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The Reconceptualized Uncertainty in Illness Theory (RUIT) was used to investigate antecedents to, appraisals of, and ways of coping with stressful caregiving. Four focus groups with caregivers (8 males and 16 females) of relatives with dementia were conducted; 15 cared for their parents and the remainder cared for their spouses. They were recruited from an adult care center and other community settings in a metropolitan area in New England. The discussions were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim. Two researchers independently coded the transcripts. Thematic analysis was structured according to the RUIT. The study is unique in its application to caregivers as opposed to patients and to all of the elements of the RUIT. Caregivers experience uncertainty in similar ways to patients with life-altering illness. Symptom severity--lack of personal boundaries, repetitive and aggressive behaviors, and the need for constant care--was the most frequent source of stress. The appraisals were mostly negative and included feelings of resentment, a lack of support from family members, financial strains, and loss of freedom. Self-improvement and self-care were important aspects of coping. Spirituality and humor were other coping skills that respondents used. Not all respondents said they were coping and some also reported that support from health care providers was not always helpful. Nurses can help improve coping by explaining the factors that contribute to caregiver strain and uncertainty, and by assisting caregivers to anticipate the effects of the caregiving role.

To ensure the function of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), nodes that fail to forward packets must be localized efficiently and then fixed or replaced promptly. The state-of-the-art work frames lossy node localization in WSNs as an optimal sequential testing problem guided by end-to-end data. It combines both the active and passive measurements to minimize the testing cost and the number of iterations. However, this hybrid approach has many limitations. Inspired by the success of coverage-based software debugging, and the similarity between software debugging and lossy node localization, we propose a coverage-based lossy node detection for WSNs. Supported by established statistic theories, this approach greatly boosts the performance. Experiments on randomly generated networks and deployed networks show that the proposed algorithm can significantly reduce testing cost and number of iterations, which are the two optimization goals of previous work. We expect to use this approach for other diagnostic problems in WSNs. © 2001-2012 IEEE.

Triangulations of 3-dimensional polyhedron are partitions of the polyhedron with tetrahedra in a face-to-face fashion without introducing new vertices. Schönhardt (Math. Ann. 89:309–312, 1927), Bagemihl (Amer. Math. Mon. 55:411–413, 1948), Kuperberg (Personal communication 2011) and others constructed special polyhedra in such a way that clever one line geometric reasons imply nontriangulability. Rambau (Comb. Comput. Geom. 52:501–516, 2005) proved that twisted prisms over n-gons are nontriangulable. Our approach for proving polyhedra are nontriangulable is to show that partitions with tetrahedra, which we call tilings, do not exist even if the face-to-face-restriction is relaxed. First we construct a polyhedron which is tileable but is not triangulable. Then we revisit Rambau type twisted prisms. In fact we consider a slightly different class of polyhedra, and prove that these new twisted prisms are nontileable, thus are nontriangulable. We also show that one can twist the regular dodecahedron so that it becomes nontileable, which is abstracted to a new family of nontileable polyhedra, called nonconvex twisted pentaprisms. © 2015, The Managing Editors.

We study transformations of finite modules over Noetherian local rings that attach to a module M a graded module H(x)(M) defined via partial systems of parameters x of M. Despite the generality of the process, which are called j-transforms, in numerous cases they have interesting cohomological properties. We focus on deriving the Hilbert functions of j-transforms and studying the significance of the vanishing of some of its coefficients. Copyright © 2016 Cambridge Philosophical Society.

Motor vehicle accidents (MVA) are often difficult to distinguish from non-accidental injury (NAI). This retrospective case–control study compared animals with known MVA trauma against those with known NAI. Medical records of 426 dogs and cats treated after MVA and 50 after NAI were evaluated. Injuries significantly associated with MVA were pelvic fractures, pneumothorax, pulmonary contusion, abrasions, and degloving wounds. Injuries associated with NAI were fractures of the skull, teeth, vertebrae, and ribs, scleral hemorrhage, damage to claws, and evidence of older fractures. Odds ratios are reported for these injuries. MVA rib fractures were found to occur in clusters on one side of the body, with cranial ribs more likely to fracture, while NAI rib fractures were found to occur bilaterally with no cranial–caudal pattern. Establishing evidence-based patterns of injury may help clinicians differentiate causes of trauma and may aid in the documentation and prosecution of animal abuse. © 2016 American Academy of Forensic Sciences

We extend and unify most known results about guarding orthogonal polygons by introducing the same-sign diagonal graphs of a convex quadrangulation and applying results about vertex covers for graphs. Our approach also yields new theorems and often guarantees two disjoint vertex guard sets of relatively small cardinality. For instance, an orthogonal polygon on n vertices has two disjoint vertex guard sets of cardinality at most (Formula presented.). We give new proofs of Aggarwal’s one-hole theorem and the orthogonal fortress theorem. We prove that an orthogonal polygon with n vertices and any number of holes can be protected by at most (Formula presented.) vertex guards, improving the best known bound of (Formula presented.). Also, an orthogonal polygon with n vertices and h holes can be protected by (Formula presented.) guarded guards, which is best possible when (Formula presented.). Moreover, for orthogonal fortresses with n vertices, (Formula presented.) guarded guards are always sufficient and sometimes necessary. © 2016, Springer Science+Business Media New York (outside the USA).

Let P be an orthogonal polygon with n vertices, and let V⁎ and E⁎ be specified sets of vertices and edges of P. We prove that P has a guard set of cardinality at most ⌊(n+3|V⁎|+2|E⁎|)/4⌋ that includes each vertex in V⁎ and at least one point of each edge in E⁎. Our bound is sharp and reduces to the orthogonal art gallery theorem of Kahn, Klawe and Kleitman when V⁎ and E⁎ are empty. © 2016 Elsevier B.V.

Software components, which are vulnerable to being exploited, need to be identified and patched. Employing any prevention techniques designed for the purpose of detecting vulnerable software components in early stages can reduce the expenses associated with the software testing process significantly and thus help building a more reliable and robust software system. Although previous studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of adapting prediction techniques in vulnerability detection, the feasibility of those techniques is limited mainly because of insufficient training data sets. This paper proposes a prediction technique targeting at early identification of potentially vulnerable software components. In the proposed scheme, the potentially vulnerable components are viewed as mislabeled data that may contain true but not yet observed vulnerabilities. The proposed hybrid technique combines the supports vector machine algorithm and ensemble learning strategy to better identify potential vulnerable components. The proposed vulnerability detection scheme is evaluated using some Java Android applications. The results demonstrated that the proposed hybrid technique could identify potentially vulnerable classes with high precision and relatively acceptable accuracy and recall.

The set of the first Hilbert coefficients of parameter ideals relative to a module—its Chern coefficients—over a local Noetherian ring codes for considerable information about its structure–noteworthy properties such as that of Cohen-Macaulayness, Buchsbaumness, and of having finitely generated local cohomology. The authors have previously studied the ring case. By developing a robust setting to treat these coefficients for unmixed rings and modules, the case of modules is analyzed in a more transparent manner. Another series of integers arise from partial Euler characteristics and are shown to carry similar properties of the module. The technology of homological degree theory is also introduced in order to derive bounds for these two sets of numbers. © 2014, Institute of Mathematics, Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology (VAST) and Springer Science+Business Media Singapore.

Our purpose is to study the cohomological properties of the Rees algebras of a class of ideals generated by quadrics. For all such ideals I⊂. R=. K[. x, y, z] we give the precise value of depth. R[. It] and decide whether the corresponding rational maps are birational. In the case of dimension d≥. 3, when K=R, we give structure theorems for all ideals of codimension d minimally generated by (d+12)-1 quadrics. For arbitrary fields K, we prove a polarized version. © 2014 Elsevier Inc.

In order to reduce students' test anxiety, collaborative testing was suggested as an evaluation strategy. However, few studies have focused on testing group construction, especially when an important factor, i.e., group diversity is taken into consideration. In this paper we conducted a case study to assess the association between group diversity and test anxiety in collaborative testing. The results observed may indicate that: 1) around 20% of students suffered from test anxiety to some extent in either an individual test or a collaborative test; 2) collaborative testing could alleviate test anxiety, whereas the effect is not statistically significant; 3) there exists a moderate positive correlation between group diversity and test anxiety in collaborative testing. The results of the study may suggest limiting group diversity in collaborative testing in order to alleviate test anxiety. © 2015 IEEE.

Due to the considerable advantages of collaborative learning, group work is widely used in tertiary institutions. Previous studies demonstrated that group diversity had positive influence on group work achievement. Therefore, an interesting question that arises is how to achieve maximum group diversity effectively and automatically, especially when the features to be considered are numerous and the number of students is large. In this paper we apply a multi-start algorithm composed by a greedy constructive and strategic oscillation improvement to group students. We evaluated the technique based on a small-scale case study. The results observed indicate that the multi-start algorithm-based grouping model is feasible. It improved the overall and average students diversity within group significantly, and it also enhanced students' collaborative learning outcomes compared to random grouping model. However, we did not find any evidence on monotonic positive relationship between diversity and students' learning outcomes. © 2015 IEEE.

Vulnerabilities need to be detected and removed from software. Although previous studies demonstrated the usefulness of employing prediction techniques in deciding about vulnerabilities of software components, the accuracy and improvement of effectiveness of these prediction techniques is still a grand challenging research question. This paper proposes a hybrid technique based on combining N-gram analysis and feature selection algorithms for predicting vulnerable software components where features are defined as continuous sequences of token in source code files, i.e., Java class file. Machine learning-based feature selection algorithms are then employed to reduce the feature and search space. We evaluated the proposed technique based on some Java Android applications, and the results demonstrated that the proposed technique could predict vulnerable classes, i.e., software components, with high precision, accuracy and recall. © 2015 IEEE.

We consider variations of the original art gallery problem where the domain is a polyomino, a polycube, or a polyhypercube. An m-polyomino is the connected union of m unit squares called pixels, an m-polycube is the connected union of m unit cubes called voxels, and an m-polyhypercube is the connected union of m unit hypercubes in a d dimensional Euclidean space. In this paper we generalize and unify the known results about guarding polyominoes and polycubes and obtain simpler proofs. We also obtain new art gallery theorems for guarding polyhypercubes. © 2015 Elsevier B.V.

This paper deals with predator–prey dynamics in individual and population perspectives. First, we build a discrete Markov model on predator–prey interactions in individual perspective. By shortening the time gap, from discrete time to continuous time, and increasing the number of individuals to infinity, a continuity equation on the predator–prey interactions is derived in a large population regime. Then, with the leading items of the continuity equation, that is the mean-field equation, following the approximate model, which entails qualitative analysis, we can obtain an asymptotically stable closed orbit or simply put, the parameter conditions where equilibrium point exists. These qualitative conclusions are the performance of individual microscopic interactions on macro-level groups, or can be treated as one component of microscopic models of various random statistical average results.This paper explored the accuracy and operability of the model constructed on individual level, which differs from traditional method, constructing population model directly via differential equations and difference equations. Therefore, by operating variables and data from individual behavior, it is probable for us to construct more accurate models for population dynamic. © 2014, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht (outside the USA).