Hearts in the Balance: The Impact of Desired Versus Received Social Support Needs on Persons with Heart Failure

Social support is the collection of tangible and intangible experiences that surround people as they cope with daily stressors. High quality social support is important among patients with cardiovascular disease (CVD) because it has positive effects on social, psychological and physical well-being, and those with good social support cope better with the travails of CVD. Although there are many studies of social support in CVD, little work has been done on the topic of discrepancies between desired and received social support in the context of gender. The purpose of this dissertation was to determine if there are gender differences in the discrepancies between CVD patients’ desired and received social support. If gender differences exist in desired and received needs for social support, it is necessary to identify how these differences might affect rehospitalization and mortality rates. Three manuscripts are included in this dissertation: 1) a comprehensive review of the literature to examine gender differences in CVD patients’ perception of the concordance between desired and received social support and if gender differences in patients’ perception of concordance are associated with differences in health outcomes; 2) a secondary analysis of a cross-sectional observational study to determine whether there is a differential relationship between perceived social support and depression in African American and Caucasian patients with heart failure (HF), and 3) a longitudinal observational study to determine if the discrepancy between desired and received support for individuals hospitalized with an exacerbation of HF is associated all-cause event-free survival. I identified a gap in the literature regarding the differences in received and desired levels of social support between genders that warrants further investigation. In the secondary analysis, I found that race moderates the relationship between perceived social support and depressive symptoms. Higher levels of perceived social support were associated with lower levels of depressive symptoms among Caucasians who had higher levels of depression. Among African Americans, depression levels were lower and were unaffected by level of social support. In the longitudinal observational study, 157 participants identified desired and received support upon enrollment. The participants had follow-up at one- and three-month post discharge intervals to determine if they had experienced rehospitalization or mortality during the period. In unadjusted and adjusted analyses neither gender nor social support congruency score group were predictive of all-cause event-free survival. This finding belies the common belief that too much support will smother the patient, causing cardiac invalidism. Despite this, further research is needed to continue to evaluate ongoing discrepancies between genders of desired and received support and their impact on health outcomes. Further research is also needed to establish accuracy in more appropriately matching social support received with the social support desired

New York State Disability and Employment Status Report, 2009.

This Status Report is intended to provide information on disability in New York State, focusing on the working-age population (16-64 years old, except where noted). The report presents: 1) estimates of disability prevalence overall and among various groups; 2) indications of where disparities exist in employment rate, educational attainment, and financial status between people with and without disabilities; and 3) characteristics of New York State which may influence employment outcomes for people with disabilities

EGG PRICES REVISITED

Recent egg price quotes are evaluated in a vector autoregression. The results indicate that empirical relationships observed over the period 1975-1976 differ from those observed over the period 1979-1982.Demand and Price Analysis,

Nonlinear optical properties of a channel waveguide produced with crosslinkable ferroelectric liquid crystals

A binary mixture of ferroelectric liquid crystals (FLCs) was used for the design of a channel waveguide. The FLCs possess two important functionalities: a chromophore with a high hyperpolarizability $\beta$ and photoreactive groups. The smectic liquid crystal is aligned in layers parallel to the glass plates in a sandwich geometry. This alignment offers several advantages, such as that moderate electric fields are sufficient to achieve a high degree of polar order. The arrangement was then permanently fixed by photopolymerization which yielded a polar network possessing a high thermal and mechanical stability which did not show any sign of degradation within the monitored period of several months. The linear and nonlinear optical properties have been measured and all four independent components of the nonlinear susceptibility tensor $\bar d$ have been determined. The off-resonant $d$-coefficients are remarkably high and comparable to those of the best known inorganic materials. The alignment led to an inherent channel waveguide for p-polarized light without additional preparation steps. The photopolymerization did not induce scattering sites in the waveguide and the normalized losses were less than 2 dB/cm. The material offers a great potential for the design of nonlinear optical devices such as frequency doublers of low power laser diodes.Comment: LaTeX2e article, 15 pages, 10 figures, 11 EPS files, submitted to Physical Review

Fast Converging Path Integrals for Time-Dependent Potentials I: Recursive Calculation of Short-Time Expansion of the Propagator

In this and subsequent paper arXiv:1011.5185 we develop a recursive approach for calculating the short-time expansion of the propagator for a general quantum system in a time-dependent potential to orders that have not yet been accessible before. To this end the propagator is expressed in terms of a discretized effective potential, for which we derive and analytically solve a set of efficient recursion relations. Such a discretized effective potential can be used to substantially speed up numerical Monte Carlo simulations for path integrals, or to set up various analytic approximation techniques to study properties of quantum systems in time-dependent potentials. The analytically derived results are numerically verified by treating several simple models.Comment: 29 pages, 5 figure

XPS and AFM study of interaction of organosilane and sizing with e-glass fibre surface

Organosilanes are often used in commercial sizings for glass fibres to provide wettability with the resin and promote strong interfacial adhesion to the matrix in a fibre reinforced polymer composite. The silane treatment is introduced as part of a complex deposition from an aqueous emulsion immediately at the spinaret and determines the optimum properties of the cured composite. To understand the interaction of organosilanes contained in sizings for glass surfaces, XPS was used to investigate the adsorption of γ-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APS) from a simple sizing system containing a polyurethane (PU) film former. It has been found that both APS and the sizing (containing APS and PU) deposits on E-glass fibre surfaces contained components of differing hydrolytic stability. The differences observed in the AFM images of APS coated E-glass fibres before and after water extraction also confirmed that the APS deposit contained components with different water solubility