268 research outputs found
Helping your partner with chronic pain: the importance of helping motivation, received social support, and its timeliness
Objective
Like all intentional acts, social support provision varies with respect to its underlying motives. Greater autonomous or volitional motives (e.g., enjoyment, full commitment) to help individuals with chronic pain (ICPs) are associated with greater well-being benefits for the latter, as indexed by improved satisfaction of their psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The present study investigates the processes explaining why partners’ autonomous or volitional helping motivation yields these benefits.
Methods
A total of 134 couples, where at least one partner had chronic pain, completed a 14-day diary. Partners reported on their daily helping motives, whereas ICPs reported on their daily received support, timing of help, need-based experiences, and pain.
Results
On days when partners provided help for volitional motives, ICPs indicated receiving more help, which partially accounted for the effect of autonomous helping motivation on ICP need-based experiences. Timing of help moderated the effects of daily received support on ICP need-based experiences.
Conclusions
Findings highlight the importance of ICPs of receiving support in general and the role of timing in particular, which especially matters when there is little support being received.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio
An Injection System for the CHIME/FRB Experiment
Dedicated surveys searching for Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are subject to
selection effects which bias the observed population of events. Software
injection systems are one method of correcting for these biases by injecting a
mock population of synthetic FRBs directly into the realtime search pipeline.
The injected population may then be used to map intrinsic burst properties onto
an expected signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), so long as telescope characteristics
such as the beam model and calibration factors are properly accounted for. This
paper presents an injection system developed for the Canadian Hydrogen
Intensity Mapping Experiment Fast Radio Burst project (CHIME/FRB). The system
was tested to ensure high detection efficiency, and the pulse calibration
method was verified. Using an injection population of ~85,000 synthetic FRBs,
we found that the correlation between fluence and SNR for injected FRBs was
consistent with that of CHIME/FRB detections in the first CHIME/FRB catalog. We
also noted that the sensitivity of the telescope varied strongly as a function
of the broadened burst width, but not as a function of the dispersion measure.
We conclude that some of the machine-learning based Radio Frequency
Interference (RFI) mitigation methods used by CHIME/FRB can be re-trained using
injection data to increase sensitivity to wide events, and that planned
upgrades to the presented injection system will allow for determining a more
accurate CHIME/FRB selection function in the near future.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures. Submitted to A
A Search for Fast Radio Bursts with the GBNCC Pulsar Survey
We report on a search for Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) with the Green Bank
Northern Celestial Cap (GBNCC) Pulsar Survey at 350 MHz. Pointings amounting to
a total on-sky time of 61 days were searched to a DM of 3000 pc cm while
the rest (23 days; 29% of the total time) were searched to a DM of 500 pc
cm. No FRBs were detected in the pointings observed through May 2016. We
estimate a 95% confidence upper limit on the FRB rate of FRBs
sky day above a peak flux density of 0.63 Jy at 350 MHz for an
intrinsic pulse width of 5 ms. We place constraints on the spectral index
by running simulations for different astrophysical scenarios and
cumulative flux density distributions. The non-detection with GBNCC is
consistent with the 1.4-GHz rate reported for the Parkes surveys for in the absence of scattering and free-free absorption and in the presence of scattering, for a Euclidean flux distribution. The
constraints imply that FRBs exhibit either a flat spectrum or a spectral
turnover at frequencies above 400 MHz. These constraints also allow estimation
of the number of bursts that can be detected with current and upcoming surveys.
We predict that CHIME may detect anywhere from several to 50 FRBs a day
(depending on model assumptions), making it well suited for interesting
constraints on spectral index, the log -log slope and pulse profile
evolution across its bandwidth (400-800 MHz).Comment: 18 pages, 10 figures, Accepted for publication in Ap
Disposable Platform Provides Visual and Color-Based Point-of-Care Anemia Self-Testing
Anemia, or low blood hemoglobin (Hgb) levels, afflicts 2 billion people worldwide. Currently, Hgb levels are typically measured from blood samples using hematology analyzers, which are housed in hospitals, clinics, or commercial laboratories and require skilled technicians to operate. A reliable, inexpensive point-of-care (POC) Hgb test would enable cost-effective anemia screening and chronically anemic patients to self-monitor their disease. We present a rapid, standalone, and disposable POC anemia test that, via a single drop of blood, outputs color-based visual results that correlate with Hgb levels.
METHODS. We tested blood from 238 pediatric and adult patients with anemia of varying degrees and etiologies and compared hematology analyzer Hgb levels with POC Hgb levels, which were estimated via visual interpretation using a color scale and an optional smartphone app for automated analysis.
RESULTS. POC Hgb levels correlated with hematology analyzer Hgb levels (r = 0.864 and r = 0.856 for visual interpretation and smartphone app, respectively), and both POC test methods yielded comparable sensitivity and specificity for detecting any anemia (n = 178) (/dl) (sensitivity: 90.2% and 91.1%, specificity: 83.7% and 79.2%, respectively) and severe anemia (n = 10) (/dl) (sensitivity: 90.0% and 100%, specificity: 94.6% and 93.9%, respectively).
CONCLUSIONS. These results demonstrate the feasibility of this POC color-based diagnostic test for self-screening/self-monitoring of anemia.
TRIAL REGISTRATION. Not applicable.
FUNDING. This work was funded by the FDA-funded Atlantic Pediatric Device Consortium, the Georgia Research Alliance, Children\u27s Healthcare of Atlanta, the Georgia Center of Innovation for Manufacturing, and the InVenture Prize and Ideas to Serve competitions at the Georgia Institute of Technology
Perspectives on the chemical etiology of breast cancer.
Multiple factors, known and unknown, contribute to human breast cancer. Hereditary, hormonal, and reproductive factors are associated with risk of breast cancer. Environmental agents, including chemical carcinogens, are modifiable risk factors to which over 70% of breast cancers have been attributed. Polymorphisms of drug-metabolizing enzymes may influence risk of breast cancer from environmental chemicals, dietary agents, and endogenous steroids. The environmental factors discussed in this review include pollutants, occupational exposures, tobacco smoke, alcohol, and diet. Aromatic amines are discussed as potential mammary carcinogens, with a focus on heterocyclic amine food pyrolysis products. These compounds are excreted into the urine after consumption of meals containing cooked meats and have recently been detected in the breast milk of lactating women
Detection of Repeating FRB 180916.J0158+65 Down to Frequencies of 300 MHz
We report on the detection of seven bursts from the periodically active,
repeating fast radio burst (FRB) source FRB 180916.J0158+65 in the 300-400-MHz
frequency range with the Green Bank Telescope (GBT). Emission in multiple
bursts is visible down to the bottom of the GBT band, suggesting that the
cutoff frequency (if it exists) for FRB emission is lower than 300 MHz.
Observations were conducted during predicted periods of activity of the source,
and had simultaneous coverage with the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) and the FRB
backend on the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME)
telescope. We find that one of the GBT-detected bursts has potentially
associated emission in the CHIME band (400-800 MHz) but we detect no bursts in
the LOFAR band (110-190 MHz), placing a limit of on the
spectral index of broadband emission from the source. We also find that
emission from the source is severely band-limited with burst bandwidths as low
as 40 MHz. In addition, we place the strictest constraint on observable
scattering of the source, 1.7 ms, at 350 MHz, suggesting that the
circumburst environment does not have strong scattering properties.
Additionally, knowing that the circumburst environment is optically thin to
free-free absorption at 300 MHz, we find evidence against the association of a
hyper-compact HII region or a young supernova remnant (age 50 yr) with the
source.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ
LOFAR Detection of 110-188 MHz Emission and Frequency-Dependent Activity from FRB 20180916B
FRB 20180916B is a well-studied repeating fast radio burst source. Its
proximity (~150 Mpc), along with detailed studies of the bursts, have revealed
many clues about its nature -- including a 16.3-day periodicity in its
activity. Here we report on the detection of 18 bursts using LOFAR at 110-188
MHz, by far the lowest-frequency detections of any FRB to date. Some bursts are
seen down to the lowest-observed frequency of 110 MHz, suggesting that their
spectra extend even lower. These observations provide an order-of-magnitude
stronger constraint on the optical depth due to free-free absorption in the
source's local environment. The absence of circular polarization and nearly
flat polarization angle curves are consistent with burst properties seen at
300-1700 MHz. Compared with higher frequencies, the larger burst widths
(~40-160 ms at 150 MHz) and lower linear polarization fractions are likely due
to scattering. We find ~2-3 rad/m^2 variations in the Faraday rotation measure
that may be correlated with the activity cycle of the source. We compare the
LOFAR burst arrival times to those of 38 previously published and 22 newly
detected bursts from the uGMRT (200-450 MHz) and CHIME/FRB (400-800 MHz).
Simultaneous observations show 5 CHIME/FRB bursts when no emission is detected
by LOFAR. We find that the burst activity is systematically delayed towards
lower frequencies by ~3 days from 600 MHz to 150 MHz. We discuss these results
in the context of a model in which FRB 20180916B is an interacting binary
system featuring a neutron star and high-mass stellar companion.Comment: Accepted for publication by ApJ
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