Validation of an Instrument to Measure Patients' Intentions and Ability to Change Attitudes and Behavior

© 2017 S. Karger GmbH, Freiburg. Background: The efficacy of specific interventions also of mind-body medicine is also dependent on the patients' ability to engage in these interventions and to perceive and change health-affecting attitudes and behaviors. The aim was to validate a 13-item instrument to measure (1) the patients' perception of specific attitudes and behaviors that are assumed to have a negative influence on the health situation, (2) their intention to change them, and (3) the implementation of the intended changes in their life affairs. Patients and Methods: Anonymous cross-sectional survey among 512 patients with chronic pain conditions (mean age 42.6 ± 11.4 years; 58% women) using standardized instruments. Results: After the elimination of 4 items, an explorative factor analysis of the 9 remaining items indicated 2 factors that would explain 57% of the variance: Perceptions/Intentions (5 items; Cronbach's alpha = 0.75) and Ability/ Implementation (4 items; alpha = 0.77). Factor 2 correlated moderately to strongly with internal adaptive coping strategies (AKU) and situational awareness (CPSC), and weakly with mental health (SF-36), life satisfaction (BMLSS), and low depressive symptoms (BDI) and escape from illness (Escape). Factor 1 correlated weakly with age and adaptive coping strategies (AKU). Conclusions: The final 9-item Perception, Intention and Ability to Change (PIAC) scale was approved as a short, practicable and promising instrument, which should be further evaluated in the context of training and intervention programs, particularly with respect to its predictive relevance

Assessing the environmental benefit of palladium-based single-atom heterogeneous catalysts for Sonogashira coupling

The Pd–Cu catalysed Sonogashira coupling of terminal alkynes and aryl halides is a cornerstone synthetic strategy for C–C bond formation. Homogeneous organometallic systems conventionally applied are typically not reusable and require efficient downstream Pd removal steps for product purification, making it challenging to fully recover the precious metal. A holistic cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment (LCA) unveils that process footprint can be improved up to two orders of magnitude from repeated catalyst reuse. New classes of heterogeneous catalysts based on isolated metal atoms (single-atom catalysts, SACs) demonstrate promising potential to synergise the benefits of solid and molecular catalysts for efficient Pd utilisation. Here we show that using Pd atoms anchored on nitrogen-doped carbon permits full recovery of the metal and reuse of the catalyst over multiple cycles. A hybrid process using the Pd-SAC with a homogeneous CuI cocatalyst is more effective than a fully heterogeneous analogue based on a bimetallic Pd–Cu SAC, which deactivates severely due to copper leaching. In some scenarios, the LCA-based metrics demonstrate the footprint of the hybrid homogeneous–heterogeneous catalytic process is leaner than the purely homogeneous counterpart already upon single reuse. Combining LCA with experimental evaluation will be a useful guide to the implementation of solid, reusable catalysts for sustainable organic transformations

Knotting and Unknotting Dynamics of DNA Strands in Nanochannels

The self-knotting dynamics of DNA strands confined in nanochannels is studied with Brownian simulations. The model DNA chains are several microns long and placed inside channels that are 50-300 nm wide. This width range covers the transition between different metric scaling regimes and the concomitant drop of DNA knotting probability for channel widths below 3c75 nm. We find that knots typically originate from deep looping and backfoldings of the chain ends. Upon lowering the channel width, backfoldings become shallower and rarer and the lifetime of knots decreases while that of unknots increases. This lifetimes interplay causes the dramatic reduction of knots incidence for increasing confinement. The results can aid the design of nanochannels capable of harnessing the self-knotting dynamics to quench or relax the DNA topological state as desired. (Figure Presented). \ua9 2014 American Chemical Society