Demonic sources of child’s dreads and magical methods to cure it (on the example of Russian spell)

The aim of the present article is to describe the folk etiology of child’s dreads as well as a presentation of the magical methods found in Russian folk culture for its cure. The material under study showed that as a means of magic various strategies have been used, for example: request, comparison, claim, demand of the dread to leave

Suicidal Ideation and Self-injury Prevalence and Impairment in an Urban Integrated Primary Care Clinic

Introduction: Suicide is the second leading cause of death for adolescents (Rosenbaum & Ougrin, 2019). Pediatric primary care staff are often the first line of intervention for youth presenting with suicidal thoughts and NSSI (Taliaferro et al., 2013). The primary aim of the current study was to describe reported suicidal ideation, attempts, and NSSI in youth presenting to an urban integrated primary care setting. Methods: Within an outpatient pediatric primary care clinic, patients were referred by medical staff and introduced to behavioral health services. Patients were asked about their history of suicidal thoughts/attempts and NSSI (Mage = 12.63; SD = 4.51; 66.3% female, 66.3% Black; 69.6% Medicaid). Patients were also screened using the Pediatric Symptom Checklist-17 (PSC17; Gardner et al., 2007) and Top Problems (Weisz et al., 2001). Results: Seventeen percent of patients endorsed a history of either suicidal ideation/attempts or NSSI. Chi-square analyses identified a significant association between patient race and suicidal ideation/attempts [χ2(6) = 13.56, p = .035]. The sample’s mean internalizing score on the PSC17 fell within the clinical range (M = 6.13, SD = 2.49). Further results reflecting findings, interventions used, and top problem areas will be presented. Conclusion: Results highlight a demand for establishing and sustaining effective screening and engagement in mental health treatment for youth suicidality and self-injury in integrated care settings. Future directions will be discussed.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/gradposters/1111/thumbnail.jp

Potential immunosuppressive effects of Escherichia coli O157:H7 experimental infection on the bovine host

Background: Enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC), like E. coli O157:H7 are frequently detected in bovine faecal samples at slaughter. Cattle do not show clinical symptoms upon infection, but for humans the consequences after consuming contaminated beef can be severe. The immune response against EHEC in cattle cannot always clear the infection as persistent colonization and shedding in infected animals over a period of months often occurs. In previous infection trials, we observed a primary immune response after infection which was unable to protect cattle from reinfection. These results may reflect a suppression of certain immune pathways, making cattle more prone to persistent colonization after re-infection. To test this, RNA-Seq was used for transcriptome analysis of recto-anal junction tissue and ileal Peyer's patches in nine Holstein-Friesian calves in response to a primary and secondary Escherichia coli O157: H7 infection with the Shiga toxin (Stx) negative NCTC12900 strain. Non-infected calves served as controls. Results: In tissue of the recto-anal junction, only 15 genes were found to be significantly affected by a first infection compared to 1159 genes in the ileal Peyer's patches. Whereas, re-infection significantly changed the expression of 10 and 17 genes in the recto-anal junction tissue and the Peyer's patches, respectively. A significant downregulation of 69 immunostimulatory genes and a significant upregulation of seven immune suppressing genes was observed. Conclusions: Although the recto-anal junction is a major site of colonization, this area does not seem to be modulated upon infection to the same extent as ileal Peyer's patches as the changes in gene expression were remarkably higher in the ileal Peyer's patches than in the recto-anal junction during a primary but not a secondary infection. We can conclude that the main effect on the transcriptome was immunosuppression by E. coli O157: H7 (Stx(-)) due to an upregulation of immune suppressive effects (7/12 genes) or a downregulation of immunostimulatory effects (69/94 genes) in the ileal Peyer's patches. These data might indicate that a primary infection promotes a re-infection with EHEC by suppressing the immune function

e-DOTS: AN INDOOR TRACKING SOLUTION

poster abstractAccurately tracking an object as its moves in a large indoor area is at-tractive due to its applicability to a wide range of domains. For example, a typical healthcare setup may benefit from tracking their assets, such as spe-cialized equipment, in real-time and thus optimize their usage. Existing techniques, such as the GPS, that focus on outdoor tracking do not provide accurate estimations of location within the confines of an indoor setup. Prev-alent approaches that attempt to provide the ability to perform indoor track-ing primarily focus on a homogenous type of sensor when providing an esti-mation of an object’s location. Such a homogeneous view is neither benefi-cial nor sufficient due to specific characteristics of single type of sensors. This research aims to create a distributed tracking system composed out of many different kinds of inexpensive and off-the-shelf sensors to address this challenge. Specifically, the proposed system, called Enhanced Distributed Object Tracking System (e-DOTS), will incorporate sensors such as web cameras, publically available wireless access points, and inexpensive RFID tracking tags to achieve accurate tracking over a large indoor area in real-time. As an object, in addition to moving in a known indoor setup, may move through an unknown confined area, the e-DOTS needs to incorporate opportunistic discovery of available sensors, select a proper subset of them, and fuse their readings in real-time to achieve an accurate estimation of the current position of that object. A preliminary prototype of e-DOTS has been created and experimented with. The results of these validations are promis-ing and suggest the possibility of e-DOTS achieving its desired goals. Further research is aimed at incorporating different kinds of sensors, different fusion techniques (e.g., Federated Kalman Filtering) and various discovery mecha-nisms to improve the tracking accuracy and the associated response time

Poster: Infusing Trust in Indoor Tracking

An indoor tracking system is inherently an asynchronous and distributed system that contains various types (e.g., detection, selection, and fusion) of events. One of the key challenges with regards to indoor tracking is an efficient selection and arrangement of sensor devices in the environment. Selecting the "right" subset of these sensors for tracking an object as it traverses an indoor environment is the necessary precondition to achieving accurate indoor tracking. With the recent proliferation of mobile devices, specifically those with many onboard sensors, this challenge has increased in both complexity and scale. No longer can one assume that the sensor infrastructure is static, but rather indoor tracking systems must consider and properly plan for a wide variety of sensors, both static and mobile, to be present. In such a dynamic setup, sensors need to be properly selected using an opportunistic approach. This opportunistic tracking allows for a new dimension of indoor tracking that previously was often infeasible or unpractical due to logistic or financial constraints of most entities. In this paper, we are proposing a selection technique that uses trust as manifested by its a quality-of-service (QoS) feature, accuracy, in a sensor selection function. We first outline how classification of sensors is achieved in a dynamic manner and then how the accuracy can be discerned from this classification in an effort to properly identify the trust of a tracking sensor and then use this information to improve the sensor selection process. We conclude this paper with a discussion of results of this implementation on a prototype indoor tracking system in an effort to demonstrate the overall effectiveness of this selection technique

Heuristic Based Sensor Ranking Algorithm for Indoor Tracking Applications

poster abstractLocation awareness in an indoor setup is an important function necessary in many application domains such as asset management, critical care, and augmented reality. Location awareness, or tracking, of an object within an indoor setting requires a high degree of accuracy, as room-to-room location may be very important. With the current proliferation of smart devices, with often a multitude of built-in sensors, and inexpensive sensors it is now possible to build a network of sensors, for the purpose of tracking, within an indoor environment without the high cost of installing the needed tracking infrastructure. In an effort to increase accuracy, as well as coverage area, various different sensors may be used in the tracking of an object. In this heterogeneous tracking situation, it is important for the tracking infrastructure to quickly and accurately decide which, all or a subset, of available sensors to use. Challenges related to heterogeneous data fusion and clock synchronization, must be addressed in order to provide accurate location estimates. We have proposed a heuristic based ranking algorithm to address these challenges. In this algorithm, the individual sensors are ranked based upon their quality of service (QoS) attributes and the resulting ranking is used by a filtering service during the sensor selection process. This information is provided to the filtering service when a sensor joins the tracking infrastructure and is subsequently only updated during idle periods, thereby, there avoiding additional overhead. We have implemented this algorithm into the existing prototypical Enhanced Distributed Object Tracking System or e-DOTS. e-DOTS has been extensively experimented with and the results of these experimentation validate the hypothesis that accurate indoor tracking can be achieved using a heterogeneous ensemble of cheap and mobile sensors. Our current investigation involves the incorporation of trust associated with sensors and deploying e-DOTS in a typical healthcare setup