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ABSTRACT: CONTEXT: Current therapies for traumatic brain injury (TBI) include pharmacotherapy, psychotherapy, and cognitive rehabilitation. Unfortunately, psychological and emotional issues regularly go untreated in individuals with TBI even after they receive treatment for physical, behavioral, and cognitive issues. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) may offer new rehabilitation opportunities for individuals with TBI.
OBJECTIVE: To demonstrate the efficacy of MBCT in the treatment of clinically diagnosed depression in a TBI population.
DESIGN: The research team measured depression, pain frequency and intensity, energy levels, health status, and function preintervention and postintervention.
SETTING: The research team conducted the study at the Ottawa Hospital Rehabilitation Centre, Ontario, Canada.
PARTICIPANTS: The research team recruited 23 participants from two sources: (1) the brain injury program at the hospital and (2) the local head-injury association. Twenty participants completed the study.
INTERVENTION: The intervention was 8 weeks in length, with a 90-minute MBCT session once a week. The research team based the specific content of the study's intervention on a combination of Kabat-Zinn's manualized mindfulness-based stress reduction program and Segal and colleague's manual for MBCT.
OUTCOME MEASURES: The research team determined statistical significance using paired t-tests for continuous outcomes and the McNemar chi-square test for dichotomous categorical outcomes. They also calculated effect sizes for all depression measures.
RESULTS: Postintervention, the study found that MBCT significantly reduced (P < .050) depression symptoms on all scales compared to baseline. The study demonstrated medium to large effect sizes for each depression measure. Participants indicated reduced pain intensity (P = .033) and increased energy levels (P = .004). No significant changes occurred in anxiety symptoms, pain frequency, and level of functioning postintervention.
CONCLUSION: MBCT was efficacious in reducing depression in the TBI population, providing ample rationale for further research with more robust designs. This study marks an important step toward the development and provision of MBCT on a wider scale to support the rehabilitation efforts of people who have depression symptoms following TBI.
Advances in mind-body medicine 01/2012; 26(1):14.
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R Fallows,
K McCoy,
J Hertza,
E Klosson,
B Estes,
I Stroescu,
Cm Salinas,
A Stringer,
S. Aronson,
W Macallister, [......],
T White,
J Gold,
A Vincent,
T Roebuck-Spencer,
A Bowles,
K Gilliland,
A Watts,
F Ahmed,
A Yon,
B Gordon
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ABSTRACT: Objective: The seminal paper on cerebellar cognitive affective syndrome by Schmahmann and Sherman (1998), and subsequent studies, has expanded our understanding of the role of the cerebellum beyond motor functioning to psychological and cognitive functioning. However, many of these studies have examined patients between 1 week and 5 years post-injury and have tended to exclude patients with prior neurological injuries. Thus, the objective of this case study was to examine cerebellar injury in the context of remote traumatic brain injury (TBI) and describe the long-term cognitive, psychological, and psychosocial sequelae of injury in a 33-year-old, right-handed, Caucasian veteran (S.M.). Method: At age 23, S.M. was referred for neuroimaging by psychiatry due to concern that a TBI from age 16 was the cause of recent onset aggressive behavior. Multiple neuroimaging studies showed no neuroanatomical sequelae of TBI, but revealed a right cerebellar arteriovenous malformation (AVM). Embolization resulted in >50% removal of the AVM, but uncovered an intranidal aneurysm. Repeat neuroimaging revealed a large hemorrhage within the cerebellum with the mass effect and hydrocephalus; subsequent treatment resulted in a complicated 5-month hospital stay. Results: Neuropsychological evaluation conducted 10 years after injury revealed deficits in basic attention, working memory, and information processing speed with relatively intact executive functioning and memory. Physical deficits, including ataxia, dysarthria, and spasticity, and psychological difficulties, including impulsivity and low frustration tolerance, were more prominent and caused significant psychosocial distress, impacting interpersonal relationships. Conclusions: This case highlights the cognitive residual of cerebellar injury and the potential long-term impact on psychological and social functioning.
Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology 09/2011; 26(6):470-567. · 2.18 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: The hit-or-miss transform (HMT) is a well-known morphological transform capable of identifying features in digital images. When image features contain noise, texture, or some other distortion, the HMT may fail. Various researchers have extended the HMT in different ways to make it more robust to noise. The most successful, and most recent extensions of the HMT for noise robustness, use rank-order operators in place of standard morphological erosions and dilations. A major issue with the proposed methods is that no technique is provided for calculating the parameters that are introduced to generalize the HMT, and, in most cases, these parameters are determined empirically. We present here, a new conceptual interpretation of the HMT which uses a percentage occupancy (PO) function to implement the erosion and dilation operators in a single pass of the image. Further, we present a novel design tool, derived from this PO function that can be used to determine the only parameter for our routine and for other generalizations of the HMT proposed in the literature. We demonstrate the power of our technique using a set of very noisy images and draw a comparison between our method and the most recent extensions of the HMT.
IEEE Transactions on Image Processing 08/2011; · 3.04 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: In this paper, a wireless, multisensor inspection system for nondestructive evaluation (NDE) of materials is described. The sensor configuration enables two inspection modes-magnetic (flux leakage and eddy current) and noncontact ultrasound. Each is designed to function in a complementary manner, maximizing the potential for detection of both surface and internal defects. Particular emphasis is placed on the generic architecture of a novel, intelligent sensor platform, and its positioning on the structure under test. The sensor units are capable of wireless communication with a remote host computer, which controls manipulation and data interpretation. Results are presented in the form of automatic scans with different NDE sensors in a series of experiments on thin plate structures. To highlight the advantage of utilizing multiple inspection modalities, data fusion approaches are employed to combine data collected by complementary sensor systems. Fusion of data is shown to demonstrate the potential for improved inspection reliability.
IEEE Sensors Journal 12/2009; · 1.52 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Existing and emerging cellular infrastructure standards require cost effective radio frequency (RF) power amplifiers. A 200 W LDMOS power amplifier (PA) that employs the unique design advantages of a new cost effective multi-chip over-molded plastic package combined with compact integrated passive devices (IPDs) is introduced in this paper. The amplifier is designed for the 900 MHz WCDMA base station market as a high power, low cost alternative to current PAs housed in metal ceramic packaging. This design represents the highest power level reported in an over-molded plastic package for 900 MHz cellular infrastructure applications.
Microwave Symposium Digest, 2009. MTT '09. IEEE MTT-S International; 07/2009
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ABSTRACT: Switch-like phenomena within biological systems complicate the inference of gene regulatory networks. In this case, the difficulty comes from the fact that the model cannot be inferred from the mixed unknown contexts directly. It is necessary to identify the dasiapurepsila contexts from the data and given a dasiapurepsila context, subsequently infer a model. In this paper, a wavelet-based approach is addressed for the efficient partitioning of data into different biological contexts. The wavelet transform is a well known tool from the signal processing domain. This approach is able to identify the switches in the various conditions, with much lower computational cost than existing techniques. In order to demonstrate the proposed algorithm, experiments on the basis of simulated sequences and a synthetic sequence derived from real gene networks have been performed.
Genomic Signal Processing and Statistics, 2009. GENSIPS 2009. IEEE International Workshop on; 06/2009
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ABSTRACT: A new edge-guided morphological filter is proposed to sharpen digital images. This is done by detecting the positions of the edges and then applying a class of morphological filtering. Motivated by the success of threshold decomposition, gradient-based operators are used to detect the locations of the edges. A morphological filter is used to sharpen these detected edges. Experimental results demonstrate that the performance of these detected edge deblurring filters is superior to that of other sharpener-type filters.
Hindawi Publishing Corporation EURASIP Journal on Image and Video Processing Article ID. 01/2008; 970353(9).
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ABSTRACT: We examined whether differences in smoking rates of Asian and white/Caucasian youth could be explained by personal (gender, employment status, volunteerism, parental education, and income) and social factors including differences in youths' relationships with their parents, extent of enculturation, and exposure to parental or peer smoking. A survey was conducted of a random sample of schools in 2 cities in British Columbia, Canada to obtain data from 3,278 high school students. Results from logistic regression analysis indicated smoking status was explained by place of birth, volunteerism, amount of income received from parents and employers, characteristics of the parental-child relationship, and parental and peer smoking status. Differences in the estimated risks of smoking of Asian youth and white youth were moderated by the youths' willingness to tell their parents about their lives, whether they worked for pay, and whether the Asian youth spoke English at home.
Journal of Ethnicity in Substance Abuse 01/2007; 6(3-4):95-112.
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ABSTRACT: This paper presents a new method of fitting probabilistic Boolean networks (PBNs) to time-course state data. The critical issue to be addressed is to identify the contributions of the PBN's constituent Boolean networks in a sequence of temporal data. The sequence must be partitioned into sections, each corresponding to a single model with fixed parameters. We propose an approach to subsequence identification based on 'purity functions' derived from state transition tables, to be used in conjunction with a method for the identification of predictor genes and functions. We also present the estimation of the network switching probability, selection probabilities, perturbation rate, as well as observations on the inference of input genes, predictor functions and their relation with the length of the observed data sequence.
Genomic Signal Processing and Statistics, 2006. GENSIPS '06. IEEE International Workshop on; 06/2006
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ABSTRACT: In any field which makes use of images, corruption is a common
problem. For broadcasters, it is desirable to have processes capable of
removing unwanted corruption in archive video material prior to
broadcast. A method of video restoration is described which specifically
addresses the problem of video “scratching”
Image Processing, 1997. Proceedings., International Conference on; 11/1997
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ABSTRACT: Several design methods for parallel genetic algorithms (PGAs)
optimizing morphological filters are discussed and an optimal scale and
machine independent PGA for a loosely coupled, homogeneous or
inhomogeneous multiprocessor computer is developed. The optimization is
made in terms of computation speed, parallelization efficiency and
quality. Quality means, in this context, the fitness of the best
chromosome, which is an objective measure for the performance of the
corresponding morphological filter in a particular environment
Image Processing and its Applications, 1995., Fifth International Conference on; 08/1995
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ABSTRACT: A snow hydrology has been implemented in an atmospheric general circulation model (GCM). The snow hydrology consists of parameterizations of snowfall and snow cover fraction, a prognostic calculation of snow temperature, and a model of the snow mass and hydrologic budgets. Previously, only snow albedo had been included. A 3-year GCM simulation with this more complete surface hydrology is compared to a previous GCM control run with the specified snow line, as well as with observations. In particular, the authors discuss comparisons of the atmospheric and surface hydrologic budgets and the surface energy budget for U.S. and Canadian areas. The new snow hydrology changes the annual cycle of the surface moisture and energy budgets in the model. There is a noticeable shift in the runoff maximum from winter in the control run to spring in the snow hydrology run. A substantial amount of GCM winter precipitation is now stored in the seasonal snowpack. Snow cover also acts as an important insulating layer between the atmosphere and the ground. Wintertime soil temperatures are much higher in the snow, hydrology experiment than in the control experiment. Seasonal snow cover is important for dampening large fluctuations in GCM continental skin temperature during the Northern Hemisphere winter. Snow depths and snow extent show good agreement with observations over North America. The geographic distribution of maximum depths is not as well simulated by the model due, in part, to the coarse resolution of the model. The patterns of runoff are qualitatively and quantitatively similar to observed patterns of streamflow averaged over the continental United States. The seasonal cycles of precipitation and evaporation are also reasonably well simulated by the model, although their magnitudes are larger than is observed. This is due, in part, to a cold bias in this model, which results in a dry model atmosphere and enhances the hydrologic cycle everywhere. 52 refs., 13 figs., 5 tabs.
Journal of Climate; (United States). 07/1994; 7:8.
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ABSTRACT: A method of shape recognition involving fast correlation
techniques based on number theoretic transforms (NTTs) is outlined. NTTs
facilitate the computation of convolutions with no roundoff error and
are ideally suited for implementation on current bit-serial
word-parallel machines such as the DAP-500. The transforms can be
carried out by a combination of shifts and adds with all arithmetic
performed modulo some integer number. They produce very fast
implementations at the price of limiting the input to integer values
over a finite field. In the present application the pixel values
describing an object boundary are in precisely this form so that the
advantages of the NTT can be obtained at no cost in quantization or
clipping noise. Results of correlating shapes which have undergone
various transformations are presented
Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, 1988. ICASSP-88., 1988 International Conference on; 05/1988 · 4.63 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: This paper describes a coding strategy which stores digital images in terms of their contours. The data in the original raw image is reorganised into a set of 1-d trajectories and these are normalised in length and approximated by low rank models. It is the coefficients of these models which are retained. The second order statistical information is used to derive a vector codebook containing standard sets of coefficients, and each contour is allocated the codeword of the nearest standard vector. In this way a codebook of generating functions for standard shapes is obtained. The problems of non closing contours are addressed along with interpolation methods to produce a reconstructed image from a contoured image.
Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, IEEE International Conference on ICASSP '86.; 05/1986
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ABSTRACT: This paper reports on a social survey that was conducted in 2001 in Central Queensland, Australia, in order to identify the disadvantaged groups in relation to accessing the Internet from home. The research found that people in younger age groups, with higher education levels, being married , having children at home, owning a house/flat, with the higher income level, or being employed, had higher levels of Internet access from home respectively, compared to their counterparts. Regression analysis found that variation of any factors of education levels, marital status, children at home, income level and employ-ment status may affect the decision to access the Internet from home. It also found that unemployment and low education levels were two major factors detrimentally affecting home Internet access and that seniors (>55 years of age) were disadvantaged because of lack of awareness and capability to use the Internet.
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ABSTRACT: A global to regional modeling system has been developed to evaluate precipitation under doubled CO 2 . The National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) regional spectral model (RSM) is initialized and forced by current and doubled CO 2 simulations from the NCAR community climate model (CCM3). Three RSM simulations, RSM0, RSM1, and RSM2, with resolution of 280, 50 and 15 km, are examined. The RSM0 setup resolution matches the T42 CCM3 simulations. The RSM2 simulation is centered over Taiwan. Due to incompatibility of the model physics, noticeable differences between RSM0 and CCM3 are found, especially in wintertime, which suggests that simulation from RSM0, rather than CCM3, should be used to contrast high-resolution regional variations produced by RSM1 or RSM2 simulations. While the spatial distributions of RSM1 and RSM2 simulations over Taiwan are greatly improved over the CCM3 simulation, the intensity of the unique wintertime drizzle is overestimated, especially in RSM2. There is also a spurious northward extension of the precipitation pattern from the subtropical warm-pool region. Thus the regional response to doubled CO 2 , which consists of more summerlike wintertime precipitation characteristics over the northeastern and eastern sides of Taiwan, with increased intensity mostly in the extreme events, is still in doubt and must be examined with improved global and regional models. D 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
