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Objective To systematically examine the effectiveness and tolerability of psilocybin for treating end-of-life anxiety symptoms.Methods The Medline, Embase, CENTRAL, and PsycINFO databases were searched up to November 25, 2020. We enrolled clinical trials investigating psilocybin for treating end-of-life anxiety symptoms. Meta-analysis was conducted using random-effects model.Results Overall, five studies were included, revealing that psilocybin was superior to the placebo in treating state anxiety at 1 day (Hedges’ g, -0.70; 95% confidence interval, -1.01 to -0.39) and 2 weeks (-1.03; -1.47 to -0.60) after treatment. Psilocybin was more effective than placebo in treating trait anxiety at 1 day (-0.71; -1.15 to -0.26), 2 weeks (-1.08; -1.80 to -0.36), and 6 months (-0.84; -1.37 to -0.30) after treatment. Psilocybin was associated with transient elevation in systolic (19.00; 13.58–24.41 mm Hg) and diastolic (8.66; 5.18–12.15 mm Hg) blood pressure compared with placebo. The differences between psilocybin and placebo groups with regard to allcause discontinuation, serious adverse events, and heart rates were nonsignificant.Conclusion Psilocybin-assisted therapy could ameliorate end-of-life anxiety symptoms without serious adverse events. Because of the small sample sizes of the included studies and high heterogeneity on long-term outcomes, future randomized controlled trials with large sample sizes are needed.

We develop RecSim NG, a probabilistic platform that supports natural, concise specification and learning of models for multi-agent recommender systems simulation. RecSim NG is a scalable, modular, differentiable simulator implemented in Edward2 and TensorFlow.

Background and purpose: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) triggers a complex series of inflammatory responses that contribute to secondary tissue damage. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of baicalein, a flavonoid possessing potent anti-inflammatory properties, on functional and histological outcomes and inflammatory cytokine expression, following TBI in rats. Experimental approach: Rats subjected to controlled cortical impact injury were injected with baicalein (30 mg kg−1) or vehicle immediately after injury or daily for 4 days. Neurological status was evaluated using the rotarod, adhesive removal, modified neurological severity scores and beam walk tests. Contusion volume and neuronal degeneration were measured using cresyl violet and FluoroJade B (FJB) histochemistry. Levels of tumour necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interleukin-1β (IL-1β) and interleukin-6 (IL-6) mRNA and protein were assessed by real-time quantitative reverse transcriptase-PCR, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and immunohistochemistry. Key results: Single-dose and multiple-dose treatment with baicalein significantly improved functional recovery and reduced contusion volumes up to day 28 post-injury, although multiple-dose baicalein was the more effective treatment. Single-dose baicalein also significantly reduced the number of degenerating neurons (31%) on post-injury day 1 as indicated by FJB staining. These changes were associated with significantly decreased levels, at the contusion site, of TNF-α, IL-1β and IL-6 mRNA at 6 h, and cytokine protein on day 1 post-injury. Conclusions and implications: Post-injury treatment with baicalein improved functional and histological outcomes and reduced induction of proinflammatory cytokines in rat TBI. The neuroprotective effect of baicalein may be related to a decreased inflammatory response following the injury. British Journal of Pharmacology (2008) 155, 1279–1296; doi:10.1038/bjp.2008.345; published online 8 September 2008

We report the structure and emission properties of ternary (In,Ga)N nanowires (NWs) embedded with self-assembled quantum dots (SAQDs). InGaN NWs are fabricated by the reaction of In, Ga and NH 3 via a vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) mechanism, using Au as the catalyst. By simply varying the growth temperature, In-rich or Ga-rich ternary NWs have been produced. X-ray diffraction, Raman studies and transmission electron microscopy reveal a phase-separated microstructure wherein the isovalent heteroatoms are self-aggregated, forming SAQDs embedded in NWs. The SAQDs are observed to dominate the emission behavior of both In-rich and Ga-rich NWs. Temperature-dependent photoluminescence (PL) measurements indicate relaxation of excited electrons from the matrix of the Ga-rich NWs to their embedded SAQDs. A multi-level band schema is proposed for the case of In-rich NWs, which showed an anomalous enhancement in the PL peak intensity with increasing temperature accompanies with red shift in its peak position.

In this paper, we study strategies in incremental planning for ordering and grouping subproblems partitioned by the subgoals of a planning problem when each sub-problem is solved by a basic planner. To generate a rich set of partial orders for ordering subproblems, we propose a new ordering algorithm based on a relaxed plan built from the initial state to the goal state. The new algorithm considers both the initial and the goal states and can effectively order subgoals in such a way that greatly reduces the number of invalidations during incremental planning. We have also considered trade-offs between the granularity of the subgoal sets and the complexity of solving the overall planning problem. We show an optimal region of grain size that minimizes the total complexity of incremental planning. We propose an efficient strategy to dynamically adjust the grain size in partitioning in order to operate in this optimal region. We further evaluate a redundant-execution scheme that uses two different subgoal orders in order to improve the quality of the plans generated without greatly sacrificing run-time efficiency. Experimental results on using three basic planners (metric-FF, YAHSP, and LPG-TD-speed) show that our strategies are general for improving the time and quality of each of these planners across various benchmarks

An MPEG-4 video coding SOC design is presented in this paper. We adopt platform-based architecture with an embedded RISC core and efficient memory organization. A motion estimator supporting predictive diamond search and spiral full search is implemented for compromise between compression performance and design cost. The proposed data reuse scheme reduces required memory access bandwidth. For texture coding path, an interleaving DCT/IDCT scheduling with substructure sharing technique is proposed. Several key modules are integrated into an efficient platform in hardware/software co-design fashion. The cost-efficient video encoder SOC consumes 256.8 mW at 40 MHz and achieves real-time encoding of 30 CIF (352×288) frames per second.

High-quality single crystal indium nitride nanorods were grown on Si substrates by catalytic chemical vapor deposition. Both Raman and high resolution transmission electron microscopic analyses suggested that even a minute amount of oxygen, from the residual oxygen in the growth environment and/or native oxide on the Si, would effectively help the growth of InN nanorods. The In2O3 formed on Au nanoparticles helped dissolve nitrogen as a catalyst with the subsequent growth of InN nanorods. Variations in the apparent color and photoluminescence (PL) spectra of the InN nanorods were observed. For the optically brown InN nanorods that exhibited diameters in the range of 30–50 nm, the PL study showed a peak at 1.9 eV, the possible origins of which are discussed. In contrast, for the optically black InN nanorods that exhibited diameters in the range of 50–100 nm, the PL peak at approximately 0.766 eV measured at 20 K was attributed to band edge emission.

The formation of homojunctions and heterojunctions on two-dimensional (2D) substrates plays a key role in the device performance of thin films. Accelerating the progress of device fabrication in nanowires (NWs) also necessitates a similar understanding in the one-dimensional (1D) system. Nanohomojunction (GaN on GaN) and nanoheterojunction (InN on GaN) nanorods (NRs) were formed in a two-step growth process by a vapor–liquid–solid (VLS) mechanism. Ga2O3 nanoribbons were formed using Ni as catalyst in a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) technique and then completely converted to GaN NWs with NH3 as reactant gas. An Au catalyst is used in the second step of the VLS process to grow GaN and InN NRs on GaN NWs using CVD techniques. A morphological study showed the formation of nanobrushes with different structural symmetries and sub-symmetries in both homogeneous and heterogeneous systems. Structural characterizations showed nearly defect-free growth of nanohomojunction (GaN) and nanoheterojunction (InN) NRs on 1D GaN NW substrates.

We report the morphology, composition, and interaction mechanisms of silicon surface gratings fabricated with the fourth harmonic (266 nm) of a Q-switched Nd:YAG laser. We paid particular attention to the laser fluence dependence of silicon grating formation. It was found that at low fluence levels, grating formation was mainly caused by silicon oxidation. However, at high fluence levels gratings were formed with thermal ablation. In the former case, it was found that water vapor, instead of oxygen molecules, in the air was the key species providing oxygen for silicon oxidation. In the latter case, grating morphology was controlled by laser fluence level. These conclusions were supported by the measurement results of atomic force microscopy, energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, and chemical etching. The results of real-time monitoring of grating growth are also reported.

Support vector machines (SVMs) were originally designed for binary classification. How to effectively extend it for multiclass classification is still an ongoing research issue. Several methods have been proposed where typically we construct a multiclass classifier by combining several binary classifiers. Some authors also proposed methods that consider all classes at once. As it is computationally more expensive to solve multiclass problems, comparisons of these methods using large-scale problems have not been seriously conducted. Especially for methods solving multiclass SVM in one step, a much larger optimization problem is required so up to now experiments are limited to small data sets. In this paper we give decomposition implementations for two such "all-together" methods. We then compare their performance with three methods based on binary classifications: "one-against-all," "one-against-one," and directed acyclic graph SVM (DAGSVM). Our experiments indicate that the "one-against-one" and DAG methods are more suitable for practical use than the other methods. Results also show that for large problems methods by considering all data at once in general need fewer support vectors.

The application of frequent patterns in classification appeared in sporadic studies and achieved initial success in the classification of relational data, text documents and graphs. In this paper, we conduct a systematic exploration of frequent pattern-based classification, and provide solid reasons supporting this methodology. It was well known that feature combinations (patterns) could capture more underlying semantics than single features. However, inclusion of infrequent patterns may not significantly improve the accuracy due to their limited predictive power. By building a connection between pattern frequency and discriminative measures such as information gain and Fisher score, we develop a strategy to set minimum support in frequent pattern mining for generating useful patterns. Based on this strategy, coupled with a proposed feature selection algorithm, discriminative frequent patterns can be generated for building high quality classifiers. We demonstrate that the frequent pattern-based classification framework can achieve good scalability and high accuracy in classifying large datasets. Empirical studies indicate that significant improvement in classification accuracy is achieved (up to 12% in UCI datasets) using the so-selected discriminative frequent patterns.

This paper presents a cost-effective platform architecture design for MPEG-4 video coding. A fast motion estimator architecture supporting predictive diamond search and spiral full search with halfway termination is implemented to make good compromise between compression performance and design cost. An efficient block-level scheduling for texture coding engine is employed to reduce the hardware cost. Both these key modules are integrated into an efficient platform in hardware/software co-design fashion. With high degree of optimization in both algorithm and architecture levels, a cost-efficient video encoder is implemented. It consumes 256.8 mW at 40 MHz and achieves real-time encoding of 30 CIF (352/spl times/288) frames per second.

MPEG-4 Fine Granularity Scalability (FGS) provides bandwidth adaptation and error resilience features for streaming applications. In this paper, by estimating the required computational power for FGS in a video encoding system, an efficient FGS implementation method is exploited. With the proposed hardware-oriented optimization approaches, a hardwired FGS block-level processing core is proposed to provide a cost-effective solution to FGS implementation. The proposed hardware core can support profile level 5, frame size 720/spl times/576, 30Hz, for real-time streaming applications at 54 MHz.

For MPEG-4 texture coding, an efficient Interleaving DCT and IDCT Schedule (IDIS) is proposed. With this scheme, the DCT-Q-IQ-IDCT coding loop can be implemented with no buffers and least latency, which in turn makes the number of buffers for MC a minimum of two. Also by the characteristics of IDIS, a substructure sharing technique is applied for DC/AC prediction with Q and IQ to reduce hardware cost further. All the functions are integrated to comprise the block engine for texture coding operations in the MPEG-4 video standard. For a encoding sequence of 720/spl times/480 at 30 fps, real-time requirement can be achieved at 54 MHz. The proposed scheduling can be further applied to other video coding standards for a cost-effective SOC implementation.

Sprite coding, which is a new coding tool in MPEG-4, can achieve high coding efficiency with high subjective quality at low bit rate. Many sprite generation algorithms have been proposed; however, the computational intensity is very high and the quality is not good enough because of the limitation of simple motion models. A novel sprite generation algorithm is proposed with several new techniques. A frame skipping technique can generate the sprite using only several important frames to accelerate the process and achieve similar subjective quality. In addition, boundary matching and multiple sprites techniques can overcome the limitation of simple motion models to achieve high subjective quality with little computation overhead. Experiments show the proposed algorithm is 46 times faster than the algorithms in MPEG-4 VM and have high subjective quality. These techniques can be also applied with other sprite generation algorithms.

The pulse break-up phenomenon during nonlinear coupling in directional couplers made of Kerr media, such as optical fiber, can lead to pulse narrowing and has been used for passive mode-locking of Er-doped fiber lasers [1,2]. In this paper, we demonstrate the similar mechanism in directional couplers made of two parallel semiconductor optical amplifiers. In such a directional coupler with an appropriate length, the leading edge of an input pulse can couple into the cross amplifier; however, the high power of the central part saturates the bar amplifier and breaks the phase-matching condition for linear coupling. Because of the long recovering time of gain saturation, the trailing edge of the input pulse is effectively depressed, although it stays in the bar amplifier. Therefore, the pulse is effectively narrowed. By placing such a directional coupler in a ring cavity, we have numerically shown that periodical short pulses evolved from a long pulse inside the cavity under appropriate conditions, similar to the passively mode-locking results using a saturable absorber. To extract laser energy, we used the cross amplifier as the output coupler and found that the peak power (pulse width) of the mode-locked output could be higher (shorter) than the intracavity peak power (pulse width). A detailed investigation showed that the relative strength of the output pulse and the intracavity pulse depended on the length of the directional coupler. Also, we found that mode-locking results could be adjusted by the relative gain of the two amplifiers. There exists quite a large parameter space for the mode-locking phenomenon to occur. This implies that the implementation of such a passively mode-locked semiconductor laser should be feasible.

The authors demonstrate the coalescence overgrowth of GaN nano-columns on a (111) Si substrate with metalorganic chemical vapor deposition to show high-quality optical properties in the overgrown film. Plan-view scanning electron microscopy (SEM) shows coalesced surface morphology, although hexagonal structures are still visible in the images. The cross-section cathodoluminescence (CL) image shows more efficient emission in the overgrowth layer than from the nano-column layer. The plan-view CL image demonstrates that the emitted light is mainly from the hexagonal structures. The photoluminescence measurement result indicates that the emission efficiency of the overgrown layer is even higher than that of an undoped GaN thin film of high quality. The presence of hexagonal structures correlates to surface roughness values in the range of several nanometres.

Idiopathic granulomatous mastitis (IGM) is a rare inflammatory breast disease. The etiology and treatment options of IGM remain controversial. Previous case reports have suggested that hyperprolactinemia may be associated with IGM. In the present report, we describe the first case of IGM associated with risperidone-induced hyperprolactinemia. Virtual slides The virtual slide(s) for this article can be found here: http://www.diagnosticpathology.diagnomx.eu/vs/8120093785928228