Course of spousal bereavement in later life

Book ChapterThe overall purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the major findings from our research over the past 11 years on spousal bereavement among older adults in the United States. We began in 1980 with a longitudinal study funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) designed to describe, from a multidisciplinary perspective, the process of adjustment that follows the death of a spouse, examine factors that influence the observed outcomes, and identify potential focuses and strategies for intervention. A sample of 192 recently bereaved spouses and a control group of 104 currently married adults over the age of 50 participated in the study. Findings from this project were used to develop a second study, also funded by NIA, to examine the effectiveness of selfhelp groups in facilitating the bereavement adjustment process. Another sample of 339 recently bereaved spouses participated in this intervention study, with 241 assigned to self-help groups and 98 assigned to a control condition

Restoration after bereavement

Journal ArticleThe death of a spouse in later life, after many years of marriage is one of the most common of all major stressful life transitions. After age 65, 32% of the U.S. population is widowed (14% for men and 45% for women) with this increasing to 46% after age 75 and 66% after the age of 85 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2000)

Basin-scale water system operations with uncertain future climate conditions: Methodology and case studies

The old and useful paradigm used by water resource engineers, that hydrology in a given place is stationary, and hence it is sufficient to look into the past to plan for the future, does not hold anymore, according to climate change projections. This becomes especially true in snow-dominated regions like California, where not only the magnitude but also the timing of streamflow could be affected by changes in precipitation and temperature. To plan and operate water resources systems at the basin scale, it is necessary to develop new tools that are suited for this nonstationary world. In this paper we develop an optimization algorithm that can be used for different studies related to climate change and water resources management. Three applications of this algorithm are developed for the Merced River basin. The first of these gives an assessment of the climate change effects on the operations of this basin considering an adaptive management strategy embedded in the optimization algorithm. In a second application we explore different long-term adaptation strategies intended to mitigate the effects of climate change. A final application is developed to determine how beneficial it is to build a new reservoir considering explicitly the uncertainty about future climate projections

Instabilities, Dynamics, and Energetics accompanying Atmospheric Layering (IDEAL): high-resolution in situ observations and modeling in and above the nocturnal boundary layer

The Instabilities, Dynamics, and Energetics accompanying Atmospheric Layering (IDEAL) program was conceived to improve understanding of the dynamics of thin strongly stratified &ldquo;sheet&rdquo; and deeper weakly stratified &ldquo;layer&rdquo; (S&amp;L) structures in the lower troposphere under strongly stable conditions. The field portion of the IDEAL program was conducted from 24 October to 15 November 2017 at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, to target nighttime lower troposphere S&amp;L conditions. It employed a synergistic combination of observations by multiple simultaneous DataHawk-2 (DH2) small unmanned aircraft systems (sUASs) and concurrent ground-based profiling by the NCAR Earth Observing Laboratory Integrated Sounding System (ISS) comprising a wind profiler radar and hourly high-resolution radiosonde soundings. DH2 measurement intervals as well as vertical (&sim;&thinsp;2&ndash;4&thinsp;km) and horizontal (&sim;&thinsp;5&ndash;10&thinsp;km) flight trajectories were chosen based on local high-resolution weather forecasting and guided by near-real-time ISS measurements. These flights combined simultaneous vertical and slant-path profiling, and/or horizontal racetrack sampling, spanning several hours before sunrise. High-spatial- and temporal-resolution data were downlinked in real time to enable near-real-time changes in DH2 flight paths based on observed flow features. The IDEAL field program performed 70 DH2 flights on 16&thinsp;d, coordinated with 93 high-resolution radiosonde soundings. In this paper, raw and derived measurements from this campaign are outlined, and preliminary analyses are briefly described. This data set, along with &ldquo;quick look&rdquo; figures, is available for access by other researchers, as described herein.</p

Survey of Collective Instabilities and Beam-Plasma Interactions in Intense Heavy Ion Beams

This paper presents a survey of the present theoretical understanding based on advanced analytical and numerical studies of collective processes and beam-plasma interactions in intense heavy ion beams for applications to ion-beam-driven high energy density physics and heavy ion fusion. The topics include: discussion of the conditions for quiescent beam propagation over long distances; and the electrostatic Harris instability and the transverse electromagnetic Weibel instability in highly anisotropic, intense one-component ion beams. In the longitudinal drift compression and transverse compression regions, collective processes associated with the interaction of the intense ion beam with a charge-neutralizing background plasma are described, including the electrostatic electron-ion two-stream instability, the multispecies electromagnetic Weibel instability, and collective excitations in the presence of a solenoidal magnetic field. The effects of a velocity tilt on reducing two-stream instability growth rates are also discussed. Operating regimes are identified where the possible deleterious effects of collective processes on beam quality are minimized

Gene expression analyses in breast cancer epidemiology: the Norwegian Women and Cancer postgenome cohort study

Introduction The introduction of high-throughput technologies, also called -omics technologies, into epidemiology has raised the need for high-quality observational studies to reduce several sources of error and bias. Methods The Norwegian Women and Cancer (NOWAC) postgenome cohort study consists of approximately 50,000 women born between 1943 and 1957 who gave blood samples between 2003 and 2006 and filled out a two-page questionnaire. Blood was collected in such a way that RNA is preserved and can be used for gene expression analyses. The women are part of the NOWAC study consisting of 172,471 women 30 to 70 years of age at recruitment from 1991 to 2006 who answered one to three questionnaires on diet, medication use, and lifestyle. In collaboration with the Norwegian Breast Cancer Group, every NOWAC participant born between 1943 and 1957 who is admitted to a collaborating hospital for a diagnostic biopsy or for surgery of breast cancer will be asked to donate a tumor biopsy and two blood samples. In parallel, at least three controls are approached for each breast cancer case in order to obtain blood samples from at least two controls per case. The controls are drawn at random from NOWAC matched by time of follow-up and age. In addition, 400 normal breast tissues as well as blood samples will be collected among healthy women participating at the Norwegian Mammography Screening program at the Breast Imaging Center at the University Hospital of North-Norway, Tromsø. Results The NOWAC postgenome cohort offers a unique opportunity (a) to study blood-derived gene expression profiles as a diagnostic test for breast cancer in a nested case-control design with adjustment for confounding factors related to different exposures, (b) to improve the reliability and accuracy of this approach by adjusting for an individual's genotype (for example, variants in genes coding for hormone and drug-metabolizing and detoxifying enzymes), (c) to study gene expression profiles from peripheral blood as surrogate tissue to biomonitor defined exposure (for example, hormone) and its association with disease risk (that is, breast cancer), and (d) to study gene variants (single nucleotide polymorphisms and copy number variations) and environmental exposure (endogenous and exogenous hormones) and their influence on the incidence of different molecular subtypes of breast cancer. Conclusion The NOWAC postgenome cohort combining a valid epidemiological approach with richness of biological samples should make an important contribution to the study of the etiology and system biology of breast cancer

Deciphering Normal Blood Gene Expression Variation—The NOWAC Postgenome Study

There is growing evidence that gene expression profiling of peripheral blood cells is a valuable tool for assessing gene signatures related to exposure, drug-response, or disease. However, the true promise of this approach can not be estimated until the scientific community has robust baseline data describing variation in gene expression patterns in normal individuals. Using a large representative sample set of postmenopausal women (N = 286) in the Norwegian Women and Cancer (NOWAC) postgenome study, we investigated variability of whole blood gene expression in the general population. In particular, we examined changes in blood gene expression caused by technical variability, normal inter-individual differences, and exposure variables at proportions and levels relevant to real-life situations. We observe that the overall changes in gene expression are subtle, implying the need for careful analytic approaches of the data. In particular, technical variability may not be ignored and subsequent adjustments must be considered in any analysis. Many new candidate genes were identified that are differentially expressed according to inter-individual (i.e. fasting, BMI) and exposure (i.e. smoking) factors, thus establishing that these effects are mirrored in blood. By focusing on the biological implications instead of directly comparing gene lists from several related studies in the literature, our analytic approach was able to identify significant similarities and effects consistent across these reports. This establishes the feasibility of blood gene expression profiling, if they are predicated upon careful experimental design and analysis in order to minimize confounding signals, artifacts of sample preparation and processing, and inter-individual differences

Search for squarks and gluinos in events with isolated leptons, jets and missing transverse momentum at s√=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

The results of a search for supersymmetry in final states containing at least one isolated lepton (electron or muon), jets and large missing transverse momentum with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider are reported. The search is based on proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy s√=8 TeV collected in 2012, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20 fb−1. No significant excess above the Standard Model expectation is observed. Limits are set on supersymmetric particle masses for various supersymmetric models. Depending on the model, the search excludes gluino masses up to 1.32 TeV and squark masses up to 840 GeV. Limits are also set on the parameters of a minimal universal extra dimension model, excluding a compactification radius of 1/R c = 950 GeV for a cut-off scale times radius (ΛR c) of approximately 30

Evidence for the Higgs-boson Yukawa coupling to tau leptons with the ATLAS detector

Results of a search for H → τ τ decays are presented, based on the full set of proton-proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC during 2011 and 2012. The data correspond to integrated luminosities of 4.5 fb−1 and 20.3 fb−1 at centre-of-mass energies of √s = 7 TeV and √s = 8 TeV respectively. All combinations of leptonic (τ → `νν¯ with ` = e, µ) and hadronic (τ → hadrons ν) tau decays are considered. An excess of events over the expected background from other Standard Model processes is found with an observed (expected) significance of 4.5 (3.4) standard deviations. This excess provides evidence for the direct coupling of the recently discovered Higgs boson to fermions. The measured signal strength, normalised to the Standard Model expectation, of µ = 1.43 +0.43 −0.37 is consistent with the predicted Yukawa coupling strength in the Standard Model