Moderators of the effect of psychological interventions on depression and anxiety in cardiac surgery patients: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Cardiac surgery patients may be provided with psychological interventions to counteract depression and anxiety associated with surgical procedures. This systematic review and meta-analysis investigated whether intervention efficacy was impacted by type of cardiac procedure/cardiac event; control condition content; intervention duration; intervention timing; facilitator type; and risk of bias. MEDLINE, EMBASE, and PsycINFO were searched for randomized controlled trials comparing anxiety and depression outcomes, pre and post psychological and cardiac interventions. Twenty-four studies met the inclusion criteria for the systematic review (N = 2718) and 16 of those were meta-analysed (N = 1928). Depression and anxiety outcomes were reduced more in interventions that lasted longer, were delivered post-surgery, and by trained health professionals. Depression (but not anxiety) was reduced more when the experimental intervention was compared to an ‘alternative’ intervention, and when the intervention was delivered to coronary artery bypass graft patients. Anxiety (but not depression) was decreased more when interventions were delivered to implantable cardioverter defibrillator patients, and were of ‘high’ or ‘unclear’ risk of bias. In addition to estimating efficacy, future work in this domain needs to take into account the moderating effects of intervention, sample, and study characteristics

Locally Enhanced Angiogenesis Promotes Transplanted Cell Survival

A developing therapy for complete or partial loss of function in various tissues and organs involves transplanting an appropriate cell population, capable of compensating for the existing deficiencies. Clinical application of this type of strategy is currently limited by the death or dedifferentiation of the transplanted cells after delivery to the recipient. A delay in thorough vascularization of the implant area creates an environment low in oxygen and other nutrients, and likely contributes to the initial death of transplanted cells. We have addressed this problem by sustained delivery of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), an initiator of angiogenesis, from a porous polymer matrix utilized simultaneously for cell delivery. As expected from previous studies, VEGF delivered from these constructs elicited an enhanced angiogenic response over a 2-week period when implanted subcutaneously in SCID mice. Hepatocytes implanted using VEGF-containing matrices demonstrated significantly greater survival after 1 week in vivo as compared with cells implanted on matrices without growth factor. The results of this study therefore indicate that enhancing vascularization in the location of transplanted cells promotes their survival. In addition, this delivery system may be used in future studies to directly promote cell survival and function by also providing growth factors specific to the transplanted cells.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/63136/1/107632704322791709.pd

Canopy nitrogen, carbon assimilation, and albedo in temperate and boreal forests: Functional relations and potential climate feedbacks

The availability of nitrogen represents a key constraint on carbon cycling in terrestrial ecosystems, and it is largely in this capacity that the role of N in the Earth\u27s climate system has been considered. Despite this, few studies have included continuous variation in plant N status as a driver of broad-scale carbon cycle analyses. This is partly because of uncertainties in how leaf-level physiological relationships scale to whole ecosystems and because methods for regional to continental detection of plant N concentrations have yet to be developed. Here, we show that ecosystem CO2 uptake capacity in temperate and boreal forests scales directly with whole-canopy N concentrations, mirroring a leaf-level trend that has been observed for woody plants worldwide. We further show that both CO2 uptake capacity and canopy N concentration are strongly and positively correlated with shortwave surface albedo. These results suggest that N plays an additional, and overlooked, role in the climate system via its influence on vegetation reflectivity and shortwave surface energy exchange. We also demonstrate that much of the spatial variation in canopy N can be detected by using broad-band satellite sensors, offering a means through which these findings can be applied toward improved application of coupled carbon cycle–climate models

Hadronic Masses and Regge Trajectories

A comprehensive phenomenological analysis of experimental data and some theoretical models is presented here (for mesons) to critically discuss how Regge trajectory parameters depend on flavor. Through analytic continuation of physical trajectories (obtained from resonance data) into the space like region, we derive the suppression factor for heavy flavor production. The case of our D Regge exchange, both for D and $\Lambda_c$ production, is considered in some detail. Good agreement with data is reached confirming that indeed the slopes of heavier flavors decrease. This result suggests that the confinement potential has a substantial dependence on the quark masses. In a simple non-relativistic model, constrained to produce linear Regge trajectories, it is shown that a linear quark mass dependence is required (in the confinement part of the potential) in order for the slope to decrease in the appropriate way.Comment: 19 pages, 9 Figures, IV Table

Universality in Turbulence: an Exactly Soluble Model

The present note contains the text of lectures discussing the problem of universality in fully developed turbulence. After a brief description of Kolmogorov's 1941 scaling theory of turbulence and a comparison between the statistical approach to turbulence and field theory, we discuss a simple model of turbulent advection which is exactly soluble but whose exact solution is still difficult to analyze. The model exhibits a restricted universality. Its correlation functions contain terms with universal but anomalous scaling but with non-universal amplitudes typically diverging with the growing size of the system. Strict universality applies only after such terms have been removed leaving renormalized correlators with normal scaling. We expect that the necessity of such an infrared renormalization is a characteristic feature of universality in turbulence.Comment: 31 pages, late

Simulation of Claylike Colloids

We investigate properties of dense suspensions and sediments of small spherical silt particles by means of a combined Molecular Dynamics (MD) and Stochastic Rotation Dynamics (SRD) simulation. We include van der Waals and effective electrostatic interactions between the colloidal particles, as well as Brownian motion and hydrodynamic interactions which are calculated in the SRD-part. We present the simulation technique and first results. We have measured velocity distributions, diffusion coefficients, sedimentation velocity, spatial correlation functions and we have explored the phase diagram depending on the parameters of the potentials and on the volume fraction.Comment: 20 pages, 14 figure

Helicity at Photospheric and Chromospheric Heights

In the solar atmosphere the twist parameter $\alpha$ has the same sign as magnetic helicity. It has been observed using photospheric vector magnetograms that negative/positive helicity is dominant in the northern/southern hemisphere of the Sun. Chromospheric features show dextral/sinistral dominance in the northern/southern hemisphere and sigmoids observed in X-rays also have a dominant sense of reverse-S/forward-S in the northern/southern hemisphere. It is of interest whether individual features have one-to-one correspondence in terms of helicity at different atmospheric heights. We use UBF \Halpha images from the Dunn Solar Telescope (DST) and other \Halpha data from Udaipur Solar Observatory and Big Bear Solar Observatory. Near-simultaneous vector magnetograms from the DST are used to establish one-to-one correspondence of helicity at photospheric and chromospheric heights. We plan to extend this investigation with more data including coronal intensities.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, 1 table To appear in "Magnetic Coupling between the Interior and the Atmosphere of the Sun", eds. S.S. Hasan and R.J. Rutten, Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings, Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, Berlin, 200

SARS and hospital priority setting: a qualitative case study and evaluation

BACKGROUND: Priority setting is one of the most difficult issues facing hospitals because of funding restrictions and changing patient need. A deadly communicable disease outbreak, such as the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in Toronto in 2003, amplifies the difficulties of hospital priority setting. The purpose of this study is to describe and evaluate priority setting in a hospital in response to SARS using the ethical framework 'accountability for reasonableness'. METHODS: This study was conducted at a large tertiary hospital in Toronto, Canada. There were two data sources: 1) over 200 key documents (e.g. emails, bulletins), and 2) 35 interviews with key informants. Analysis used a modified thematic technique in three phases: open coding, axial coding, and evaluation. RESULTS: Participants described the types of priority setting decisions, the decision making process and the reasoning used. Although the hospital leadership made an effort to meet the conditions of 'accountability for reasonableness', they acknowledged that the decision making was not ideal. We described good practices and opportunities for improvement. CONCLUSIONS: 'Accountability for reasonableness' is a framework that can be used to guide fair priority setting in health care organizations, such as hospitals. In the midst of a crisis such as SARS where guidance is incomplete, consequences uncertain, and information constantly changing, where hour-by-hour decisions involve life and death, fairness is more important rather than less