The effects of mindfulness-based stress reduction program on the mental health of family caregivers: a randomized controlled trial

<b>Background</b> Caregivers of people with chronic conditions are more likely than non-caregivers to have depression and emotional problems. Few studies have examined the effectiveness of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) in improving their mental well-being. <p></p> <b>Methods</b> Caregivers of persons with chronic conditions who scored 7 or above in the Caregiver Strain Index were randomly assigned to the 8-week MBSR group (n = 70) or the self-help control group (n = 71). Validated instruments were used to assess the changes in depressive and anxiety symptoms, quality of life, self-efficacy, self-compassion and mindfulness. Assessments were conducted at baseline, post-intervention and at the 3-month follow-up. <p></p> <b>Results </b>Compared to the participants in the control group, participants in the MBSR group had a significantly greater decrease in depressive symptoms at post-intervention and at 3 months post-intervention (p < 0.01). The improvement in state anxiety symptoms was significantly greater among participants in the MBSR group than those of the control group at post-intervention (p = 0.007), although this difference was not statistically significant at 3 months post-intervention (p = 0.084). There was also a statistically significant larger increase in self-efficacy (controlling negative thoughts; p = 0.041) and mindfulness (p = 0.001) among participants in the MBSR group at the 3-month follow-up compared to the participants in the control group. No statistically significant group effects (MBSR vs. control) were found in perceived stress, quality of life or self-compassion. <p></p> <b>Conclusions </b>MBSR appears to be a feasible and acceptable intervention to improve mental health among family caregivers with significant care burden, although further studies that include an active control group are needed to make the findings more conclusive

Tracking Control of Vertical Pneumatic Artificial Muscle System Using PID

The advantages of pneumatic system such as compactness, high power to weight ratio, ease of maintenance, cleanliness and inherent safety led to the development of McKibben muscle and pneumatic artificial muscle (PAM). However, the air compressibility and the lack of damping ability of PAM bring dynamic delay to the pressure response and causes oscillatory motion to occur. It is not easy to realize the motion with high accuracy and high speed due to all the non-linear characteristics of pneumatic system. In this paper, we present a vertical PAM system with a simple PID controller to control the motion of the PAM. The experiment setup is explained and Ziegler Nichols tuning method is used in getting the approximation PID parameters. The effectiveness of the proposed control algorithm is demonstrated through experiments

Equidistribution of zeros of holomorphic sections in the non compact setting

We consider N-tensor powers of a positive Hermitian line bundle L over a non-compact complex manifold X. In the compact case, B. Shiffman and S. Zelditch proved that the zeros of random sections become asymptotically uniformly distributed with respect to the natural measure coming from the curvature of L, as N tends to infinity. Under certain boundedness assumptions on the curvature of the canonical line bundle of X and on the Chern form of L we prove a non-compact version of this result. We give various applications, including the limiting distribution of zeros of cusp forms with respect to the principal congruence subgroups of SL2(Z) and to the hyperbolic measure, the higher dimensional case of arithmetic quotients and the case of orthogonal polynomials with weights at infinity. We also give estimates for the speed of convergence of the currents of integration on the zero-divisors.Comment: 25 pages; v.2 is a final update to agree with the published pape

Identification of low Ca2+stress-induced embryo apoptosis response genes in Arachis hypogaea by SSH-associated library lift (SSHaLL)

Calcium is a universal signal in the regulation of wide aspects in biology, but few are known about the function of calcium in the control of early embryo development. Ca2+ deficiency in soil induces early embryo abortion in peanut, producing empty pods, which is a general problem; however, the underlying mechanism remains unclear. In this study, embryo abortion was characterized to be caused by apoptosis marked with cell wall degradation. Using a method of SSH cDNA libraries associated with library lift (SSHaLL), 62 differentially expressed genes were isolated from young peanut embryos. These genes were classified to be stress responses, catabolic process, carbohydrate and lipid metabolism, embryo morphogenesis, regulation, etc. The cell retardation with cell wall degradation was caused by up-regulated cell wall hydrolases and down-regulated cellular synthases genes. HsfA4a, which was characterized to be important to embryo development, was significantly down-regulated under Ca2+-deficient conditions from 15 days after pegging (DAP) to 30 DAP. Two AhCYP707A4 genes, encoding abscisic acid (ABA) 8′-hydroxylases, key enzymes for ABA catabolism, were up-regulated by 21-fold under Ca2+-deficient conditions upstream of HsfA4a, reducing the ABA level in early embryos. Over-expression of AhCYP707A4 in Nicotiana benthamiana showed a phenotype of low ABA content with high numbers of aborted embryos, small pods and less seeds, which confirms that AhCYP707A4 is a key player in regulation of Ca2+ deficiency-induced embryo abortion via ABA-mediated apoptosis. The results elucidated the mechanism of low Ca2+-induced embryo abortion and described the method for other fields of study

How to compare arc-annotated sequences: The alignment hierarchy

International audienceWe describe a new unifying framework to express comparison of arc-annotated sequences, which we call alignment of arc-annotated sequences. We first prove that this framework encompasses main existing models, which allows us to deduce complexity results for several cases from the literature. We also show that this framework gives rise to new relevant problems that have not been studied yet. We provide a thorough analysis of these novel cases by proposing two polynomial time algorithms and an NP-completeness proof. This leads to an almost exhaustive study of alignment of arc-annotated sequences

{Ni4} Cubanes from enantiomerically pure 2-(1-hydroxyethyl)pyridine ligands: supramolecular chirality

Homometallic {NiII4} cubane-like clusters with a rare chiral core have been prepared via the employment of enantiomerically pure 2-(1-hydroxyethyl)pyridine (Hmpm). Comparison with the achiral cubanes derived from the related 2-pyridinemethanol (Hpym) ligand reveals drastic structural changes as a consequence of the transfer of chirality from the ligands to the whole structure. Their magnetic properties have been related to the structural features of their cubane-type cores

Constraint methods for determining pathways and free energy of activated processes

Activated processes from chemical reactions up to conformational transitions of large biomolecules are hampered by barriers which are overcome only by the input of some free energy of activation. Hence, the characteristic and rate-determining barrier regions are not sufficiently sampled by usual simulation techniques. Constraints on a reaction coordinate r have turned out to be a suitable means to explore difficult pathways without changing potential function, energy or temperature. For a dense sequence of values of r, the corresponding sequence of simulations provides a pathway for the process. As only one coordinate among thousands is fixed during each simulation, the pathway essentially reflects the system's internal dynamics. From mean forces the free energy profile can be calculated to obtain reaction rates and insight in the reaction mechanism. In the last decade, theoretical tools and computing capacity have been developed to a degree where simulations give impressive qualitative insight in the processes at quantitative agreement with experiments. Here, we give an introduction to reaction pathways and coordinates, and develop the theory of free energy as the potential of mean force. We clarify the connection between mean force and constraint force which is the central quantity evaluated, and discuss the mass metric tensor correction. Well-behaved coordinates without tensor correction are considered. We discuss the theoretical background and practical implementation on the example of the reaction coordinate of targeted molecular dynamics simulation. Finally, we compare applications of constraint methods and other techniques developed for the same purpose, and discuss the limits of the approach

Azimuthal asymmetries in lepton-pair production at a fixed-target experiment using the LHC beams (AFTER)

A multi-purpose fixed-target experiment using the proton and lead-ion beams of the LHC was recently proposed by Brodsky, Fleuret, Hadjidakis and Lansberg, and here we concentrate our study on some issues related to the spin physics part of this project (referred to as AFTER). We study the nucleon spin structure through $pp$ and $pd$ processes with a fixed-target experiment using the LHC proton beams, for the kinematical region with 7 TeV proton beams at the energy in center-of-mass frame of two nucleons $\sqrt{s}=115$ GeV. We calculate and estimate the $\cos2\phi$ azimuthal asymmetries of unpolarized $pp$ and $pd$ dilepton production processes in the Drell--Yan continuum region and at the $Z$-pole. We also calculate the $\sin(2\phi-\phi_S)$, $\sin(2\phi+\phi_S)$ and $\sin2\phi$ azimuthal asymmetries of $pp$ and $pd$ dilepton production processes with the target proton and deuteron longitudinally or transversally polarized in the Drell--Yan continuum region and around $Z$ resonances region. We conclude that it is feasible to measure these azimuthal asymmetries, consequently the three-dimensional or transverse momentum dependent parton distribution functions (3dPDFs or TMDs), at this new AFTER facility.Comment: 15 pages, 40 figures. Version accepted for publication in EPJ

Smeared phase transition in a three-dimensional Ising model with planar defects: Monte-Carlo simulations

We present results of large-scale Monte Carlo simulations for a three-dimensional Ising model with short range interactions and planar defects, i.e., disorder perfectly correlated in two dimensions. We show that the phase transition in this system is smeared, i.e., there is no single critical temperature, but different parts of the system order at different temperatures. This is caused by effects similar to but stronger than Griffiths phenomena. In an infinite-size sample there is an exponentially small but finite probability to find an arbitrary large region devoid of impurities. Such a rare region can develop true long-range order while the bulk system is still in the disordered phase. We compute the thermodynamic magnetization and its finite-size effects, the local magnetization, and the probability distribution of the ordering temperatures for different samples. Our Monte-Carlo results are in good agreement with a recent theory based on extremal statistics.Comment: 9 pages, 6 eps figures, final version as publishe