On the attitudinal consequences of being mindful: Links between mindfulness and attitudinal ambivalence

ArticleThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from SAGE Publications via the DOI in this record.A series of studies examined whether mindfulness is associated with the experience of attitudinal ambivalence. Studies 1A and 1B found that mindful individuals expressed greater comfort holding ambivalent views and reported feeling ambivalent less often. More mindful individuals also responded more positively to feelings of uncertainty (as assessed in Study 1B). Study 2 replicated these effects and demonstrated that mindful individuals had lower objective and subjective ambivalence across a range of attitude objects but did not differ in attitude valence, extremity, positivity/negativity, strength, or the need to evaluate. Study 3 showed that the link between greater ambivalence and negative affect was buffered by mindfulness, such that there was no link between the amount of ambivalence and negative affect among more mindful individuals. The results are discussed with respect to the benefits of mindfulness in relation to ambivalence and affect.Parts of this article were funded by a Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant awarded to the first author

Characterization of the structural requirements for a carbohydrate based anticoagulant with a reduced risk of inducing the immunological type of heparin-associated thrombocytopenia

HAT is the most frequent drug induced immune-thrombocytopenia. We recently identified multimolecular PF4/heparin complexes as the major antigen. In order to evaluate the structural requirements for formation of the antigenic complex, we chemically synthesized 13 glucan sulfates and used 5 heparin fractions (2.4-4.8 kD) and a synthesized pentasaccharide, representing the antithrombin III binding sequence of heparin, for further characterize the HAT antigen. In the presence of glucan sulfates and heparin, HAT antibodies caused platelet activation typically at low but not at high concentrations, as measured by 14C-5HT release. The concentration range giving the activation pattern depended on the degree of sulfation (DS) and molecular weight (MW) of the glucan sulfates but not on the type of glycosidic linkage of a polysaccharide. With linear glucan sulfates with a chain length of 35 monosaccharides, the critical DS to form the HAT antigen ranged between 0.60 and 1.20. Glycosidic branched glucan sulfates were able to form the HAT antigen at a lower DS and a lower MW than linear glucan sulfates. Platelet activation by HAT-antibodies in the presence of linear curdlan sulfate fractions was dependent on their MW. At a low concentration (0.01 microM) medium-size fractions (60 kD) caused platelet activation but neither small (12 kD) nor large fractions ( > 150 kD) did. At higher concentrations (2 microM) the opposite reaction pattern was observed. In the case of heparin, the optimal chain length for forming the HAT antigen is a hexadecasaccharide (4.8 kD). Antigen generation decreased with larger and smaller fractions.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS

Spectral characteristics of Apollo landing sites in the VIS to NIR wavelength range

Observations in the visible and near-infrared wavelength range have been used to characterize the spectral behaviour of the lunar nearside. Special emphasis was given to the investigation of the Apollo landing sites which give the possibility to compare remotely sensed data and spectral analyzing techniques with the compositional ground-truth provided by the lunar sample record. Two independent obervational data sets were used for this study with (1) earth-based multispectral CCD measurements in 12 colors obtained at the Mauna Kea observatory and (2) Galileo SSI images in six colors obtained during the second Earth-Moon encounter. Both data sets cover the same spectral range from 0.4 to 1.0 muem and have a comparable spatial resolution of <&#61 2 km/pixel. The analysis of the lunar soil samples shows a strong correlation between the concentrations of the main chemical constituents and spectral variations as measured in thelaboratory. In order to apply this spectral-chemical correlation to the remotely sensed data of the lunar surface, seperate correlation models were developed for each remote instrument, respectively, by folding the optical properties of the cameras with the laboratory spectra of the samples. The reliability of the modelswere tested for the observational multispectral data of the Apollo landing sites. The main chemical constituents like Fe, Ti, Ca and Al could be determined to an accuracy of a few percent and confirm the applicability of the analyzing technique to the remotely sensed data sets. Hence, the spectral-chemical correlation models allow to map the distribution of these elements in the lunar soil and to define geological surface units in terms of their composition