Functional and Psychiatric Correlates of Comorbid Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Alcohol Use Disorder.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and alcohol use disorder (AUD) are common comorbid conditions that affect large segments of the population. Individuals with comorbid PTSD/AUD face greater clinical and functional stressors than those with diagnoses of either PTSD or AUD alone. The purpose of this article is to review the phenomenology and functional associations of PTSD/AUD and address the common social, occupational, and psychological concerns associated with both disorders. Given the increased problems associated with comorbid PTSD/AUD, clinical and research efforts should focus on targeting functional and psychosocial problems in conjunction with psychiatric symptoms

Quantum Gauge Equivalence in QED

We discuss gauge transformations in QED coupled to a charged spinor field, and examine whether we can gauge-transform the entire formulation of the theory from one gauge to another, so that not only the gauge and spinor fields, but also the forms of the operator-valued Hamiltonians are transformed. The discussion includes the covariant gauge, in which the gauge condition and Gauss's law are not primary constraints on operator-valued quantities; it also includes the Coulomb gauge, and the spatial axial gauge, in which the constraints are imposed on operator-valued fields by applying the Dirac-Bergmann procedure. We show how to transform the covariant, Coulomb and spatial axial gauges to what we call ``common form,'' in which all particle excitation modes have identical properties. We also show that, once that common form has been reached, QED in different gauges has a common time-evolution operator that defines time-translation for states that represent systems of electrons and photons. By combining gauge transformations with changes of representation from standard to common form, the entire apparatus of a gauge theory can be transformed from one gauge to another.Comment: Contribution for a special issue of Foundations of Physics honoring Fritz Rohrlich; edited by Larry P. Horwitz, Tel-Aviv University, and Alwyn van der Merwe, University of Denver (Plenum Publishing, New York); 40 pages, REVTEX, Preprint UCONN-93-3, 1 figure available upon request from author

Analysis and design of a flat central finned-tube radiator

Computer program based on fixed conductance parameter yields minimum weight design. Second program employs variable conductance parameter and variable ratio of fin length to tube outside radius, and is used for radiator designs with geometric limitations. Major outputs of the two programs are given

Analysis of low-temperature direct-condensing vapor-chamber fin and conducting fin radiators

Analysis of flat, direct-condensing finned-tube space radiator with vapor chamber, and central fin tube geometries for low temperature Rankine space power electric generating syste

Computer program for preliminary design and analysis of V/STOL tip-turbine fans

Computer program for design and analysis of V/STOL tip turbine fan

Individual heat map assessments demonstrate vestronidase alfa treatment response in a highly heterogeneous mucopolysaccharidosis VII study population.

Mucopolysaccharidosis (MPS) VII is an ultra-rare, progressively debilitating, life-threatening lysosomal disease caused by deficiency of the enzyme, β-glucuronidase. Vestronidase alfa is an approved enzyme replacement therapy for MPS VII. UX003-CL301 was a phase 3, randomized, placebo-controlled, blind-start study examining the efficacy and safety of vestronidase alfa 4 mg/kg intravenously administered every 2 weeks to 12 patients with MPS VII. Due to the rarity of disease, broad eligibility criteria resulted in a highly heterogeneous population with variable symptoms. For an integrated view of the diverse data, the changes from baseline (or randomization for the placebo period) in clinical endpoints were grouped into three functional domains (mobility, fatigue, and fine motor + self-care) and analyzed post-hoc as subject-level heat maps. Mobility assessments included the 6-minute walk test, 3-minute stair climb test, Bruininks-Oseretsky test (BOT-2) gross motor function subtests, and patient-reported outcome assessments (PROs) related to movement, pain, and ambulation. Fatigue assessments included the Pediatric Quality of Life Multidimensional Fatigue Scale and other fatigue-related PROs. Fine motor + self-care assessments included BOT-2 fine motor function subtests and PROs for eating, dressing, hygiene, and caregiver assistance. Most subjects showed improvement in at least one domain. Two subjects improved in two or more domains and two subjects did not show clear improvement in any domain. Both severely and mildly affected subjects improved with vestronidase alfa in clinical assessments, PRO results, or both. Heat map analysis demonstrates how subjects responded to treatment across multiple domains, providing a useful visual tool for studying rare diseases with variable symptoms

Slow decay of concentration variance due to no-slip walls in chaotic mixing

Chaotic mixing in a closed vessel is studied experimentally and numerically in different 2-D flow configurations. For a purely hyperbolic phase space, it is well-known that concentration fluctuations converge to an eigenmode of the advection-diffusion operator and decay exponentially with time. We illustrate how the unstable manifold of hyperbolic periodic points dominates the resulting persistent pattern. We show for different physical viscous flows that, in the case of a fully chaotic Poincare section, parabolic periodic points at the walls lead to slower (algebraic) decay. A persistent pattern, the backbone of which is the unstable manifold of parabolic points, can be observed. However, slow stretching at the wall forbids the rapid propagation of stretched filaments throughout the whole domain, and hence delays the formation of an eigenmode until it is no longer experimentally observable. Inspired by the baker's map, we introduce a 1-D model with a parabolic point that gives a good account of the slow decay observed in experiments. We derive a universal decay law for such systems parametrized by the rate at which a particle approaches the no-slip wall.Comment: 17 pages, 12 figure

Macronuclear DNA in Stentor coeruleus: a first approach to its characterization

The macronuclei of Stentor coeruleus were isolated on a discontinuous sucrose gradient and their DNA was purified by conventional methods. The GC content was 32 mole%. The DNA banded as a single peak on analytical ultracentrifugation at 1·691 g/cm3. The molecular weight of the DNA was 5 × 106 to 4 × 107 daltons. Genome size determined by DNA-DNA reassociation kinetics was 6 × 1010 daltons. The macronuclear genome was mostly simple, about 85% being made of non-repetitive sequence

Rates, Delays, and Completeness of General Practitioners' Responses to a Postal Versus Web-Based Survey: A Randomized Trial.

Web-based surveys have become a new and popular method for collecting data, but only a few studies have directly compared postal and Web-based surveys among physicians, and none to our knowledge among general practitioners (GPs). Our aim is to compare two modes of survey delivery (postal and Web-based) in terms of participation rates, response times, and completeness of questionnaires in a study assessing GPs' preventive practices. This randomized study was conducted in Western Switzerland (Geneva and Vaud) and in France (Alsace and Pays de la Loire) in 2015. A random selection of community-based GPs (1000 GPs in Switzerland and 2400 GPs in France) were randomly allocated to receive a questionnaire about preventive care activities either by post (n=700 in Switzerland, n=400 in France) or by email (n=300 in Switzerland, n=2000 in France). Reminder messages were sent once in the postal group and twice in the Web-based group. Any GPs practicing only complementary and alternative medicine were excluded from the study. Among the 3400 contacted GPs, 764 (22.47%, 95% CI 21.07%-23.87%) returned the questionnaire. Compared to the postal group, the participation rate in the Web-based group was more than four times lower (246/2300, 10.70% vs 518/1100, 47.09%, P<.001), but median response time was much shorter (1 day vs 1-3 weeks, P<.001) and the number of GPs having fully completed the questionnaire was almost twice as high (157/246, 63.8% vs 179/518, 34.6%, P<.001). Web-based surveys offer many advantages such as reduced response time, higher completeness of data, and large cost savings, but our findings suggest that postal surveys can be still considered for GP research. The use of mixed-mode approaches is probably a good strategy to increase GPs' participation in surveys while reducing costs

Actors that Unify Threads and Events

There is an impedance mismatch between message-passing concurrency and virtual machines, such as the JVM. VMs usually map their threads to heavyweight OS processes. Without a lightweight process abstraction, users are often forced to write parts of concurrent applications in an event-driven style which obscures control flow, and increases the burden on the programmer. In this paper we show how thread-based and event-based programming can be unified under a single actor abstraction. Using advanced abstraction mechanisms of the Scala programming language, we implemented our approach on unmodified JVMs. Our programming model integrates well with the threading model of the underlying VM