The role of subjective and objective social isolation as predictors of mental health recovery

Background Loneliness is increasingly being acknowledged as a more pervasive experience for people with mental health problems than the general population. Research also suggests that people with mental health problems tend to be more objectively socially isolated than people without mental health diagnoses. However, with most research to date are restricted to their cross-sectional design, more longitudinal studies exploring the impact of both issues on mental health outcomes are of high value. Method Drawing the data from the Crisis Team Optimisation and Relapse Prevention (CORE) study, this PhD thesis established whether baseline loneliness and social network size were associated with self-rated personal recovery and overall psychiatric symptom severity at 18-month follow-up among people with mental health issues. This PhD thesis also determined whether persistent severe loneliness and persistent objective social isolation were associated with poor self-rated personal recovery at 18-month follow-up. Additionally, a systematic review was carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of potential interventions for subjective and objective social isolation among people with mental health problems. Results The quantitative analyses indicate that greater baseline loneliness was associated with poorer personal recovery and greater symptom severity at 18-month follow-up, after adjusting for three blocks of baseline confounding variables. Persistent severe loneliness group was associated with the poorest self-rated personal recovery at 18-month follow-up, followed by the intermittent severe loneliness group and never severe loneliness group. Persistent objective social isolation group was also associated with poorer personal recovery at 18-month follow-up, compared to the never objective social isolation group. The systematic review provides preliminary evidence supporting promising interventions with cognition modification for subjective social isolation, interventions with supported socialisation and mixed strategies for objective social isolation. Conclusion This research advances our existing evidence-base in the field of loneliness research. The need for more rigorous work with a longitudinal research design is warranted

A Side-Constrained Peer-to-Peer Carpooling Stochastic User Equilibrium Model

Peer-to-peer (P2P) carpooling has become an effective way to utilize the idle car capacity and ease traffic congestion. However, the interactive relationship between carpooling and traffic congestion has not been fully quantified. To make up for this gap, this paper constructs a side-constrained P2P carpooling stochastic user equilibrium model to disclose the effects of carpooling on traffic congestion. Next, the proposed model was transformed into a linear constrained minimization problem, and the problem was proved to have a unique solution. The case study shows that the travellers prefer carpooling at a high fuel price and a low inconvenient cost

Multi-Point Optical Fiber Fabry-Perot Curvature Sensor Based On Microwave Photonics

This article reports a multi-point curvature sensor system based on multiplexed optical fiber Fabry-Perot interferometric (FPI) sensor devices and a microwave photonics interrogation technique. The FPI sensor is fabricated with the assistance of a capillary tube, where a short section of the capillary is sandwiched between two single-mode fibers, forming the airgap Fabry-Perot cavity. Bending of the FPI device leads to changes in the fringe contrast of its reflection spectrum. Based on the microwave photonics filtering technique, variations of the fringe contrast are encoded into the changes in the peak magnitude of the passband in the frequency response of the FPI device. By multiplexing such FPI devices with different cavity lengths, multi-point measurements of curvature can be realized by tracking changes in corresponding passbands in the frequency response of the system. The FPI curvature sensor is easy-to-manufacture and cost-effective, and the microwave photonics-based system provides an alternative and robust solution to interrogating the multiplexed FPI sensors for multi-point curvature sensing that could be desired in structural health monitoring, human-machine interface sensing, and other related fields

Loneliness and the onset of new mental health problems in the general population

PURPOSE: Loneliness is associated with poor health including premature mortality. There are cross-sectional associations with depression, anxiety, psychosis, and other mental health outcomes. However, it is not known whether loneliness is causally linked with the new onset of mental health problems in the general population. Longitudinal studies are key to understanding this relationship. We synthesized evidence from longitudinal studies investigating the relationship between loneliness and new onset of mental health problems, in the general population. METHOD: We systematically searched six electronic databases, unpublished sources, and hand-searched of references, up to August 2021. We conducted a meta-analysis of eight independent cohorts and narrative synthesis of the remaining studies. RESULTS: We included 32 studies, of which the majority focused on depression. Our narrative synthesis found most studies show loneliness at baseline which is associated with the subsequent new onset of depression. The few studies on anxiety and self-harm also showed a positive association. Our meta-analysis found a pooled adjusted odds ratio of 2.33 (95% CI 1.62-3.34) for risk of new onset depression in adults who were often lonely compared with people who were not often lonely. This should be interpreted with caution given evidence of heterogeneity. CONCLUSION: Loneliness is a public mental health issue. There is growing evidence; it is associated with the onset of depression and other common mental health problems. Future studies should explore its impact across the age range and in more diverse populations, look beyond depression, and explore the mechanisms involved with a view to better informing appropriate interventions

Pharmacological Effects of Two Novel Bombesin-Like Peptides from the Skin Secretions of Chinese Piebald Odorous Frog (Odorrana schmackeri) and European Edible Frog (Pelophylax kl. esculentus) on Smooth Muscle

Bombesin-like peptides, which were identified from a diversity of amphibian skin secretions, have been demonstrated to possess several biological functions such as stimulation of smooth muscle contraction and regulation of food intake. Here, we report two novel bombesin-like peptides, bombesin-OS and bombesin-PE, which were isolated from Odorrana schmackeri and Pelophylax kl. esculentus, respectively. The mature peptides were identified and structurally confirmed by high performance Scliquid chromatography (HPLC) and tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS). Subsequently, the effects of these purified chemically-synthetic peptides on smooth muscle were determined in bladder, uterus, and ileum. The synthetic replications were revealed to have significant pharmacological effects on these tissues. The EC50 values of bombesin-OS for bladder, uterus and ileum, were 10.8 nM, 33.64 nM, and 12.29 nM, respectively. Furthermore, compared with bombesin-OS, bombesin-PE showed similar contractile activity on ileum smooth muscle and uterus smooth muscle, but had a higher potency on bladder smooth muscle. The EC50 value of bombesin-OS for bladder was around 1000-fold less than that of bombesin-PE. This suggests that bombesin-OS and bombesin-PE have unique binding properties to their receptors. The precursor of bombesin-OS was homologous with that of a bombesin-like peptide, odorranain-BLP-5, and bombesin-PE belongs to the ranatensin subfamily. We identified the structure of bombesin-OS and bombesin-PE, two homologues peptides whose actions may provide a further clue in the classification of ranid frogs, also in the provision of new drugs for human health

Impact Of Surface And Pore Characteristics On Fatigue Life Of Laser Powder Bed Fusion Ti–6Al–4V Alloy Described By Neural Network Models

In this study, the effects of surface roughness and pore characteristics on fatigue lives of laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) Ti–6Al–4V parts were investigated. The 197 fatigue bars were printed using the same laser power but with varied scanning speeds. These actions led to variations in the geometries of microscale pores, and such variations were characterized using micro-computed tomography. To generate differences in surface roughness in fatigue bars, half of the samples were grit-blasted and the other half were machined. Fatigue behaviors were analyzed with respect to surface roughness and statistics of the pores. For the grit-blasted samples, the contour laser scan in the LPBF strategy led to a pore-depletion zone isolating surface and internal pores with different features. For the machined samples, where surface pores resemble internal pores, the fatigue life was highly correlated with the average pore size and projected pore area in the plane perpendicular to the stress direction. Finally, a machine learning model using a drop-out neural network (DONN) was employed to establish a link between surface and pore features to the fatigue data (logN), and good prediction accuracy was demonstrated. Besides predicting fatigue lives, the DONN can also estimate the prediction uncertainty

All-small-molecule organic solar cells with over 14% efficiency by optimizing hierarchical morphologies

The high efficiency all-small-molecule organic solar cells (OSCs) normally require optimized morphology in their bulk heterojunction active layers. Herein, a small-molecule donor is designed and synthesized, and single-crystal structural analyses reveal its explicit molecular planarity and compact intermolecular packing. A promising narrow bandgap small-molecule with absorption edge of more than 930 nm along with our home-designed small molecule is selected as electron acceptors. To the best of our knowledge, the binary all-small-molecule OSCs achieve the highest efficiency of 14.34% by optimizing their hierarchical morphologies, in which the donor or acceptor rich domains with size up to ca. 70 nm, and the donor crystals of tens of nanometers, together with the donor-acceptor blending, are proved coexisting in the hierarchical large domain. All-small-molecule photovoltaic system shows its promising for high performance OSCs, and our study is likely to lead to insights in relations between bulk heterojunction structure and photovoltaic performance.Funding Agencies|Ministry of Science and Technology of ChinaMinistry of Science and Technology, China [2016YFA0200700, 2016YFF0203803]; National Natural Science Foundation of ChinaNational Natural Science Foundation of China [51961135103, 51973043, 21822503, 21534003, 21721002]; Beijing Nova ProgramBeijing Municipal Science &amp; Technology Commission [Z17110001117062]; Youth Innovation Promotion Association; K.C.Wong Education Foundation; Chinese Academy of SciencesChinese Academy of Sciences; Swedish Research Council VRSwedish Research Council [2018-06048, 2018-05484]</p