-020-00482-2.
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Maschler, Johannes, and Günther R. Raidl. "Multivalued decision diagrams for prize-collecting job sequencing with one common and multiple secondary resources." Annals of Operations Research, November 21, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10479-019-03479-6.
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AbstractMultivalued decision diagrams (MDD) are a powerful tool for approaching combinatorial optimization problems. Relatively compact relaxed and restricted MDDs are applied to obtain dual bounds and heuristic solutions and provide opportunities for new branching schemes. We consider a prize-collecting sequencing problem in which a subset of given jobs has to be found that is schedulable and yields maximum total prize. The primary aim of this work is to study different methods for creating relaxed MDDs for this problem. To this end, we adopt and extend the two main MDD compilation approaches found in the literature: top down construction and incremental refinement. In a series of computational experiments these methods are compared. The results indicate that for our problem the incremental refinement method produces MDDs with stronger bounds. Moreover, heuristic solutions are derived by compiling restricted MDDs and by applying a general variable neighborhood search (GVNS). Here we observe that the top down construction of restricted MDDs is able to yield better solutions as the GVNS on small to medium-sized instances.
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Wang, Yu, and Jorge J. Santiago-Avilés. "FTIR Characterization Of PZT Nano Fibers Synthesized from Metallo-organic Compounds Using Electrospinning." MRS Proceedings 736 (2002). http://dx.doi.org/10.1557/proc-736-d2.9.
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ABSTRACTWe have synthesized Pb(Zr0.54Ti0.48)O3 fibers with diameter ranging from 500 nm to several microns using electrospinning and metallo-organics decomposition (MOD) techniques. By a refinement of our electrospinning technique, i.e. by increasing the viscosity of the precursor solution, and by adding a filter to the tip of the syringe, the diameter of synthesized PZT fibers has been reduced to the neighborhood of a hundred nanometers. The complex thermal decomposition was characterized using Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and x-ray diffraction (XRD). It was found that alcohol evaporated during electrospinning and that the organic groups had pyrolized before the intermediate pyrochlore phase was formed. There is a good correspondence between XRD and FTIR spectra. It was also found that a thin film of platinum coated on silicon substrate surface not only seems to have catalyzed the phase transformation to PZT but also favored the formation of 110 texture in the synthesized PZT fibers.
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Posick, Chad, and Michael Rocque. "Integrating Individual Risk and Social Exposure to Violence: A Multilevel Victimization Perspective." Journal of Interpersonal Violence, September 22, 2020, 088626052095864. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0886260520958640.
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We test two major hypotheses in this article: (a) macrolevels of school disorganization and individual levels of low self-control will be directly, and positively, linked to victimization and (bi) low self-control will have the largest impact on exposure to victimization (ETV) when it interacts with negative environments consistent with a social enhancement perspective, or (bii) low self-control will have a weaker impact on ETV when it interacts with negative environments consistent with saturation or social push models. The data for the current study were collected as part of the second International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD-II). A total of 49,685 individuals from 30 countries are nested within 1,427 schools. We use multilevel generalized linear regression models with violent victimization (robbery and assault) regressed on demographic, family, school, and neighborhood variables. Multiplicative interaction terms are included in separate models to examine key moderation effects consistent with expectations drawn from the victimization literature. Analyses reveal that low self-control and perceptions of school disorganization are both associated with an increase in the odds of experiencing victimization. Interactions between low self-control and school disorganization are also found to be consistent with saturation/social push models. Our regulation approach offers a foundation for theorizing about ETV and provides a testable model for future research. However, elements of the regulation model are in need of further refinement and testing before the perspective can be moved toward a broader theory of victimization.
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Nijagal, Malini A., Devika Patel, Courtney Lyles, Jennifer Liao, Lara Chehab, Schyneida Williams, and Amanda Sammann. "Using human centered design to identify opportunities for reducing inequities in perinatal care." BMC Health Services Research 21, no. 1 (July 20, 2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12913-021-06609-8.
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Abstract Background Extreme disparities in access, experience, and outcomes highlight the need to transform how pregnancy care is designed and delivered in the United States, especially for low-income individuals and people of color. Methods We used human-centered design (HCD) to understand the challenges facing Medicaid-insured pregnant people and design interventions to address these challenges. The HCD method has three phases: Inspiration, Ideation, and Implementation. This study focused on the first and second. In the Inspiration phase we conducted semi-structured interviews with a purposeful sample of stakeholders who had either received or participated in the care of Medicaid-insured pregnant people within our community, with a specific emphasis on representation from marginalized communities. Using a general inductive approach to thematic analysis, we identified themes, which were then framed into design opportunities. In the Ideation phase, we conducted structured brainstorming sessions to generate potential prototypes of solutions, which were tested and iterated upon through a series of community events and engagement with a diverse community advisory group. Results We engaged a total of 171 stakeholders across both phases of the HCD methodology. In the Inspiration phase, interviews with 23 community members and an eight-person focus group revealed seven insights centered around two main themes: (1) racism and discrimination create major barriers to access, experience, and the ability to deliver high-value pregnancy care; (2) pregnancy care is overmedicalized and does not treat the pregnant person as an equal and informed partner. In the Ideation phase, 162 ideas were produced and translated into eight solution prototypes. Community scoring and feedback events with 140 stakeholders led to the progressive refinement and selection of three final prototypes: (1) implementing telemedicine (video visits) within the safety-net system, (2) integrating community-based peer support workers into healthcare teams, and (3) delivering co-located pregnancy-related care and services into high-need neighborhoods as a one-stop shop. Conclusions Using HCD methodology and a collaborative community-health system approach, we identified gaps, opportunities, and solutions to address perinatal care inequities within our urban community. Given the urgent need for implementable and effective solutions, the design process was particularly well-suited because it focuses on understanding and centering the needs and values of stakeholders, is multi-disciplinary through all phases, and results in prototyping and iteration of real-world solutions.