Effects of self-generated rules on the development of schedule-controlled behavior.

College students responded under a multiple differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate 5-s fixed-ratio 8 schedule, with components alternating every 2 min. After 40 programmed minutes of acquisition and 12 min of maintenance, without notice, both schedules changed to extinction for 28 min. During acquisition, between alternations of the multiple schedule, some subjects were asked to develop rules describing the schedule contingencies. Other subjects were given these same rules between alternations, and a third group neither received nor were asked to develop rules. By the end of the acquisition phase, self-generated-rule subjects were more likely to show schedule-typical behavior than were subjects not asked to generate rules. The behavior of those given rules was similar to those asked to generate rules at the end of acquisition, but yoked-rule subjects acquired schedule-typical behavior at a quicker rate. By the end of extinction, during the period corresponding to the previous fixed-ratio interval, all no-rule subjects who had earned points during acquisition and maintenance were responding at a rate of less than 30 responses per minute. Only 3 of the 9 self-generated-rule subjects and 2 of the 5 yoked-rule subjects were similarly responding at this low rate. Results suggest that asking subjects to develop self-rules facilitates acquisition, but can retard extinction. Results also suggest that self-generated rules function similarly to external rules.     

Police interviewing: The identification of vulnerabilities

Failure to identify potential psychological vulnerabilities of people entering the Criminal Justice System continues to present a serious problem for the police and other agencies. This paper reviews some of the problems involved which include: the nature of the handicap itself, current guidelines and definitions, and somewhat arbitrary legal interpretations by the courts. An experiment is described in which police officers chose not to identify someone as vulnerable or ‘at risk’, despite information in all conditions having been biased towards eliciting a positive judgement.     

Nonabsolute/relativistic thinking: A common factor underlying models of postformal reasoning?

Strong empirical evidence was obtained in support of the proposition that nonabsolute/relativistic (N/R) thinking is a unifying commonality underlying four postformal models of higher-order thinking, namely, problem finding, dialectical reasoning, relativistic operations, and reflective judgment. Within the construct of N/R thinking, two dimensions—the basic form and the epistemic view—and two levels—the formal form and the postformal form—were differentiated as hypothesized. The findings clarify logical relationships among the models as well as provide a common link unifying their diversity. Implications and suggestions for future research are provided.     

Optimal temporal differentiation

In order to illuminate a light signaling a correct response, adult humans had to space their button presses according to a range of time requirements. In some conditions, the spacing needed only to exceed a minimum duration; in others, it had to fall between lower and upper bounds. Mean interresponse times always exceeded the lower limit, and decreased the more stringent were the upper bounds. Variability of interresponse times increased with larger lower bounds, but was unaffected by the size of the upper bound. Feedback about the direction of errors in conditions involving both upper and lower bounds did not affect the means, but it did reduce variability. Predictions were derived from optimality theory, based on the assumption that the critical factor was minimization of the time between correct responses. Without upper bounds, the theory overestimated the mean interresponse times by about 10%; with upper bounds, the theoretical predictions corresponded closely to the actual data. The results did not appear to reflect a scalar timing process. Optimality theory, in contrast to Weber's law, correctly predicted the variety of curves relating sensitivity to duration requirements.     

从胰腺移植到胰岛干细胞移植

糖尿病学家在胰腺及胰岛细胞移植领域进行了不懈的探索。胰腺移植和胰岛细胞移植的两大制约因素是可供移植的胰腺来源少且诱发受体免疫排斥反应而需应用免疫抑制剂。胰岛细胞制备、纯化技术以及免疫隔离技术的应用在一定程度上克服了上述两大制约因素，人们期待胰岛干细胞技术及其相关的基因技术的深入将这一技术趋于完善。     

Asthma-specific cognitions,self-focused attention,and fear of negative evaluation in adolescents and young adults diagnosed with childhood-onset asthma

The present study examined the impact of asthma-specific thought intrusion (TI) and thought suppression (TS) on two cognitive-affective variables (self-focused attention and fear of negative evaluation) among adolescents and young adults (AYAs) diagnosed with childhood-onset asthma. Participants were 290 AYAs who completed assessment questionnaires and participated in a written exercise electronically. Asthma-TI and TS were reported by participants following participation in a writing assignment. Asthma-TI was associated with increased private, public, and social anxiety self-focused attention, and greater fear of negative evaluation. Interestingly, asthma-TS was not associated with these same outcome variables. Findings suggest illness-specific cognitions are associated with cognitive-affective variables and it may be important to assess for illness-specific intrusive thoughts following asthma-focused medical appointments. Additionally, findings suggest the importance of assessing asthma-TI and TS separately in order to better understand thoughts about health and psychological functioning.     

Detection of subtype blood cells using deep learning

Deep Learning has already shown power in many application fields, and is accepted by more and more people as a better approach than the traditional machine learning models. In particular, the implementation of deep learning algorithms, especially Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), brings huge benefits to the medical field, where a huge number of images are to be processed and analyzed. This paper aims to develop a deep learning model to address the blood cell classification problem, which is one of the most challenging problems in blood diagnosis. A CNN-based framework is built to automatically classify the blood cell images into subtypes of the cells. Experiments are conducted on a dataset of 13k images of blood cells with their subtypes, and the results show that our proposed model provide better results in terms of evaluation parameters.     

慢性乙型肝炎T细胞功能与HBV前C区变异的研究

通过研究慢性HBV感染者前C区变异及T细胞免疫功能与疾病的相关性,评估前C（preC）区变异及T细胞免疫功能对于慢性乙型肝炎（chronichepatitisB,CHB）预后的影响。分别采用实时荧光法、突变特异PCRmsPCR法及微粒酶免疫分析法对150例HBV-DNA阳性的CHB及50例健康体检者进行血清HBV-DN...     

克服肿瘤干细胞耐药性的策略和思路

肿瘤干细胞（cancersterncells,CSCs）是肿瘤细胞的祖细胞。已有的研究表明,肿瘤干细胞对多种化疗药物具有耐药性,是导致肿瘤治疗后复发的根源。研究针对肿瘤干细胞的治疗方法,克服肿瘤干细胞耐药性,将给肿瘤治疗模式带来全新的改变,有望彻底改善肿瘤患者的预后。     

Behavioral Activation Treatment for Depression in Older Adults Delivered via Videoconferencing: A Pilot Study

Depression affects up to 25% of older adults. Underdetection and subsequent undertreatment of depression in older adults has been attributed in part to difficulties in older adults being able to access treatment. This uncontrolled pilot study, N = 3, explored the acceptability and efficacy of a brief behavioral activation treatment delivered via videoconferencing to 3 participants, aged 64 to 73 years, diagnosed with major depressive disorder. The results indicate that a 5-session behavioral activation treatment delivered via videoconferencing produced clinically significant and reliable decreases in depression. The results also showed clinically significant and reliable decreases in negative affect and clinically significant and reliable increases in positive affect. Treatment gains were maintained at 1-month follow-up. Videoconferencing can be a valuable and effective tool in increasing accessibility to psychological treatment for older adults.