Medicalisation of sadness, depression and spiritual distress

A qualitative study was conducted amongst 57 practising Catholics in Spain: students, priests, and contemplative monks and nuns. Through semi-structured interviews, participant observation and ethnography their understanding of severe sadness and the difference with pathological sadness, coping mechanisms and help-seeking behaviour were explored. The participants clearly differentiated between sadness in response to a cause, sadness that “made sense”, and cases where sadness was not explained by the context, sadness that “did not make sense”. The former was seen as a normal reaction to adversity which should be resolved by the individuals’ social, cultural and religious resources, while the latter was likely to be conceptualised as pathological, along the lines of depression, warranting psychiatric consultation. It was also found that religion played a crucial role in the way sadness was understood and resolved: symptoms that otherwise might have been described as evidence of a depressive episode were often understood in those more religiously committed within the framework of the “Dark Night of the Soul” narrative, an active transformation of emotional distress into a process of self-reflection, attribution of religious meaning and spiritual growth. A complex portrayal of the role of the spiritual director and the parish priest in helping those undergoing sadness and depression emerged, containing positive aspects and criticisms of some priests’ lack of commitment and mental health training. This study emphasises the importance of taking into account the context of depressive symptoms, as the absence of an appropriate context is seemingly what made participants conceptualise them as abnormal. It also warns about the risks of medicalising normal episodes of sadness and raises questions about the lack of face validity of the current diagnostic classification for depressive disorder, which exclusively uses descriptive criteria. The thesis concludes by making some suggestions regarding differentiating normal from pathological sadness and how to incorporate existential issues into clinical practice

The encapsulation and controlled release of proteins from “meltable” chemically cross-linked hydrogels

\ua9 2024 The Authors. Journal of Applied Polymer Science published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.Chemically crosslinked hydrogels can be used for the controlled delivery of therapeutic proteins, however, cargo loading can be challenging. A common approach involves performing the hydrogel crosslinking step in the presence of the cargo proteins, however, this can require the utilization of selective chemistries to ensure the cargos do not chemically react with the forming hydrogel network. We demonstrate that chemically crosslinked hydrogels based upon the protein polymer Capsular antigen fragment 1 (Caf1) can be used to encapsulate proteins within a chemically crosslinked hydrogel network. This encapsulation exploits the “meltable” feature of Caf1 hydrogels, where upon heating the Caf1 protein unfolds with concomitant depolymerization of the hydrogel network. Protein cargos can be loaded into the “molten” form of the hydrogel which cools with protein refolding and concomitant reformation of the hydrogel network to entrap the cargos, ensuring a more homogenous dispersion of the cargo. Analysis of release profiles indicated lower burst release in comparison to release from identical hydrogels loaded by an absorption method. This work is significant because it suggest that the “meltable” feature of Caf1 hydrogels may present an improved method of loading protein cargos into crosslinked hydrogel networks whilst avoiding the need for crosslinking chemistries

INFLUENCE OF ANKLE STABILIZERS ON SHOCK ABSORTION AND PERFORMANCE IN RUNNING AND JUMPING.

Stabilizing the ankle has been investigated as a method of prevention of ankle sprains.. Several studies have found a significant decrease in ankle injuries with an increased support. In some sports with high risk of ankle injuries like basketball, high top shoes are extensively used to reduce injuries. Nevertheless, in other Sports with also high risk, high top shoes are not so extensively used because they are considered to reduce performance in runniest with rapid lateral movements. Ankle movement is also an important shock absorptions mechanism and limiting this 'movement can lead to higher impacts suffered by the body. For these reasons, performance and shock absorptions on the one hand and, prevention of ankle sprains on the other, seem to be opposite points for the ankle support issue. The aim of this paper is to understand better the effects of ankle support in both shock attenuation and performance of jumps. The influence in performance through a obstacle course has been also investigated. Three subjects participated in the study and two types of shoes were used for the tests. The shoes had exact midsole and sole and the differences between them were only in the upper vamp. First shoe was a high top shoe with firm heel counters designed to obtain a good ankle support. The second one was a low top shoe with no heel counter. Three types of experiments were carried out. The first experiment consisted of series of three maximal jumps in which the shoes were randomized. For this test the jump height was measured. The second test was also a performance test but consisted of a obstacle court and the times were measured by a chronometer. For this test also series of three runs with randomized order of shoes were performed. For the third test two accelerometers were firmly attached to the subject's tibia and forehead. Series of three jumps at 95% of the maximal jump and reach were performed barefoot and randomly wearing the shoes. The subjects landed on their right foot over a force plate. The accelerometers and force plate were sampled at 1000 Hz. Statistical significant differences between shoes were found both in the performance tests and in the shock absorption ones. High top shoes were found to reduce the performance in jumps and obstacle course and to increase impacts that reach the forehead

Delayed relaxation of highly excited naphthalene cations

The efficiency of energy transfer in ultrafast electronic relaxation of molecules depends strongly on the complex interplay between electronic and nuclear motion. In this study we use wavelength-selected XUV pulses to induce relaxation dynamics of highly excited cationic states of naphthalene. Surprisingly, the observed relaxation lifetimes increase with the cationic excitation energy. We propose that this is a manifestation of a quantum mechanical population trapping that leads to delayed relaxation of molecules in the regions with a high density of excited states. © 2019 Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd

Evaluation of pressure and temperature effect on the structure and properties of Ca2.93Sr0.07Co4O9 ceramic materials

In this work, the effect of hot-pressing conditions on the performances of Sr-doped Ca3Co4O9 materials has been investigated. The samples were prepared from attrition milled precursors, which reduced the processing time. Samples were hot-pressed at temperatures (T) between 800 and 900 °C and pressures (P) from 51 to 71 MPa. The out-of-plane X-ray diffraction (XRD) showed that all samples are formed by the thermoelectric phase, with a good grain orientation which is improved with T, and P, as demonstrated by their Lotgering factor. The observations through Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) have revealed that grain sizes and orientation are enhanced with T, and P, as well as density through Archimedes''s method. All these trends are reflected in the flexural strength and microhardness. The electrical resistivity is lower when the T, or P, is increased, reaching 6.4 mO cm for samples processed at 900 °C and 71 MPa, which is about the best reported values in the literature. On the other hand, contrarily to the expected results, they also showed the highest S values, 182 µV/K, which are similar to the best reported values for highly dense textured materials. Thermal conductivity values do not follow a regular evolution with the hot-pressing conditions, probably due to internal stresses, reaching the lowest values at 800 °C in samples processed at 800 °C and 51 MPa (1.51 W/(K*m)) or 900 °C and 61 MPa (1.53 W/(K*m)). Consequently, the highest ZT values have been determined in samples processed at 900 °C and 61 MPa (0.35) which is higher than the best reported values in literature for bulk textured samples, to the best of our knowledge. © 2021 The Author

Tuning Ca3Co4O9 thermal and transport properties by TiC nanoparticles addition

Ca3Co4O9 + xwt.% TiC (x = 0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, and 1.0) polycrystalline thermoelectric ceramics have been prepared through the classical ceramic route. XRD characterization has demonstrated that all samples are mainly composed by the Ca3Co4O9 phase, while microstructural observation has shown that no reaction between both components has been produced. Moreover, TiC particles are well distributed for small additions, and start to agglomerate from 0.75 wt.% content. Density measurements showed that nearly no changes have been produced by TiC addition and nearly the whole porosity appears as open one. Furthermore, electrical resistivity decreases up to 0.75 wt.% addition, increasing for higher content. On the other hand, Seebeck coefficient has been maintained unchanged in all samples. In spite of an irregular behaviour of thermal conductivity with temperature, it tends to decrease when the temperature is raised, displaying the lowest values for the 0.25 wt.% samples. These data led to an increase of about 40% in ZT values at 800 °C for samples with 0.25 wt.% addition, when compared with the pure ones. Finally, linear thermal expansion coefficient is decreased when TiC content is increased, which can be exploited to fit the thermal expansion coefficients of all the components used to build a power generation thermoelectric module

Communication: XUV transient absorption spectroscopy of iodomethane and iodobenzene photodissociation

Time-resolved extreme ultraviolet (XUV) transient absorption spectroscopy of iodomethane and iodobenzene photodissociation at the iodine pre-N4,5 edge is presented, using femtosecond UV pump pulses and XUV probe pulses from high harmonic generation. For both molecules the molecular core-to-valence absorption lines fade immediately, within the pump-probe time-resolution. Absorption lines converging to the atomic iodine product emerge promptly in CH3I but are time-delayed in C6H5I. We attribute this delay to the initial π → σ* excitation in iodobenzene, which is distant from the iodine reporter atom. We measure a continuous shift in energy of the emerging atomic absorption lines in CH3I, attributed to relaxation of the excited valence shell. An independent particle model is used to rationalize the observed experimental findings

Optimization by adaptive stochastic descent

Published: March 16, 2018When standard optimization methods fail to find a satisfactory solution for a parameter fitting problem, a tempting recourse is to adjust parameters manually. While tedious, this approach can be surprisingly powerful in terms of achieving optimal or near-optimal solutions. This paper outlines an optimization algorithm, Adaptive Stochastic Descent (ASD), that has been designed to replicate the essential aspects of manual parameter fitting in an automated way. Specifically, ASD uses simple principles to form probabilistic assumptions about (a) which parameters have the greatest effect on the objective function, and (b) optimal step sizes for each parameter. We show that for a certain class of optimization problems (namely, those with a moderate to large number of scalar parameter dimensions, especially if some dimensions are more important than others), ASD is capable of minimizing the objective function with far fewer function evaluations than classic optimization methods, such as the Nelder-Mead nonlinear simplex, Levenberg-Marquardt gradient descent, simulated annealing, and genetic algorithms. As a case study, we show that ASD outperforms standard algorithms when used to determine how resources should be allocated in order to minimize new HIV infections in Swaziland.Cliff C. Kerr, Salvador Dura-Bernal, Tomasz G. Smolinski, George L. Chadderdon, David P. Wilso

Kinematically complete measurements of strong eld ionisation with mid-IR pulses

Recent observations of three unique peaks near 1 eV, 100 meV and 1 meV in the electron spectra generated by ionization using intense mid-IR pulses have challenged the current understanding of strong-field (SF) ionization. The results came as a surprise as they could not be reproduced by the standard version of the commonly used SF approximation. We present results showing the simultaneous measurement of all three low energy ranges at high resolution. This capability is possible due to a unique experimental combination of a high repetition rate mid-IR source, which allows probing deep in the quasi-static regime at high data rates, with a reaction microscope, which allows high resolution three dimensional imaging of the electron momentum distribution.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft