Obsessive-compulsive disorder and comorbid depression: the role of OCD-related and non-specific factors

Although comorbid depression is a predictor of poor treatment response in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), there is limited understanding of factors that contribute to depression severity in OCD. The current study examines the influence of OCD-related factors (autogenous obsessions and obsessional beliefs) and non-specific factors (avoidance and anxiety) on depression severity in a sample of OCD patients. There were 56 participants with only OCD and 46 with OCD and comorbid depression. Self-report questionnaires measuring depression, OCD-related factors, and non-specific factors were completed. Although there were no significant differences between the two groups on these variables, depression severity was positively correlated with anxiety, avoidance, obsessional beliefs, and autogenous obsessions in the whole sample. When entered into a multiple regression model to predict depression severity, these factors accounted for 51% of the variance. While OCD-related factors remained significant predictors after controlling for non-specific factors, the non-specific factors made the most significant contributions to the model. Our findings suggest that in addition to dealing with autogenous obsessions, addressing anxiety and avoidance might lead to improvements in the treatment of OCD with comorbid depression

Does Chinese medicine consultation share features and effects of cognitive-behavioural therapy? Using traditional acupuncture as an example

Background: Acupuncture, as part of Chinese medicine (CM), is based on a holistic therapeutic theory. Individualised differential diagnosis is the essence and an integral part of its practice. It leads to an individualised treatment plan. Little research on the nature and effects of the CM consultation has been conducted. Previous studies showed behavioural and cognitive changes after traditional acupuncture treatment. In this article, through a hypothetical case, we illustrated a CM consultation process, examined the changes produced and compared the features between CM consultation and cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT). Main text: The two therapies share nine out of eleven features, including five specific factors that took different forms in CM and CBT and four non-specific factors known to partially mediate the relationship between psychological therapies and positive therapeutic outcomes. Although Chinese medicine treatments induce changes in behaviours as well as cognition, CM consultation does not share two essential features of CBT, namely a framework of the interaction between behaviour and cognition and teaching patients how to identify and dispute dysfunctional thoughts. Discussion: CM consultation has CBT-like features and effects. Existing qualitative studies suggest that changes in behaviours and cognition after traditional acupuncture treatment are probably due to the CM consultation process or its combined effect with needling, rather than acupuncture needling alone. This hypothesis provides a new perspective on the contributing factors to acupuncture effect. CBT-like features and effects of traditional acupuncture is underestimated by practitioners and researchers, and need to be taken into consideration in acupuncture trial design and clinical practice

Properties and performance of rubberwood particleboard treated with BP® fire retardant

Rubberwood composites are available in many sizes and are frequently used as furniture and partitioning inputs. However they are naturally combustible and may limit its usage for other value-added products. Treating wood composites with fire retardant was one of the most effective ways to prevent such occurrence. In this study, Rubberwood (Hevea brasiliensis) particleboards were incorporated with BP® fire retardant through hot and cold soaking processes. Four different concentrations of fire retardant were applied for the study i.e., 15, 20, 25 and 30% (w/v). Treated and untreated particleboards were exposed to early burning performance test. Fire performance was assessed based on the amount of weight loss and width of burnt area formed on the boards after they were exposed to a fire source. The study shows that BP® had significantly affected the burnt area of the treated particleboards. Insignificant reductions of weight loss were recorded between 15-30% treatment concentrations. Early burning performance showed that increase of fire retardant concentration up to 25% (w/v) reduced the weight loss. There was no further weight loss reduction recorded above that concentration. The burnt area decreased as the concentration level of BP® increased. The smallest burnt area was recorded for the boards treated with 30% BP®. The addition of fire retardant had interfered slightly with the physical and mechanical properties of the treated particleboards. The physical and mechanical properties of the particleboards were adversely affected compared to untreated boards with increasing concentration of BP®

Effect of Inflow and Infiltration in Sewerage System of Residential Area, Kuantan, Pahang

Inflow and infiltration is a phenomenon in sewerage systems that can have negative effects on the environment and human health if not treated properly. Collaboration has been made between Universiti Malaysia Pahang (UMP) and Indah Water Konsortium Sdn. Bhd. (IWK) where the purpose is to evaluate the amount of inflow and infiltration happening in sewerage systems of residential areas in Kuantan. For this part of the study, one sewer pipeline (MH92a–MH92b) was selected at the residential area of Bandar Putra, having a population equivalent of 1694. The method used in this research was the Flowrate method to tabulate data. ISCO 2150 and 4250 Area Velocity Flowmeters were used to measure flow rate data in the sewer pipeline, whereas ISCO 674 Rain Gauge was used to collect rainfall intensity data. Calibration of all the equipment was done at the Hydrology and Hydraulic Laboratory in UMP. The data was collected for 41 days with each measurement separated by an interval of five minutes. The result shows that the average percentage Infiltration Rate of Qpeak and Qave in this residential catchment were 10.3% and 26.5% which is higher than the value mentioned in Hammer and Hammer (2012). Inflow and infiltration is a real concern, so more study is required to determine whether revision of the infiltration rate recommended in the Malaysian Standard is needed

Mapping of serotype-specific, immunodominant epitopes in the NS-4 region of hepatitis C virus (HCV):use of type-specific peptides to serologically differentiate infections with HCV types 1, 2, and 3

The effect of sequence variability between different types of hepatitis C virus (HCV) on the antigenicity of the NS-4 protein was investigated by epitope mapping and by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay with branched oligopeptides. Epitope mapping of the region between amino acid residues 1679 and 1768 in the HCV polyprotein revealed two major antigenic regions (1961 to 1708 and 1710 to 1728) that were recognized by antibody elicited upon natural infection of HCV. The antigenic regions were highly variable between variants of HCV, with only 50 to 60% amino acid sequence similarity between types 1, 2, and 3. Although limited serological cross-reactivity between HCV types was detected between peptides, particularly in the first antigenic region of NS-4, type-specific reactivity formed the principal component of the natural humoral immune response to NS-4. Type-specific antibody to particular HCV types was detected in 89% of the samples from anti-HCV-positive blood donors and correlated almost exactly with genotypic analysis of HCV sequences amplified from the samples by polymerase chain reaction. Whereas almost all blood donors appeared to be infected with a single virus type (97%), a higher proportion of samples (40%) from hemophiliacs infected from transfusion of non-heat-inactivated clotting factor contained antibody to two or even all three HCV types, providing evidence that long-term exposure may lead to multiple infection with different variants of HCV

Estimating logged-over lowland rainforest aboveground biomass in Sabah, Malaysia using airborne LiDAR data

Unprecedented deforestation and forest degradation in recent decades have severely depleted the carbon storage in Borneo. Estimating aboveground biomass (AGB) with high accuracy is crucial to quantifying carbon stocks for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation-plus implementation (REDD+). Airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) is a promising remote sensing technology that provides fine-scale forest structure variability data. This paper highlights the use of airborne LiDAR data for estimating the AGB of a logged-over tropical forest in Sabah, Malaysia. The LiDAR data was acquired using an Optech Orion C200 sensor onboard a fixed wing aircraft. The canopy height of each LiDAR point was calculated from the height difference between the first returns and the Digital Terrain Model (DTM) constructed from the ground points. Among the obtained LiDAR height metrics, the mean canopy height produced the strongest relationship with the observed AGB. This single-variable model had a root mean squared error (RMSE) of 80.02 t ha-1 or 22.31% of the mean AGB, which performed exceptionally when compared with recent tropical rainforest studies. Overall, airborne LiDAR did provide fine-scale canopy height measurements for accurately and reliably estimating the AGB in a logged-over forest in Sabah, thus supporting the state's effort in realizing the REDD+ mechanism

On Sparsification for Computing Treewidth

We investigate whether an n-vertex instance (G,k) of Treewidth, asking whether the graph G has treewidth at most k, can efficiently be made sparse without changing its answer. By giving a special form of OR-cross-composition, we prove that this is unlikely: if there is an e > 0 and a polynomial-time algorithm that reduces n-vertex Treewidth instances to equivalent instances, of an arbitrary problem, with O(n^{2-e}) bits, then NP is in coNP/poly and the polynomial hierarchy collapses to its third level. Our sparsification lower bound has implications for structural parameterizations of Treewidth: parameterizations by measures that do not exceed the vertex count, cannot have kernels with O(k^{2-e}) bits for any e > 0, unless NP is in coNP/poly. Motivated by the question of determining the optimal kernel size for Treewidth parameterized by vertex cover, we improve the O(k^3)-vertex kernel from Bodlaender et al. (STACS 2011) to a kernel with O(k^2) vertices. Our improved kernel is based on a novel form of treewidth-invariant set. We use the q-expansion lemma of Fomin et al. (STACS 2011) to find such sets efficiently in graphs whose vertex count is superquadratic in their vertex cover number.Comment: 21 pages. Full version of the extended abstract presented at IPEC 201

Syngas Production from Glycerol-dry(CO2) Reforming Over La-promoted Ni/Al2O3 Catalyst

A 3 wt% La-promoted Ni/Al2O3 catalyst was prepared via wet co-impregnation technique and physicochemically-characterized. Lanthanum was responsible for better metal dispersion; hence higher BET specific surface area (96.0 m2 g−1) as compared to the unpromoted Ni/Al2O3 catalyst (85.0 m2 g−1). In addition, the La-promoted catalyst possessed finer crystallite size (9.1 nm) whilst the unpromoted catalyst measured 12.8 nm. Subsequently, glycerol dry reforming was performed at atmospheric pressure and temperatures ranging from 923 to 1123 K employing CO2-to-glycerol ratio from zero to five. Significantly, the reaction results have yielded syngas as main gaseous products with H2:CO ratios always below than 2.0 with concomitant maximum 96% glycerol conversion obtained at the CO2-to-glycerol ratio of 1.67. In addition, the glycerol consumption rate can be adequately captured using power law modelling with the order of reactions equal 0.72 and 0.14 with respect to glycerol and CO2 whilst the activation energy was 35.0 kJ mol−1. A 72 h longevity run moreover revealed that the catalyst gave a stable catalytic performance

Ongoing mumps outbreak in a student population with high vaccination coverage, Netherlands, 2010.

Since December 2009, mumps incidence has increased in the Netherlands. As of 20 April 2010, 172 cases have been notified on the basis of laboratory confirmation or linkage to a laboratory-confirmed case. Of these, 112 were students, the majority of whom had been vaccinated (81%). Although outbreaks in vaccinated populations have been described before, risk factors for exposure and susceptibility, and dose-dependent vaccine effectiveness in a student population of this nature are relatively unknown