Hypnosis in pediatrics: applications at a pediatric pulmonary center

BACKGROUND: This report describes the utility of hypnosis for patients who presented to a Pediatric Pulmonary Center over a 30 month period. METHODS: Hypnotherapy was offered to 303 patients from May 1, 1998 – October 31, 2000. Patients offered hypnotherapy included those thought to have pulmonary symptoms due to psychological issues, discomfort due to medications, or fear of procedures. Improvement in symptoms following hypnosis was observed by the pulmonologist for most patients with habit cough and conversion reaction. Improvement of other conditions for which hypnosis was used was gauged based on patients' subjective evaluations. RESULTS: Hypnotherapy was associated with improvement in 80% of patients with persistent asthma, chest pain/pressure, habit cough, hyperventilation, shortness of breath, sighing, and vocal cord dysfunction. When improvement was reported, in some cases symptoms resolved immediately after hypnotherapy was first employed. For the others improvement was achieved after hypnosis was used for a few weeks. No patients' symptoms worsened and no new symptoms emerged following hypnotherapy. CONCLUSIONS: Patients described in this report were unlikely to have achieved rapid improvement in their symptoms without the use of hypnotherapy. Therefore, hypnotherapy can be an important complementary therapy for patients in a pediatric practice

Rhenium in seawater: Confirmation of generally conservative behavior

A depth profile of the concentration of Re was measured in the Pacific Ocean using a technique we have developed for the clean chemical separation and the precise measurement of Re by isotope dilution and negative thermal ionization mass spectrometry (ID-NTIMS). This technique permits Re concentrations to be determined from 200 mL of seawater with a typical precision of ±5‰. This is an improvement of at least a factor of 100 over the techniques used in previously published determinations of Re in seawater. We obtain a narrow range for Re from 7.20 ± 0.03 to 7.38 ± 0.03 ng/kg for depths between 45 m and 4700 m. This demonstrates that Re is relatively well mixed throughout the water column and confirms the theoretical prediction that the behavior of Re in the oceans is conservative. When examined in detail, both salinity and the concentration of Re increase by approximately 1.5% between 400 and 4700 m, a correlation consistent with conservative behavior. However, Re appears to be depleted relative to salinity by 1.0–1.5% at 100 m, and enriched by approximately 4% at the surface. These observations suggest a minor level of Re scavenging in near surface waters, and an input of Re to the ocean surface. This work demonstrates the utility of ID-NTIMS for geochemical investigations of certain trace elements that have not previously been amenable to detailed study

An Archean Biosphere Initiative

The search for life on extrasolar planets will necessarily focus on the imprints of biolgy on the composition of planetary atmospheres. The most notable biological imprint on the modern terrestrial atmosphere is the presence of 21 % O2, However, during most of the past 4 billion years, life and the surface environments on Earth were profoundly different than they are today. It is therefore a major goal of the astrobiology community to ascertain how the O2 content of the atmosphere has varied with time. and to understand the causes of these variations. The NAI and NASA Exobiology program have played critical roles in developing our current understanding of the ancient Earth's atmosphere, supporting diverse observational, analytical, and computational research in geoscience, life science, and related fields. In the present incarnation of the NAI, ongoing work is investigating (i) variations in atmospheric O2 in the Archean to the Cambrian, (ii) characterization of the redox state of the oceans shortly before, during and after the Great Oxidation Event (GOE), and (iii) unraveling the complex connections between environmental oxygenation, global climate, and the evolution of life

Uranium isotope cycling on the highly productive Peruvian margin

Uranium isotopes (δ238U values) in ancient sedimentary rocks (shales, carbonate rocks) are widely used as a tool to reconstruct paleo-redox conditions, but the behaviour of U isotopes under modern non-sulfidic anoxic vs. oxic conditions remains poorly constrained. We present U concentration and isotope data for modern sediments from the Peruvian margin, a highly productive open ocean environment with a range of redox conditions. To investigate U in different host fractions of the sediment (reactive, silicate, and HNO3-soluble fraction), we conducted a series of sequential extractions. Detrital-corrected authigenic U isotope compositions (δ238Uauth) in sediments deposited beneath an oxic water column show little deviation from the dissolved seawater U source, while anoxically deposited sediments have δ238Uauth values that are up to 0.4‰ heavier compared to seawater δ238U. Under anoxic, non-euxinic conditions, the U isotope offset between sediment and seawater is larger compared with oxic, but significantly smaller when compared with euxinic conditions from the literature. The results from sequential extractions show that the reactive sediment fraction records more pronounced differences in δ238Ureactive than δ238Uauth values depending on the oxidation state of the overlying water column. Furthermore, we found a strong correlation between total organic carbon (TOC) and both U concentrations (Uauth) and δ238Uauth values (R2 = 0.70 and 0.94, respectively) at the persistently anoxic site that we examined. These correlations can be caused by several processes including U isotope fractionation during microbially-mediated U reduction at the sediment-water interface (diffusive U input), during sorption onto and/or incorporation into organic matter in the water column (particulate U input) and diagenetic redistribution of U, or a combination of these processes. Our data show that several factors can influence δ238U values including oxidation state of U, the presence or absence of hydrogen sulfide and organic matter. These findings add new constraints to the degree of U isotope fractionation associated with U incorporation into sediments in different low-oxygen environments, thus aiding in interpretation of ancient paleo-redox conditions from U isotope data

A simple graphical way of evaluating coverage and directional non-coverages

Evaluation of the coverage probability and, more recently, of the intervalar location of con dence intervals, is a useful procedure if exact and asymptotic methods for constructing con dence intervals are used for some populacional parameter. In this paper, a simple graphical procedure is presented to execute this kind of evaluation in con dence methods for linear combinations of k independent binomial proportions. Our proposal is based on the representation of the mesial and distal non-coverage probabilities on a plane. We carry out a simulation study to show how this graphical representation can be interpreted and used as a basis for the evaluation of intervalar location of con dence interval methods

Exoplanet Diversity in the Era of Space-based Direct Imaging Missions

This whitepaper discusses the diversity of exoplanets that could be detected by future observations, so that comparative exoplanetology can be performed in the upcoming era of large space-based flagship missions. The primary focus will be on characterizing Earth-like worlds around Sun-like stars. However, we will also be able to characterize companion planets in the system simultaneously. This will not only provide a contextual picture with regards to our Solar system, but also presents a unique opportunity to observe size dependent planetary atmospheres at different orbital distances. We propose a preliminary scheme based on chemical behavior of gases and condensates in a planet's atmosphere that classifies them with respect to planetary radius and incident stellar flux.Comment: A white paper submitted to the National Academy of Sciences Exoplanet Science Strateg

Scientific Goals and Objectives for the Human Exploration of Mars: 1. Biology and Atmosphere/Climate

To prepare for the exploration of Mars by humans, as outlined in the new national vision for Space Exploration (VSE), the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG), chartered by NASA's Mars Exploration Program (MEP), formed a Human Exploration of Mars Science Analysis Group (HEM-SAG), in March 2007. HEM-SAG was chartered to develop the scientific goals and objectives for the human exploration of Mars based on the Mars Scientific Goals, Objectives, Investigations, and Priorities.1 The HEM-SAG is one of several humans to Mars scientific, engineering and mission architecture studies chartered in 2007 to support NASA s plans for the human exploration of Mars. The HEM-SAG is composed of about 30 Mars scientists representing the disciplines of Mars biology, climate/atmosphere, geology and geophysics from the U.S., Canada, England, France, Italy and Spain. MEPAG selected Drs. James B. Garvin (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center) and Joel S. Levine (NASA Langley Research Center) to serve as HEMSAG co-chairs. The HEM-SAG team conducted 20 telecons and convened three face-to-face meetings from March through October 2007. The management of MEP and MEPAG were briefed on the HEM-SAG interim findings in May. The HEM-SAG final report was presented on-line to the full MEPAG membership and was presented at the MEPAG meeting on February 20-21, 2008. This presentation will outline the HEM-SAG biology and climate/atmosphere goals and objectives. A companion paper will outline the HEM-SAG geology and geophysics goals and objectives

Quantitative assessment of pain-related thermal dysfunction through clinical digital infrared thermal imaging

BACKGROUND: The skin temperature distribution of a healthy human body exhibits a contralateral symmetry. Some nociceptive and most neuropathic pain pathologies are associated with an alteration of the thermal distribution of the human body. Since the dissipation of heat through the skin occurs for the most part in the form of infrared radiation, infrared thermography is the method of choice to study the physiology of thermoregulation and the thermal dysfunction associated with pain. Assessing thermograms is a complex and subjective task that can be greatly facilitated by computerised techniques. METHODS: This paper presents techniques for automated computerised assessment of thermal images of pain, in order to facilitate the physician's decision making. First, the thermal images are pre-processed to reduce the noise introduced during the initial acquisition and to extract the irrelevant background. Then, potential regions of interest are identified using fixed dermatomal subdivisions of the body, isothermal analysis and segmentation techniques. Finally, we assess the degree of asymmetry between contralateral regions of interest using statistical computations and distance measures between comparable regions. RESULTS: The wavelet domain-based Poisson noise removal techniques compared favourably against Wiener and other wavelet-based denoising methods, when qualitative criteria were used. It was shown to improve slightly the subsequent analysis. The automated background removal technique based on thresholding and morphological operations was successful for both noisy and denoised images with a correct removal rate of 85% of the images in the database. The automation of the regions of interest (ROIs) delimitation process was achieved successfully for images with a good contralateral symmetry. Isothermal division complemented well the fixed ROIs division based on dermatomes, giving a more accurate map of potentially abnormal regions. The measure of distance between histograms of comparable ROIs allowed us to increase the sensitivity and specificity rate for the classification of 24 images of pain patients when compared to common statistical comparisons. CONCLUSIONS: We developed a complete set of automated techniques for the computerised assessment of thermal images to assess pain-related thermal dysfunction