Attitudes Toward Psychotropic Medications Among Psychotropic Medications Among Psychiatric Outpatients and the General Population

Attitudes and beliefs towards psychotropic medication were evaluated among psychiatric outpatients, patients seeking buprenorphine for substance abuse, and nonusers in a general population. The Drug Attitude Inventory scale (DAI-10) and the Beliefs about Medicines Questionnaire General (BMQ-G) were used to assess attitudes and beliefs of 49 participants. The general population had a negative attitude toward psychotropic medication and the psychiatric groups showed positive attitudes. Compliance and noncompliance were not associated with attitudes or beliefs toward psychotropic medication. Other findings include that females had less positive attitudes and beliefs towards psychotropic medication than males. The current findings expand and support research associated with substance abuse treatment of buprenorphine and attitudes toward psychotropic medication among psychiatric patients and the general population

The Biochemical Reactions of the Tribe Klebsielleae

M. A.Fife, W. H. Ewing, and B. R. Davis."June 1965."Includes bibliographical references (p. 42-43)

Causes of Imbalance and Abnormal Gait That May Be Misdiagnosed

Disorders of gait and balance are common in medicine and often lead to referral for neurologic evaluation. Because the maintenance of balance and normal gait are mediated by complex neurologic pathways as well as musculoskeletal, metabolic, and behavioral considerations, the list of possible contributing causes is very large. Much of the time, the history and neurologic examination reveal the underlying cause or causes. There are instances, however, when there are limited neurologic findings, as well as no structural abnormalities on brain or spine magnetic resonance imaging studies to explain the imbalance or gait difficulty. In this article, selected disorders that may be overlooked in the neurologic examination and imaging studies are reviewed. Possible causes of imbalance include occult drug-induced ataxia, autoimmune ataxia, ataxia associated with tremor, bilateral vestibular hypofunction, and spastic or dystonic gait disorders with normal imaging

Dynamical mechanism of atrial fibrillation: a topological approach

While spiral wave breakup has been implicated in the emergence of atrial fibrillation, its role in maintaining this complex type of cardiac arrhythmia is less clear. We used the Karma model of cardiac excitation to investigate the dynamical mechanisms that sustain atrial fibrillation once it has been established. The results of our numerical study show that spatiotemporally chaotic dynamics in this regime can be described as a dynamical equilibrium between topologically distinct types of transitions that increase or decrease the number of wavelets, in general agreement with the multiple wavelets hypothesis. Surprisingly, we found that the process of continuous excitation waves breaking up into discontinuous pieces plays no role whatsoever in maintaining spatiotemporal complexity. Instead this complexity is maintained as a dynamical balance between wave coalescence -- a unique, previously unidentified, topological process that increases the number of wavelets -- and wave collapse -- a different topological process that decreases their number.Comment: 15 pages, 14 figure

Development of a Closed-Loop Strap Down Attitude System for an Ultrahigh Altitude Flight Experiment

A low-cost attitude system has been developed for an ultrahigh altitude flight experiment. The experiment uses a remotely piloted sailplane, with the wings modified for flight at altitudes greater than 100,000 ft. Mission requirements deem it necessary to measure the aircraft pitch and bank angles with accuracy better than 1.0 deg and heading with accuracy better than 5.0 deg. Vehicle cost restrictions and gross weight limits make installing a commercial inertial navigation system unfeasible. Instead, a low-cost attitude system was developed using strap down components. Monte Carlo analyses verified that two vector measurements, magnetic field and velocity, are required to completely stabilize the error equations. In the estimating algorithm, body-axis observations of the airspeed vector and the magnetic field are compared against the inertial velocity vector and a magnetic-field reference model. Residuals are fed back to stabilize integration of rate gyros. The effectiveness of the estimating algorithm was demonstrated using data from the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center Systems Research Aircraft (SRA) flight tests. The algorithm was applied with good results to a maximum 10' pitch and bank angles. Effects of wind shears were evaluated and, for most cases, can be safely ignored

The Antiferromagnetic Band Structure of La2CuO4 Revisited

Using the Becke-3-LYP functional, we have performed band structure calculations on the high temperature superconductor parent compound, La2CuO4. Under the restricted spin formalism (rho(alpha) equal to rho(beta)), the R-B3LYP band structure agrees well with the standard LDA band structure. It is metallic with a single Cu x2-y2/O p(sigma) band crossing the Fermi level. Under the unrestricted spin formalism (rho(alpha) not equal to rho(beta)), the UB3LYP band structure has a spin polarized antiferromagnetic solution with a band gap of 2.0 eV, agreeing well with experiment. This state is 1.0 eV (per formula unit) lower than that calculated from the R-B3LYP. The apparent high energy of the spin restricted state is attributed to an overestimate of on-site Coulomb repulsion which is corrected in the unrestricted spin calculations. The stabilization of the total energy with spin polarization arises primarily from the stabilization of the x2-y2 band, such that the character of the eigenstates at the top of the valence band in the antiferromagnetic state becomes a strong mixture of Cu x2-y2/O p(sigma) and Cu z2/O' p(z). Since the Hohenberg-Kohn theorem requires the spin restricted and spin unrestricted calculations give exactly the same ground state energy and total density for the exact functionals, this large disparity in energy reflects the inadequacy of current functionals for describing the cuprates. This calls into question the use of band structures based on current restricted spin density functionals (including LDA) as a basis for single band theories of superconductivity in these materials.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. B, for more information see http://www.firstprinciples.co

T>0 properties of the infinitely repulsive Hubbard model for arbitrary number of holes

Based on representations of the symmetric group $S_N$, explicit and exact Schr\"odinger equation is derived for $U=\infty$ Hubbard model in any dimensions with arbitrary number of holes, which clearly shows that during the movement of holes the spin background of electrons plays an important role. Starting from it, at T=0 we have analyzed the behaviour of the system depending on the dimensionality and number of holes. Based on the presented formalism thermodynamic quantities have also been expressed using a loop summation technique in which the partition function is given in terms of characters of $S_N$. In case of the studied finite systems, the loop summation have been taken into account exactly up to the 14-th order in reciprocal temperature and the results were corrected in higher order based on Monte Carlo simulations. The obtained results suggest that the presented formalism increase the efficiency of the Monte Carlo simulations as well, because the spin part contribution of the background is automatically taken into account by the characters of $S_N$.Comment: 26 pages, 1 embedded ps figure; Phil. Mag. B (in press

Drift- or Fluctuation-Induced Ordering and Self-Organization in Driven Many-Particle Systems

According to empirical observations, some pattern formation phenomena in driven many-particle systems are more pronounced in the presence of a certain noise level. We investigate this phenomenon of fluctuation-driven ordering with a cellular automaton model of interactive motion in space and find an optimal noise strength, while order breaks down at high(er) fluctuation levels. Additionally, we discuss the phenomenon of noise- and drift-induced self-organization in systems that would show disorder in the absence of fluctuations. In the future, related studies may have applications to the control of many-particle systems such as the efficient separation of particles. The rather general formulation of our model in the spirit of game theory may allow to shed some light on several different kinds of noise-induced ordering phenomena observed in physical, chemical, biological, and socio-economic systems (e.g., attractive and repulsive agglomeration, or segregation).Comment: For related work see http://www.helbing.or