Living with persistent pain: experiences of older people receiving home care.

Background. Although the topic of pain among older people has received increasing interest, little is still known about how pain is experienced or handled by those who no longer manage independently but depend on professionals for help with daily living. Developing pain management for older people requires such knowledge. Aim. To explore sense of self, sense of pain, daily living with pain, sense of others and ways of handling pain in older people with persistent pain. Methods. Interviews with 90 older people receiving home care from nursing auxiliaries in their own homes or in sheltered accommodation were collected from January to June 2000. A typology of older people in persistent pain was developed. Activities for handling pain were examined using content analysis. Findings. Respondents' experiences of themselves and their pain varied. Two groups of older people, considered as 'competent and proud' and 'confident and serene', expressed satisfaction in spite of pain, while the groups 'misunderstood and disappointed' and 'resigned and sad' expressed dissatisfaction. The most common strategies used were medication, rest, mobility, distracting activities and talking about pain. Respondents chose strategies by balancing the advantages of the activities against the disadvantages these brought for their daily living. Conclusion. This study indicates that characteristics of the older people, such as their way of experiencing themselves, how pain affects their daily life and how they perceive effects and side-effects of pain management are areas that need to be identified when staff assess pain and plan pain management. Caring for older people in pain could be improved by listening to and believing their complaints, evaluating effects and side-effects from medications and nonpharmacological pain management and by emphasising the importance of common everyday activities such as mobility and distraction to relieve pain

Temperature dependences of N2-broadening and shift coefficients in the ν6 perpendicular band of 12CH3D

International audienc

Line Positions and Intensities of ¹³C¹²CH₆ in the 12.2 µm Region

<p>High-resolution, high signal-to-noise spectra of mono-substituted ¹³C-ethane (¹³C¹²CH₆) in the 12.2 <em>µ</em>m region have been recorded with a Bruker IFS 125HR Fourier transform spectrometer. Four of these spectra were recorded at three different temperatures between 130 and 208 K using a 99% ¹³C-enriched ethane sample contained in a 20.38-cm long coolable absorption cell¹. A multispectrum nonlinear least squares fitting technique²was used to fit the same intervals in these four spectra simultaneously to determine line positions and intensities. Similar to our previous analyses of ¹²C₂H₆spectra in this same region³, constraints were applied to accurately fit each pair of doublet components arising from torsional Coriolis interaction of the excited <em>ν</em>₁₂= 1 state with the nearby torsional <em>ν</em>₆= 3 state. Line intensities are reported for 1660 <em>ν</em>₁₂absorption lines for which the assignments are known, and integrated intensities are estimated as the summation of the measured values. The measured line positions and intensities are compared with values in recent editions of spectroscopic databases.⁴</p

ExploreNEOs: Average albedo by taxonomic complex in the near-Earth asteroid population

Understanding the albedo distribution of the near-Earth object (NEO) population allows for a better understanding of the relationship between absolute magnitude and size, which impacts calculations of size-frequency distribution and impact hazards. Examining NEO albedos also sheds light on the differences between the NEO and Main-Belt populations. We combine albedo results from the ExploreNEOs Warm Spitzer Exploration Science program with taxonomic classifications from the literature, publicly available datasets, and new observations from our concurrent spectral survey to derive the average albedos for C-, D-, Q-, S-, V- and X-complex NEOs

ExploreNEOs. V. Average Albedo by Taxonomic Complex in the Near-Earth Asteroid Population

Examining the albedo distribution of the near-Earth object (NEO) population allows for a better understanding of the relationship between absolute (H) magnitude and size, which impacts calculations of the size frequency distribution and impact hazards. Examining NEO albedos also sheds light on the differences between the NEO and Main Belt populations. We combine albedo results from the ExploreNEOs Warm Spitzer Exploration Science program with taxonomic classifications from the literature, publicly available data sets, and new observations from our concurrent spectral survey to derive the average albedos for C-, D-, Q-, S-, V-, and X-complex NEOs. Using a sample size of 118 NEOs, we calculate average albedos of 0.29+0.05 –0.04, 0.26+0.04 –0.03, and 0.42+0.13 –0.11 for the Q-, S-, and V-complexes, respectively. The averages for the C- and D-complexes are 0.13+0.06 –0.05 and 0.02+0.02 –0.01, but these averages are based on a small number of objects (five and two, respectively) and will improve with additional observations. We use albedos to assign X-complex asteroids to one of the E-, M-, or P-types. Our results demonstrate that the average albedos for the C-, S-, V-, and X-complexes are higher for NEOs than the corresponding averages observed in the Main Belt

ExploreNEOs: The Warm Spitzer near Earth object survey

We are carrying out the ExploreNEOs project in which we observe more than 600 near Earth Objects (NEOs) at 3.6 and 4.5 microns with Warm Spitzer. For each NEO we derive diameter and albedo. We present our results to date, which include studies of individual objects, results for our entire observed sample, and, by extrapolation, results for the entire NEO population. We also present several avenues of future work