Integrative Cognitive Therapy for Depression: A Preliminary Investigation.

This study is a preliminary investigation of an integrative treatment aimed at improving the efficacy of cognitive therapy (CT) for depression. The development of the treatment protocol was based on process findings, which suggested that strategies used in CT to resolve alliance ruptures may actually exacerbate problems in the therapeutic relationship. The protocol integrates, within the traditional CT treatment manual, procedures to repair alliance ruptures that are derived from or consistent with humanistic and interpersonal therapies. Although conducted by inexperienced therapists, the integrative treatment led to greater improvement than a waiting-list condition. The results also compare favorably to previous findings for CT. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Contributing authors

Contributing authors     

Interactions Between Ozone,Halogens and Organic Compounds

During drinking-water treatment, ozone used as a preoxidant and chlorine required for final disinfection, lead to competing chemical reactions, in the case of raw water containing both organic compounds and inorganic salts (such as bromides and ammonia).

The study of the interactions between those reactants has been made according to the following main topics :

As for THM formation, experiments conducted on simple organic compounds or on natural fulvic acids show important decreases in THM or TCAA formation after ozonation. It may be noticed, however, that the ozonation of surface waters may induce the formation of haloform precursors, usually with a low level of reactivity.

In water supplies containing bromide ions, oxidation of the latter through hypobromous acid may take place during the ozonation stage. Failing preozonation treatment, hypobromous acid is generated very rapidly during chlorination, thus inducing the formation of chloro- brominated organic compounds.

During the ozonation of fulvic acid solutions, the presence of small amounts of bicarbonate was found to improve precursor removal significantly.

It can be concluded that the partial analogy of the action of ozone or chlorine on aromatic structures, whether simple or complex (such as humic and fulvic acids), seems to indicate that the consequence of preozonation is the destruction, at least in part, of the most reactive sites for THM production, thus leading to a decrease of the volatile organochlorinated compounds formed during the post-chlorination. However, some ozonation products of natural waters are THM precursors, though of low reactivity. Then, in the presence of bromide ions, the formation of volatile organobrominated compounds may be observed during ozonation.     

Note: a high transmission Faraday optical isolator in the 9.2 μm range

We have fabricated and characterized an n-doped InSb Faraday isolator in the mid-IR range (9.2 μm). A high isolation ratio (31(2) dB) and low insertion loss (1.9(3) dB) are obtained. Temperature dependance is analyzed. Further possible improvements are discussed, including the realization of a two-stage isolator. A similar design can be used to cover a wide wavelength range (λ ~ 7.5-30 μm).     

Free-form object reconstruction from silhouettes, occluding edges and texture edges: a unified and robust operator based on duality

In this paper, the duality in differential form is developed between a 3D primal surface and its dual manifold formed by the surface's tangent planes, i.e., each tangent plane of the primal surface is represented as a four-dimensional vector which constitutes a point on the dual manifold. The iterated dual theorem shows that each tangent plane of the dual manifold corresponds to a point on the original 3D surface, i.e., the dual of the dual goes back to the primal. This theorem can be directly used to reconstruct 3D surface from image edges by estimating the dual manifold from these edges. In this paper we further develop the work in our original conference papers resulting in the robust differential dual operator. We argue that the operator makes good use of the information available in the image data, by using both points of intensity discontinuity and their edge directions; we provide a simple physical interpretation of what the abstract algorithm is actually estimating and why it makes sense in terms of estimation accuracy; our algorithm operates on all edges in the images, including silhouette edges, self occlusion edges, and texture edges, without distinguishing their types (thus resulting in improved accuracy and handling locally concave surface estimation if texture edges are present); the algorithm automatically handles various degeneracies; and the algorithm incorporates new methodologies for implementing the required operations such as appropriately relating edges in pairs of images, evaluating and using the algorithm's sensitivity to noise to determine the accuracy of an estimated 3D point. Experiments with both synthetic and real images demonstrate that the operator is accurate, robust to degeneracies and noise, and general for reconstructing free-form objects from occluding edges and texture edges detected in calibrated images or video sequences.     

Partial 3D Shape Retrieval by Reeb Pattern Unfolding

This paper presents a novel approach for fast and efficient partial shape retrieval on a collection of 3D shapes. Each shape is represented by a Reeb graph associated with geometrical signatures. Partial similarity between two shapes is evaluated by computing a variant of their maximum common sub-graph.
By investigating Reeb graph theory, we take advantage of its intrinsic properties at two levels. First, we show that the segmentation of a shape by a Reeb graph provides charts with disk or annulus topology only. This topology control enables the computation of concise and efficient sub-part geometrical signatures based on parameterisation techniques. Secondly, we introduce the notion of Reeb pattern on a Reeb graph along with its structural signature. We show this information discards Reeb graph structural distortion and still depicts the topology of the related sub-parts. The number of combinations to evaluate in the matching process is then dramatically reduced by only considering the combinations of topology equivalent Reeb patterns.
The proposed framework is invariant against rigid transformations and robust against non-rigid transformations and surface noise. It queries the collection in interactive time (from 4 to 30 seconds for the largest queries). It outperforms the competing methods of the SHREC 2007 contest in term of NDCG vector and provides, respectively, a gain of 14.1% and 40.9% on the approaches by Biasotti et al. [ BMSF06 ] and Cornea et al. [ CDS*05 ].
As an application, we present an intelligent modelling-by-example system which enables a novice user to rapidly create new 3D shapes by composing shapes of a collection having similar sub-parts.     

Comparative morphology of leaf epidermis in eight populations of Atlas Pistachio (Pistacia atlantica Desf., Anacardiaceae)

A comparative analysis was undertaken to conduct a micromorphological study of Pistacia atlantica leaves by comparing different populations grown under different climatic conditions. Leaf epidermis of eight wild populations was investigated under scanning electron microscope. Micromorphological characteristics (epidermis ornament, stomata type, waxes as well as trichomes) of the adaxial and abaxial leaf surfaces were examined. The epidermis ornament varied among populations and leaf surface, the abaxial leaf surface is reticulate with a striate surface. Messaad site shows a smooth uneven surface. The adaxial leaf surface is smooth but several ornamentations can be seen. The leaflet is amphistomatic; the stomata appeared to be slightly sunken. A variety of stomatal types were recorded; actinocytic and anomocytic types are the most frequent. The indumentum consisted of glandular and nonglandular trichomes. Unicellular glandular trichomes are recorded for P. atlantica leaves in this study. Their density is higher in Oued safene site, located at the highest altitude in comparison with the other populations. The wax occurred in all the sites and its pattern varied according to the populations studied, particularly between Berriane and Messaad. The morphological variability exhibited by the eight populations of P. atlantica may be interpreted as relevant to the ecological plasticity and the physiological mechanisms involved are discussed in this report.     

Using Diary Methods to Study Marital and Family Processes.

Diary methods allow researchers to study marital and family processes within the context of daily life in a way that is not possible with more traditional methods. The authors review applications of diary designs in marital and family research and detail the types of research questions that can uniquely be asked of dyadic/family diary data. Technological developments for the use of electronic palm-top devices for implementing diary methods are also reviewed. Additionally, the authors discuss specific issues relevant to the analysis of diary data that come from dyads or families. Last, the authors raise unresolved issues and directions for future research in the use of diary methods for studying marital and family processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personality Organizations, Psychiatric Severity, and Self and Object Representations.

This study examined the hypothesis that psychotic, borderline, and neurotic personality organizations (POs) present a progressive differentiation between self and object representations and an increasing integration of their bad and good aspects. Fifty patients participated in the study. Measures included scales of self and object representations (S. J. Blatt, S. A. Bers, & C. E. Schaffer, 1993; S. J. Blatt, H. Wiseman, E. Prince-Gibson, & C. Gatt, 1991), as well as the Personality Organization Diagnostic Form (L. Diguer & L. Normandin, 1997) and estimations of psychiatric severity. Results showed that PO groups differed in terms of the integration of the object and its valence. It was also observed that although object and self representations were closely intertwined, the latter showed more discrimination between POs than the former. Psychiatric severity was shown to correlate more with object representations than self representations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rain or Snow Detection in Image Sequences Through Use of a Histogram of Orientation of Streaks

The detection of bad weather conditions is crucial for meteorological centers, specially with demand for air, sea and ground traffic management. In this article, a system based on computer vision is presented which detects the presence of rain or snow. To separate the foreground from the background in image sequences, a classical Gaussian Mixture Model is used. The foreground model serves to detect rain and snow, since these are dynamic weather phenomena. Selection rules based on photometry and size are proposed in order to select the potential rain streaks. Then a Histogram of Orientations of rain or snow Streaks (HOS), estimated with the method of geometric moments, is computed, which is assumed to follow a model of Gaussian-uniform mixture. The Gaussian distribution represents the orientation of the rain or the snow whereas the uniform distribution represents the orientation of the noise. An algorithm of expectation maximization is used to separate these two distributions. Following a goodness-of-fit test, the Gaussian distribution is temporally smoothed and its amplitude allows deciding the presence of rain or snow. When the presence of rain or of snow is detected, the HOS makes it possible to detect the pixels of rain or of snow in the foreground images, and to estimate the intensity of the precipitation of rain or of snow. The applications of the method are numerous and include the detection of critical weather conditions, the observation of weather, the reliability improvement of video-surveillance systems and rain rendering.