A multi-country test of brief reappraisal interventions on emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased negative emotions and decreased positive emotions globally. Left unchecked, these emotional changes might have a wide array of adverse impacts. To reduce negative emotions and increase positive emotions, we tested the effectiveness of reappraisal, an emotion-regulation strategy that modifies how one thinks about a situation. Participants from 87 countries and regions (n = 21,644) were randomly assigned to one of two brief reappraisal interventions (reconstrual or repurposing) or one of two control conditions (active or passive). Results revealed that both reappraisal interventions (vesus both control conditions) consistently reduced negative emotions and increased positive emotions across different measures. Reconstrual and repurposing interventions had similar effects. Importantly, planned exploratory analyses indicated that reappraisal interventions did not reduce intentions to practice preventive health behaviours. The findings demonstrate the viability of creating scalable, low-cost interventions for use around the world

Protective intraoperative ventilation with higher versus lower levels of positive end-expiratory pressure in obese patients (PROBESE): study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

Background: Postoperative pulmonary complications (PPCs) increase the morbidity and mortality of surgery in obese patients. High levels of positive end-expiratory pressure (PEEP) with lung recruitment maneuvers may improve intraoperative respiratory function, but they can also compromise hemodynamics, and the effects on PPCs are uncertain. We hypothesized that intraoperative mechanical ventilation using high PEEP with periodic recruitment maneuvers, as compared with low PEEP without recruitment maneuvers, prevents PPCs in obese patients. Methods/design The PRotective Ventilation with Higher versus Lower PEEP during General Anesthesia for Surgery in OBESE Patients (PROBESE) study is a multicenter, two-arm, international randomized controlled trial. In total, 2013 obese patients with body mass index ≥35 kg/m2 scheduled for at least 2 h of surgery under general anesthesia and at intermediate to high risk for PPCs will be included. Patients are ventilated intraoperatively with a low tidal volume of 7 ml/kg (predicted body weight) and randomly assigned to PEEP of 12 cmH2O with lung recruitment maneuvers (high PEEP) or PEEP of 4 cmH2O without recruitment maneuvers (low PEEP). The occurrence of PPCs will be recorded as collapsed composite of single adverse pulmonary events and represents the primary endpoint. Discussion To our knowledge, the PROBESE trial is the first multicenter, international randomized controlled trial to compare the effects of two different levels of intraoperative PEEP during protective low tidal volume ventilation on PPCs in obese patients. The results of the PROBESE trial will support anesthesiologists in their decision to choose a certain PEEP level during general anesthesia for surgery in obese patients in an attempt to prevent PPCs. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT02148692. Registered on 23 May 2014; last updated 7 June 2016. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13063-017-1929-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Tco’s Thin Films Grown By Spray Pyrolysis Technique For Window Layer Of Solar Cell Application: A Comparative Study

Thin films of ZnO, SnO2 and CdO have been deposited using spray pyrolysis technique. They were characterized by X-Ray diffraction (XRD), optical absorption in the wavelength range 200-2500 nm and Hall Effect measurements. A comparative study was conducted for the prepared TCO’s thin films. The structural studies revealed the formation of polycrystalline thin films with a hexagonal wurtzite and tetragonal rutile structure for ZnO and SnO2 thin films respectively, whereas a cubic structure was found for the CdO films. Optical studies showed that the prepared SnO2, ZnO and CdO thin films had a direct band gap of 3.72, 2.98 and 2.43 eV, respectively. The ZnO films exhibited highest optical transmittance that varied between 70% - 88%. The film thickness of the samples was estimated from transmission spectra. The effective mass of the carriers (m*) at the Fermi level and the figure of merit of the deposited films are also investigated. Hall Effect measurements confirm the n-type nature of the TCO’s thin films. A low resistivity in the order of 10-2 (Ω.cm) has been observed for SnO2 and CdO thin films

Investigations In Structural Morphological And Optical Properties Of Cd1-Xsnxs Thin Films

Cd1_xSnxS thin films with different concentrations x (x= 0 at%, 2 at%, 4 at%, 6 at% and 8 at %) were grown onto the glass substrates using spray pyrolysis technique. The structural, morphological and optical properties of pure CdS (x=0) and Cd1_xSnxS ternary alloy thin films for different concentrations x were investigated. X-ray diffraction study showed that the deposited films were polycrystalline with hexagonal structure and the crystallinity of the CdS films has improved with Sn incorporation. The morphological and compositional properties of the deposited films have been investigated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS). SEM images revealed that tin addition caused notable changes in the surface morphology of the Cd1_xSnxS thin films. Also, the addition of Sn+2 ions improved the optical transmittance of the films. However, the optical absorption studies revealed that Sn addition did not change the absorption band gap of the prepared thin films. The variations of photocurrent density Jph of the pure CdS and Cd1_xSnxS ternary alloy thin films have been investigated depending on Tin contents

Effect of TM (TM= Sn, Mn, Al) Doping on the Physical Properties of ZnO Thin Films Grown by Spray Pyrolysis Technique: A comparative Study

ZnO:TM (TM=Sn, Mn, Al) thin films were successfully deposited on glass substrates using spray pyrolysis technique. X-ray analysis shows that ZnO:TM thin films crystallize in hexagonal structure with a preferred orientation of the crystallites along (002) direction and the crystallite size had increased with TM doping. The present study investigated the effect of TM type on the structural parameters. These films had direct band gap energy lying in the range of 3 – 2.25 eV and the average transmittance varied from 75 to 85 % with TM doping. The lowest observed figure of merit in the present study is 4.13×10-5 (Ω-1) for AZO thin films. All the optical expected absorption capacity and photocurrent (jph) depend on the TM type. The optical constants, such as the urbach energy, effective mass of the carriers (m*), refractive index (n) and extinction coefficient (k), were also evaluated. The AZO thin films exhibited the lowest resistivity (1.79 × 10-1 Ω cm)

Mathematical study of a bacteria-fish model with level of infection structure

In this paper, we propose a mathematical model to study a bacteria-fish system, based upon the interactions between Clostridium botulinum and tilapia, Oerochromis mossambicus. The fish population is divided into susceptible and infected, and the infected fish population is considered structured by the level of infection. The model is thus a system with the infected fish equation being an evolution equation, while those corresponding to the susceptible fish and bacteria in water are ordinary differential equations. The model is firstly transformed into a system with distributed delay for susceptible fish and bacteria and, further, under some assumptions, into a system with discrete delay. The study of this system gives us some results concerning the existence, uniqueness, positivity and boundedness of solutions; we also discuss the existence and stability of its equilibrium points, including conditions for the appearance of Hopf bifurcation. The theoretical results are illustrated by some numerical simulations

Fast Adaptive Blind MMSE Equalizer for Multichannel FIR Systems

<p/> <p>We propose a new blind minimum mean square error (MMSE) equalization algorithm of noisy multichannel finite impulse response (FIR) systems, that relies only on second-order statistics. The proposed algorithm offers two important advantages: a low computational complexity and a relative robustness against channel order overestimation errors. Exploiting the fact that the columns of the equalizer matrix filter belong both to the signal subspace and to the kernel of truncated data covariance matrix, the proposed algorithm achieves blindly a direct estimation of the zero-delay MMSE equalizer parameters. We develop a two-step procedure to further improve the performance gain and control the equalization delay. An efficient fast adaptive implementation of our equalizer, based on the projection approximation and the shift invariance property of temporal data covariance matrix, is proposed for reducing the computational complexity from <inline-formula><graphic file="1687-6180-2006-014827-i1.gif"/></inline-formula> to <inline-formula><graphic file="1687-6180-2006-014827-i2.gif"/></inline-formula>, where <inline-formula><graphic file="1687-6180-2006-014827-i3.gif"/></inline-formula> is the number of emitted signals, <inline-formula><graphic file="1687-6180-2006-014827-i4.gif"/></inline-formula> the data vector length, and <inline-formula><graphic file="1687-6180-2006-014827-i5.gif"/></inline-formula> the dimension of the signal subspace. We then derive a statistical performance analysis to compare the equalization performance with that of the optimal MMSE equalizer. Finally, simulation results are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed blind equalization algorithm.</p