A pilot study on psychological interventions with Chinese young adults with schizophrenia

Objectives: To investigate the functional and clinical status of a group of Chinese schizophrenic patients after treatment with individually tailored psychological treatment over a 9-month period. Patients and Methods: Thirty six 15- to 32-year-old Chinese schizophrenic patients were recruited into the study from 2001 to 2002. The patients were randomly assigned into treatment and waitlist groups. At baseline their pre-treatment clinical status, social functioning, and other clinically relevant parameters were assessed. The psychological treatments were conducted by 2 experienced clinical psychologists and assessed by face-to-face interviews. Results: After the treatment period, outcome measures supported the use of adjuvant psychotherapy in the routine treatment programme for subjects with schizophrenia; both positive and negative symptoms improved compared to baseline status (p < 0.001). Conclusions: The findings support the use of psychotherapeutic interventions to promote better adaptation to the psychotic disorder. © 2007 Hong Kong College of Psychiatrists.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

SMD packaged ZnSSe ultra-violet schottky photodetectors with high detectivity

We report the 1/f noise and shot noise studies on molecular beam epitaxy (MBE)-grown ZnSSe UV detectors packaged in SMD leadframes for three detectors with different thicknesses of the active layer and the top electrode pad. The highest onset of reverse bias for the appearance of 1/f noise is -27.5V and the highest dark resistances at zero bias is R 0 = 3.7 × 10 13Ω. The observed difference in their noise performance implies that the increase of the thicknesses of both the active layer and the top electrode pad can significantly lower the noise levels and in turn lead to higher detectivity. The best detectivity achieved is 8.75×10 13 cmHz 1/2W -1 in a detector with an active layer of 5000 Å and a top electrode pad of Cr (50Å) / Au (8000Å).link_to_subscribed_fulltex