Vibrophonocardiograph Patent

Vibrophonocardiograph comprising low weight and small volume piezoelectric microphone with amplifier having high imput impedance for high sensitivity and low frequency respons

Mutual help groups for mental health problems: A review of effectiveness studies

This paper reviews empirical studies on whether participating in mutual help groups for people with mental health problems leads to improved psychological and social functioning. To be included, studies had to satisfy four sets of criteria, covering: (1) characteristics of the group, (2) target problems, (3) outcome measures, and (4) research design. The 12 studies meeting these criteria provide limited but promising evidence that mutual help groups benefit people with three types of problems: chronic mental illness, depression/anxiety, and bereavement. Seven studies reported positive changes for those attending support groups. The strongest findings come from two randomized trials showing that the outcomes of mutual help groups were equivalent to those of substantially more costly professional interventions. Five of the 12 studies found no differences in mental health outcomes between mutual help group members and non-members; no studies showed evidence of negative effects. There was no indication that mutual help groups were differentially effective for certain types of problems. The studies varied in terms of design quality and reporting of results. More high-quality outcome research is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of mutual help groups across the spectrum of mental health problems

Analytical simulation of the Langley Research Center integrated life-support system, volume 1

Analytical simulation of integrated life support system and oxygen recovery syste

Psychotherapy and social support - Integrating research on psychological helping

Psychotherapy interactions and social support conversations have many similarities, as well as some important differences. Researchers studying these two manifestations of psychological helping - often known as formal and informal helping - usually apply a separate set of concepts and methods to each and tend to locate their work in separate bodies of literature. This paper argues that such a division of the field is unnecessary and unproductive. It outlines several ways in which the two bodies of literature might inform each other and argues for conceptual integration of the two fields. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved

New broad 8Be nuclear resonances

Energies, total and partial widths, and reduced width amplitudes of 8Be resonances up to an excitation energy of 26 MeV are extracted from a coupled channel analysis of experimental data. The presence of an extremely broad J^pi = 2^+ ``intruder'' resonance is confirmed, while a new 1^+ and very broad 4^+ resonance are discovered. A previously known 22 MeV 2^+ resonance is likely resolved into two resonances. The experimental J^pi T = 3^(+)? resonance at 22 MeV is determined to be 3^-0, and the experimental 1^-? (at 19 MeV) and 4^-? resonances to be isospin 0.Comment: 16 pages, LaTe

Online peer support for students

While many UK higher education institutions have websites offering information and advice on common student problems, interactive online support is less common. This article describes a project developing internet-based mutual support for students experiencing psychological problems at University College London

The 8^8B Neutrino Spectrum

Knowledge of the energy spectrum of $^8$B neutrinos is an important ingredient for interpreting experiments that detect energetic neutrinos from the Sun. The neutrino spectrum deviates from the allowed approximation because of the broad alpha-unstable $^8$Be final state and recoil order corrections to the beta decay. We have measured the total energy of the alpha particles emitted following the beta decay of $^8$B. The measured spectrum is inconsistent with some previous measurements, in particular with a recent experiment of comparable precision. The beta decay strength function for the transition from $^8$B to the accessible excitation energies in $^8$Be is fit to the alpha energy spectrum using the R-matrix approach. Both the positron and neutrino energy spectra, corrected for recoil order effects, are constructed from the strength function. The positron spectrum is in good agreement with a previous direct measurement. The neutrino spectrum disagrees with previous experiments, particularly for neutrino energies above 12 MeV.Comment: 15 pages, 13 figures, 4 tables, submitted to Phys. Rev. C, typos correcte

Implicit cognition is impaired and dissociable in a head-injured group with executive deficits

Implicit or non-conscious cognition is traditionally assumed to be robust to pathology but Gomez-Beldarrain et al (1999, 2002) recently showed deficits on a single implicit task after head injury. Laboratory research suggests that implicit processes dissociate. This study therefore examined implicit cognition in 20 head-injured patients and age- and I.Q.-matched controls using a battery of four implicit cognition tasks: a Serial Reaction Time task (SRT), mere exposure effect task, automatic stereotype activation and hidden co-variation detection. Patients were assessed on an extensive neuropsychological battery, and MRI scanned. Inclusion criteria included impairment on at least one measure of executive function. The patient group was impaired relative to the control group on all the implicit cognition tasks except automatic stereotype activation. Effect size analyses using the control mean and standard deviation for reference showed further dissociations across patients and across implicit tasks. Patients impaired on implicit tasks had more cognitive deficits overall than those unimpaired, and a larger Dysexecutive Self/Other discrepancy (DEX) score suggesting greater behavioural problems. Performance on the SRT task correlated with a composite measure of executive function. Head-injury thus produced heterogeneous impairments in the implicit acquisition of new information. Implicit activation of existing knowledge structures appeared intact. Impairments in implicit cognition and executive function may interact to produce dysfunctional behaviour after head-injury. Future comparisons of implicit and explicit cognition should use several measures of each function, to ensure that they measure the latent variable of interest

Cavity cooling of an optically trapped nanoparticle

We study the cooling of a dielectric nanoscale particle trapped in an optical cavity. We derive the frictional force for motion in the cavity field, and show that the cooling rate is proportional to the square of oscillation amplitude and frequency. Both the radial and axial centre-of-mass motion of the trapped particle, which are coupled by the cavity field, are cooled. This motion is analogous to two coupled but damped pendulums. Our simulations show that the nanosphere can be cooled to 1/e of its initial momentum over time scales of hundredths of milliseconds.Comment: 11 page

Localization of the Functional Domains of Human Tissue Inhibitor of Metalloproteinases-3 and the Effects of a Sorsby's Fundus Dystrophy Mutation

A transient COS-7 cell expression system was used to investigate the functional domain arrangement of tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases-3 (TIMP-3), specifically to assess the contribution of the amino- and carboxylterminal domains of the molecule to its matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) inhibitory and extracellular matrix (ECM) binding properties. Wild type TIMP-3 was entirely localized to the ECM in both its glycosylated (27 kDa) and unglycosylated (24 kDa) forms. A COOH-terminally truncated TIMP-3 molecule was found to be a non- ECM bound MMP inhibitor, whereas a chimeric TIMP molecule, consisting of the NH2-terminal domain of TIMP-2 fused to the COOH-terminal domain of TIMP-3, displayed ECM binding, albeit with a lower affinity than the wild type TIMP-3 molecule. Thus the functional domain arrangement of TIMP-3 is analogous to that seen in TIMP-1 and -2, namely that the NH2-terminal domain is responsible for MMP inhibition whereas the COOH-terminal domain is most important in mediating the specific functions of the molecule. A mutant TIMP-3 in which serine 181 was changed to a cysteine, found in Sorsby’s fundus dystrophy, a hereditary macular degenerative disease, was also expressed in COS-7 cells. This gave rise to an additional 48-kDa species (possibly a TIMP-3 dimer) that retained its ability to inhibit MMPs and localize to the ECM. These data favor the hypothesis that the TIMP-3 mutations seen in Sorsby’s fundus dystrophy contribute to disease progression by accumulation of mutant protein rather than by the loss of functional TIMP-3