Integration of Mental Heath Screening Protocol in Primary Care for Patients Who Have Experienced Traumatic Events

Mental health status is not always assessed in patients involved in a physically traumatic event unless the patient expresses concern. Often times, orthopedic injuries are a result from a traumatic event. Routine mental health screening in the primary care orthopedic setting can help identify mental health care needs early so that adequate interventions can be implemented in a more effective manner. The goal of this project was to evaluate the feasibility of incorporating the use of a brief mental health screening tool in a primary care setting to assess the psychological needs of patients who have been involved in a physical traumatic event. The healthcare staff at an urban orthopedic clinic were educated on the use of the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-4). Post-education surveys were collected. The staff noted that there was a need to implement this protocol in their orthopedic-trauma setting and that it would be feasible to implement. An evidence based protocol was developed and provided to the staff delineating what care interventions would be needed according to the patient’s PHQ-4 score. Further work is needed to evaluate if long term implementation would be successful at this site

Slow 4He^{4}He Quenches Produce Fuzzy, Transient Vortices

We examine the Zurek scenario for the production of vortices in quenches of liquid $^{4}He$ in the light of recent experiments. Extending our previous results to later times, we argue that short wavelength thermal fluctuations make vortices poorly defined until after the transition has occurred. Further, if and when vortices appear, it is plausible that that they will decay faster than anticipated from turbulence experiments, irrespective of quench rates.Comment: 4 pages, Revtex file, no figures Apart from a more appropriate title, this paper differs from its predecessor by including temperature, as well as pressure, quenche

Anti-tubulin drugs conjugated to anti-ErbB antibodies selectively radiosensitize.

Tumour resistance to radiotherapy remains a barrier to improving cancer patient outcomes. To overcome radioresistance, certain drugs have been found to sensitize cells to ionizing radiation (IR). In theory, more potent radiosensitizing drugs should increase tumour kill and improve patient outcomes. In practice, clinical utility of potent radiosensitizing drugs is curtailed by off-target side effects. Here we report potent anti-tubulin drugs conjugated to anti-ErbB antibodies selectively radiosensitize to tumours based on surface receptor expression. While two classes of potent anti-tubulins, auristatins and maytansinoids, indiscriminately radiosensitize tumour cells, conjugating these potent anti-tubulins to anti-ErbB antibodies restrict their radiosensitizing capacity. Of translational significance, we report that a clinically used maytansinoid ADC, ado-trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1), with IR prolongs tumour control in target expressing HER2+ tumours but not target negative tumours. In contrast to ErbB signal inhibition, our findings establish an alternative therapeutic paradigm for ErbB-based radiosensitization using antibodies to restrict radiosensitizer delivery

Dynamics of defect formation

A dynamic symmetry-breaking transition with noise and inertia is analyzed. Exact solution of the linearized equation that describes the critical region allows precise calculation (exponent and prefactor) of the number of defects produced as a function of the rate of increase of the critical parameter. The procedure is valid in both the overdamped and underdamped limits. In one space dimension, we perform quantitative comparison with numerical simulations of the nonlinear nonautonomous stochastic partial differential equation and report on signatures of underdamped dynamics.Comment: 4 pages, LaTeX, 4 figures. Submitted to Physical Revie

Dynamics of tachyonic preheating after hybrid inflation

We study the instability of a scalar field at the end of hybrid inflation, using both analytical techniques and numerical simulations. We improve previous studies by taking the inflaton field fully into account, and show that the range of unstable modes depends sensitively on the velocity of the inflaton field, and thereby on the Hubble rate, at the end of inflation. If topological defects are formed, their number density is determined by the shortest unstable wavelength. Finally, we show that the oscillations of the inflaton field amplify the inhomogeneities in the energy density, leading to local symmetry restoration and faster thermalization. We believe this explains why tachyonic preheating is so effective in transferring energy away from the inflaton zero mode.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures, REVTeX. Minor changes, some references added. To appear in PR