Rotational energy transfer in carbon monoxide + helium collisions

Rotational energy transfer is an important process in a variety of astrophysical environments including the interstellar medium, photo-dissociation regions, and cool stellar atmospheres. The knowledge of the rates of rotational energy transfer in collisions at low temperatures is required to understand the relative intensities of rotational transitions observed in emission from dense interstellar clouds. Specifically, it is necessary to know the rate coefficients for energy transfer between different rotational levels of CO in collisions with the major interstellar species such as H2, H, and He in order to estimate the radiative cooling rate as applied to the cooling mechanism in the interstellar medium; Accurate quantum mechanical calculations were carried out to investigate the excitation and de-excitations of rotational levels in a hetero-nuclear molecule at low temperatures by taking the He + CO system as an illustrative example. Collisions between CO molecule in its electronic ground state and He atom provide an ideal test case for comparisons between experiment and theory, because the potential energy surface that governs the collision dynamics has been calculated accurately. The collision dynamics calculations were performed by solving the time-independent Schrodinger equation employing the close coupling method. The rate constants for rotational energy transfer were obtained by Boltzmann averaging the corresponding cross sections. The calculations were performed to investigate the collision energy dependence of total removal of cross sections for rotational levels of ji = 0...12 in the ground vibrational state (nu = 0) of CO and ji = 0, 1, 4, and 6 in the excited nu = 2 vibrational level of CO. It is found that the van der Waals well in the interaction potential supports a number of shape resonances which significantly influence the relaxation cross sections at energies less than the well depth. The computed results are compared with available experimental and theoretical data

The Child Behaviour Assessment Instrument: development and validation of a measure to screen for externalising child behavioural problems in community setting

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In Sri Lanka, behavioural problems have grown to epidemic proportions accounting second highest category of mental health problems among children. Early identification of behavioural problems in children is an important pre-requisite of the implementation of interventions to prevent long term psychiatric outcomes. The objectives of the study were to develop and validate a screening instrument for use in the community setting to identify behavioural problems in children aged 4-6 years.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>An initial 54 item questionnaire was developed following an extensive review of the literature. A three round Delphi process involving a panel of experts from six relevant fields was then undertaken to refine the nature and number of items and created the 15 item community screening instrument, Child Behaviour Assessment Instrument (CBAI). Validation study was conducted in the Medical Officer of Health area Kaduwela, Sri Lanka and a community sample of 332 children aged 4-6 years were recruited by two stage randomization process. The behaviour status of the participants was assessed by an interviewer using the CBAI and a clinical psychologist following clinical assessment concurrently. Criterion validity was appraised by assessing the sensitivity, specificity and predictive values at the optimum screen cut off value. Construct validity of the instrument was quantified by testing whether the data of validation study fits to a hypothetical model. Face and content validity of the CBAI were qualitatively assessed by a panel of experts. The reliability of the instrument was assessed by internal consistency analysis and test-retest methods in a 15% subset of the community sample.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Using the Receiver Operating Characteristic analysis the CBAI score of >16 was identified as the cut off point that optimally differentiated children having behavioural problems, with a sensitivity of 0.88 (95% CI = 0.80-0.96) and specificity of 0.81 (95% CI = 0.75-0.87). The Cronbach's alpha exceeded Nunnaly's criterion of 0.7 for items related to inattention, aggression and impaired social interaction.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Preliminary data obtained from the study indicate that the Child Behaviour Assessment Instrument is a valid and reliable screening instrument for early identification of young children at risk of behavioural problems in the community setting.</p

Leading Article The challenge of providing mental health care for children after the tsunami

Research evidence supports that psychological morbidity in children following natural disasters such as earthquakes, flash floods and hurricanes can be high and widespread 1,2,3. When considering the magnitude of the recent tsunami disaster and the extensive bereavements, losses and injuries suffered by the children, we too can anticipate that large numbers will be similarly affected. In the short period of less than 3 months since the disaster, paediatric and mental health services have seen acute stress reactions in the form of separation anxiety, bedwetting, nightmares, panic attacks and somatic complaints. Although such reactions are universal under similar circumstances, they are transient in the majority and will disappear without any intervention. However, we do not understand enough about th

Leading Article Child mental health problems in paediatric practice: the hidden psychopathology

Behavioural and emotional problems have been identified in 18-20 % of children attending paediatric primary care 1. Similar problems, but in a higher prevalence of 28%, are reported from specialist paediatric ambulatory care services 2. As many as two thirds of randomly selected hospitalised children have been found to have psychological difficulties 3. At one end of the spectrum are children with longterm physical disorders and associated psychological disturbances. This includes children with almost any kind of chronic illness, neurological disease, disfiguring and life threatening illness, recurrent hospitalisation and those subjected to invasive procedures. All these children run a high risk of developing mental health problems 4. When the psychological impact of individual illnesses is considered, a rich source of data is available on children suffering from epilepsy, asthma, diabetes and cancer. Apart from the general psychosocial difficulties associated with illness and disability, poor emotional adjustment to chronic or life threatening illness is known to jeopardise disease control and the compliance with treatment regimes 4,5. Presence of psychological symptoms may also complicate the diagnostic process, promote longer hospitalisation and increase health care cost 6. Some international classifications of diseases even provide guidelines for diagnosing and coding of such secondary psychological effects of physical disorders 7. At the opposite end of the spectrum are children who present with somatic symptoms, which at first glance may suggest a physical disorder, but where there is no evidence of this. These medically unexplained physical presentations are common in paediatric practice and prevalence as high as 25 % is known 8. Here, the psychological distress is masked by a physical complaint or expressed through a bodily symptom. This is not surprising as emotions hav

Leading Article Autism – the hidden epidemic

Autism has currently become a subject of discussion to the extent that it overshadows all other developmental disabilities in children put together. Autism is a highly disabling condition with life lon

Short Report Fantastic children

Children demonstrating exceptional mental abilities are reported in the medical literature, but it is more intriguing when such children are also mentally impaired. This short report describes some unique abilities of children with autism spectrum disorders and attempts to provide possible explanations for the existence of these exceptional aptitudes. The exceptional abilities were mostly unrecognized and their impairments and oddities were more readily recognised. These children were all seen at the Lady Ridgeway Hospital for assessment and diagnosis and the description here will be confined to their unique mental abilities. All are boys and the names given are fictitious. Twelve year old Dilan has a single preoccupation, the Sri Lankan cricket team. His favourite player is Sanath Jayasuriya. He will promptly and accurately give Sanath’s batting score in any match played for the past several years. However, Dilan never plays cricket himself as he does not mix with peers and is reluctant to attend school. He has significant difficulty in managing school work and has marked attention deficit. Eight year old Shan has an exceptional ability in calendar calculation. When dates were randomly selected from several past years and the year to come, he gave the corresponding days of the week, which were all found to be exact when checked with the existing calendars. His educational abilities matched that of a child 2 to 3 years his senior when working with his mother at home, but he refused to do any work in school. His class teacher recommended special education, much to the frustration of the mother, but failed to convince the school about his abilities. • Four year old Mahen correctly reads and spells almost any word in English or Sinhala, which others of his age could not manage to do

Case Report Management of Severe Pediatric Tourette Syndrome Resistant to Drug Treatment

Tourette syndrome (TS) is a neurodevelopmental disorder with chronic and disabling impacts on multiple domains of functioning in children. Treatment of TS is often complicated by comorbid conditions. We present a 12-year-old boy with severe symptoms of Tourette syndrome (TS), with prominent and markedly disabling vocal tics, who failed to respond to substantial doses of risperidone and haloperidol, given for a prolonged period. Satisfactory outcome was achieved with exposure and response prevention, adjunct to medication. Comorbid ADHD was treated with stimulants with no exacerbation of tics

Development and Validation of a Simple High Performance Liquid Chromatography/UV Method for Simultaneous Determination of Urinary Uric Acid, Hypoxanthine, and Creatinine in Human Urine

Uric acid and hypoxanthine are produced in the catabolism of purine. Abnormal urinary levels of these products are associated with many diseases and therefore it is necessary to have a simple and rapid method to detect them. Hence, we report a simple reverse phase high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC/UV) technique, developed and validated for simultaneous analysis of uric acid, hypoxanthine, and creatinine in human urine. Urine was diluted appropriately and eluted with C-18 column 100 mm × 4.6 mm with a C-18 precolumn 25 mm × 4.6 mm in series. Potassium phosphate buffer (20 mM, pH 7.25) at a flow rate of 0.40 mL/min was employed as the solvent and peaks were detected at 235 nm. Tyrosine was used as the internal standard. The experimental conditions offered a good separation of analytes without interference of endogenous substances. The calibration curves were linear for all test compounds with a regression coefficient, r2>0.99. Uric acid, creatinine, tyrosine, and hypoxanthine were eluted at 5.2, 6.1, 7.2, and 8.3 min, respectively. Intraday and interday variability were less than 4.6% for all the analytes investigated and the recovery ranged from 98 to 102%. The proposed HPLC procedure is a simple, rapid, and low cost method with high accuracy with minimum use of organic solvents. This method was successfully applied for the determination of creatinine, hypoxanthine, and uric acid in human urine

Mental health literacy in adolescents: ability to recognise problems, helpful interventions and outcomes

Abstract Background Although mental health literacy has been widely studied in adults, there are still relatively few studies on adolescent populations. In Sri Lanka, adolescents account for about one fifth of the population. Current evidence shows that most mental health problems diagnosed in adulthood begin in adolescence. There is also growing evidence that the trajectories of these disorders can be altered through early recognition and intervention. Although, help-seeking for mental health problems is known to be poor in adolescents, mental health literacy improves help-seeking. It is also known that adolescents may act as agents of change regarding mental health in their wider communities. Thus, mental health literacy in adolescents is an important aspect of community mental health initiatives. The objective of this study was to describe aspects of mental health literacy in terms of ability to recognise problems, helpful interventions, helpful referral options and outcomes in a target adolescent population in Sri Lanka. The association between socio economic variables and recognition of mental health problems was also examined. Methods This descriptive cross sectional study used a pretested questionnaire on 1002 adolescents aged between 13 and 16, where mental health literacy was assessed using 4 case vignettes. The vignettes represented depression with suicidal ideation, social phobia, psychosis and diabetes, where the last was for comparison. Results The response rates for recognition as a mental health problem was 82.2% (n = 824) for the vignette depicting depression, 68.7% (n = 689) for the psychosis vignette and 62.3% (n = 623) for the social phobia vignette. “Talking to the person”, was responded to as helpful by 49.9% (n = 500), for the depression vignette followed by 49.8% (n = 499) for social phobia, 39.5% (n = 396) for psychosis and 19.5% (n = 195) for the diabetes vignette. The response rate for exercise being a helpful intervention was 25% (n = 251) for the diabetes vignette, followed by 21% (n = 210) for social phobia, 18.7% (n = 187) for psychosis vignette and 18.4% (n = 184) for the depression vignette. While 70.2% (n = 704) responded that there would be benefit in seeing a doctor for the diabetes vignette, the response rates for psychosis was 48.5% (n = 486), and for both depression and social phobia it was 48.2% (n = 483). The responses for the persons in the vignettes becoming better with treatment was 81.4% (n = 816) for the diabetes, 79.5% (n = 797) for depression, 75.6% (n = 758) for psychosis and 63.4% (n = 636) for the social phobia vignette. A statistically significant association was found between the income level of the family and appropriate recognition as mental health problems, for all the 3 mental health related vignettes. Conclusions The ability to recognise mental health problems, helpful interventions and outcomes in this population was comparable to those of adolescent populations in other countries, with some exceptions. The main differences were in relation to the identification and interventions in response to the psychosis and social phobia vignettes

Assessment of outcome of an ADHD treatment program using parent feedback

Background Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common behaviour disorder in children where the associated aggressive tendencies, learning difficulties and poor social skills pose a substantial burden of care on the parents. However, in traditional clinical practice, parental expectation of outcome of treatment is rarely considered. Aims This study prospectively analysed an outpatient treatment programme for children with ADHD, where parents provided feedback on the outcome of treatment. Methods Parents completed structured formats to provide information on presenting complaints, outcome at 3 months and 6 months after commencing treatment and side effects of the drug methylphenidate. Parents also attended psycho-educational and support groups. Results Of the 102 patients, parents reported a positive outcome in the majority. There was significantly better improvement in symptoms of ADHD at 6 months when compared to 3 months of treatment (p<0.005). Also, hyperactivity improved more than attention deficit and impulsiveness at the end of 6 months, though persistence of learning difficulties (50%) and disruptive behaviour were causes for dissatisfaction about treatment. The commonest side effect was poor appetite (49%), though none of the children had identifiable weight loss. Conclusions Close involvement of parents in monitoring outcome of treatment of ADHD helps to focus on aspects of care relevant to them