Notes

User profile and correlates regarding colorimetric reagent equipment utilize amongst people who use ecstasy/MDMA along with other outlawed stimuli in Australia.
In this paper, we present the design, fabrication, and characterization of a compact 4 × 4 piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducer (pMUT) array and its application to photoacoustic imaging. The uniqueness of this pMUT array is the integration of a 4 μm-thick ceramic PZT, having significantly higher piezoelectric coefficient and lower stress than sol-gel or sputtered PZT. The fabricated pMUT array has a small chip size of only 1.8 × 1.6 mm2 with each pMUT element having a diameter of 210 μm. The fabricated device was characterized with electrical impedance measurement and acoustic sensing test. Photoacoustic imaging has also been successfully demonstrated on an agar phantom with a pencil lead embedded using the fabricated pMUT array.Existing methods for sealing chip-to-chip (or module-to-motherboard) microfluidic interconnects commonly use additional interconnect components (O-rings, gaskets, and tubing), and manual handling expertise for assembly. Novel gasketless superhydrophobic fluidic interconnects (GSFIs) sealed by transparent superhydrophobic surfaces, forming liquid bridges between the fluidic ports for fluidic passages were demonstrated. Two test platforms were designed, fabricated, and evaluated, a multi-port chip system (ten interconnects) and a modules-on-a-motherboard system (four interconnects). System assembly in less than 3 sec was done by embedded magnets and pin-in-V-groove structures. Flow tests with deionized (DI) water, ethanol/water mixture, and plasma confirmed no leakage through the gasketless interconnects up to a maximum flow rate of 100 μL/min for the multi-port chip system. The modules-on-a-motherboard system showed no leakage of water at a flow rate of 20 μL/min and a pressure drop of 3.71 psi. Characterization of the leakage pressure as a function of the surface tension of the sample liquid in the multi-port chip system revealed that lower surface tension of the liquid led to lower static water contact angles on the superhydrophobic-coated substrate and lower leakage pressures. The high-density, rapidly assembled, gasketless interconnect technology will open up new avenues for chip-to-chip fluid transport in complex microfluidic modular systems.This paper presents active noise cancelation (ANC) based on MEMS resonant microphone array (RMA) which offers very high sensitivities (and thus very low noise floors) near resonance frequencies and also provides filtering in acoustic domain. The ANC is targeted to actively cancel out any sound between 5 - 9 kHz (above the speech range of 300 - 3,400 Hz). The ANC works best around the resonance frequencies of the resonant microphones where the sensitivities are high. The ANC has been implemented with analog inverter, digital phase compensator, digital adaptive filter, and deep learning, and shown to perform better with a digital adaptive filter for both RMA-based and flat-band-microphone-based ANC. At the same time, when the sound intensity over 5 - 9 kHz is low, RMA-based ANC with adaptive filter works the best among different approaches tested. Automatic speech recognition under different noises (of different intensity levels) has been tested with ANC. In all the tested cases, word error rate improves with ANC.This paper describes a novel acoustic transducer with dual functionality based on 1-mm-thick lead zirconate titanate (PZT) substrate with a modified air-cavity Fresnel acoustic lens on top. Designed to let ultrasound waves focus over an annular ring region, the lens generates a long depth-of-focus Bessel-like focal beam and multiple trapping zones based on quasi-Airy beams and bottle beams. With 2.32 MHz sinusoidal driving signal at 150 Vpp, the transducer produces a focal zone with 9.9 mm depth-of-focus and 0.8 MPa peak pressure at a focal length of 31.33 mm. With 2.32 MHz continuous sinusoidal drive at 30-35 Vpp, the transducer is able to trap multiple polyethylene microspheres (350-1,000 μm in diameter and 1.025-1.130 g/cm3 in density) in water either simultaneously (when suspended by mechanical agitation or released from water surface) or sequentially (when placed one after another with a pipette). The largest particles the transducer could trap are two 1-mm-diameter microspheres stuck together (1.07 mg in weight, lifted by buoyance and 0.257 μN acoustic-field-induced force). When the transducer is moved laterally, some firmly trapped microspheres follow along the transducer's movement, while being trapped. When trapped, some microspheres can rotate due to the rotation torque generated by the quasi-Airy beams.We provide a discussion of several recent results which, in certain scenarios, are able to overcome a barrier in distributed stochastic optimization for machine learning. Our focus is the so-called asymptotic network independence property, which is achieved whenever a distributed method executed over a network of n nodes asymptotically converges to the optimal solution at a comparable rate to a centralized method with the same computational power as the entire network. We explain this property through an example involving the training of ML models and sketch a short mathematical analysis for comparing the performance of distributed stochastic gradient descent (DSGD) with centralized stochastic gradient decent (SGD).
Family violence has been shown to have a dramatic impact on individual and family life in the United States and other countries. Numerous studies have assessed the influence that exposure to violence can have on family dynamics and parent-child relationships. However, less is known about the association between family violence and parent-child relationships with Mexican families.

Guided by social interaction learning theory, the purpose of this study was to explore the role of exposure to family violence on PTSD and mother-child interaction patterns.

Eighty-seven mother-child dyads from Mexico completed assessments for exposure to family violence, PTSD, and observational tasks were analyzed to assess prosocial parent-child interactions (i.e., positive communication and problem solving). We conducted an actor-partner independence model (APIM) to examine the association between exposure to family violence, PTSD and mother-child relationship dynamics.

As expected, higher exposure to family violence was linked to higher PTSD symptoms for mothers. Unexpectedly, higher maternal PTSD symptoms were associated with better communication during dyadic interaction tasks with their children.

The present study suggests that individuals from certain cultures (i.e., Mexico) may respond differently to experiencing family violence. The use of multiple measurement methods to assess the relational effects of trauma on family dynamics can advance the scientific understanding of trauma affected families.
The present study suggests that individuals from certain cultures (i.e., Mexico) may respond differently to experiencing family violence. The use of multiple measurement methods to assess the relational effects of trauma on family dynamics can advance the scientific understanding of trauma affected families.The goal of the paper is to sharpen and generalise bounds involving Cheeger's isoperimetric constant h and the first eigenvalue λ 1 of the Laplacian. A celebrated lower bound of λ 1 in terms of h, λ 1 ≥ h 2 / 4 , was proved by Cheeger in 1970 for smooth Riemannian manifolds. An upper bound on λ 1 in terms of h was established by Buser in 1982 (with dimensional constants) and improved (to a dimension-free estimate) by Ledoux in 2004 for smooth Riemannian manifolds with Ricci curvature bounded below. The goal of the paper is twofold. First we sharpen the inequalities obtained by Buser and Ledoux obtaining a dimension-free sharp Buser inequality for spaces with (Bakry-Émery weighted) Ricci curvature bounded below by K ∈ R (the inequality is sharp for K > 0 as equality is obtained on the Gaussian space). Second all of our results hold in the higher generality of (possibly non-smooth) metric measure spaces with Ricci curvature bounded below in synthetic sense, the so-called RCD ( K , ∞ ) spaces.The prevalence of COVID-19 disease continues to be a significant psychosocial status among health care workers (HCWs) and the general population worldwide. This cross sectional study aimed to compare the psychosocial status between healthcare workers and general population during the prevalence of COVID-19 disease in southeast Iran. Totally 415 health care workers of a medical service center for COVID-19 patients and 1023 people of general population participated in the study. An online socio-demographic characteristics questionnaire, General Health Questionnaire (GHQ -28), and Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item (GAD-7) were utilized to evaluate psychosocial status. According to GHQ, the psychological disorders of the HCWs were significantly higher than that of the general population (P  less then  0.001). According to GAD-7, no significant difference was found between general population and HCWs. Multivariate logistic analysis showed no difference between general population and HCWs in the psychological disorder. Although HCWs suffered from psychological disorders more than general population, nearly one third to half of the participants in both groups had psychosocial disorders.
In the wake of COVID-19, organizations all over India have closed their premises and shifted to work from home policy to curb the further spread of the virus. Stattic This has led to increased stress and anxiety among employees, which explicably affects their satisfaction with life. Thus, the present study analyses the effect of COVID-19 induced stressors (role overload, lifestyle choices, family distraction, and occupational discomfort) on employees' distress levels and job performance. Subsequently, the impact of such distress and job performance on the employees' life satisfaction is analyzed during the lockdown period.

Data was collected from 433 working professionals of private and public organizations in the Delhi and NCR region of India during India's third and fourth phase of lockdown via a survey, which was distributed online. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was applied first to establish the validity of this study's model (measurement model validity) and subsequently test the hypothesized relationships in the model (structural model).

The COVID-19 induced stressors, i.e., role overload, lifestyle choices, and occupational discomfort, were significant predictors of distress during the lockdown. It has been found that role overload and change in lifestyle choice did not significantly affect job performance. Family distraction, occupational discomfort, and distress were significant in impacting job performance, with distress being the most significant one. During the COVID-19 pandemic, life satisfaction has reduced due to a significant increase in distress levels and lowered job performances.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-021-01567-0.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-021-01567-0.The Government of India implemented a nationwide lockdown from March 24, 2020 in response to the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak. This study examines the effects of two positive psychological resources on the mental health of Indian citizens during the early days of the lockdown. The effects of psychological capital (PsyCap) and internal locus of control on psychological distress of people via affect balance were tested. Data were collected through an online survey from 667 participants. Psychological distress was assessed using the GHQ-12, and affect balance was assessed as the preponderance of positive over negative affect. Results reveal that psychological capital and internal locus of control were negatively associated with psychological distress. In addition, affect balance mediated the relationship between psychological capital and psychological distress and the relationship between internal locus of control and psychological distress. Thus, both the psychological resources through affect balance acted as buffers protecting people from mental health deterioration during COVID-19 lockdown.
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