Religion/Spirituality as a Predictor of Attrition from a Culturally Informed Family Treatment for Schizophrenia that Targets Religious Coping

Symposium Title: The Integration of Religion/Spirituality into Culturally-Informed, Cognitive-Behavioral Mental Health Treatments Chair: Kayla K. Thayer, Ph.D., Nova Southeastern University Discussant: Stevan Lars Nielsen, Ph.D., Brigham Young Universit

Physics Division annual report, April 1, 1995--March 31, 1996

The past year has seen several major advances in the Division`s research programs. In heavy-ion physics these include experiments with radioactive beams of interest to nuclear astrophysics, a first exploration of the structure of nuclei situated beyond the proton drip line, the discovery of new proton emitters--the heaviest known, the first unambiguous detection of discrete linking transitions between superdeformed and normal deformed states, and the impact of the APEX results which were the first to report, conclusively, no sign of the previously reported sharp electron positron sum lines. The medium energy nuclear physics program of the Division has led the first round of experiments at the CEBAF accelerator at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility and the study of color transparency in rho meson propagation at the HERMES experiment at DESY, and it has established nuclear polarization in a laser driven polarized hydrogen target. In atomic physics, the non-dipolar contribution to photoionization has been quantitatively established for the first time, the atomic physics beamline at the Argonne 7 GeV Advanced Photon Source was constructed and, by now, first experiments have been successfully performed. The theory program has pushed exact many-body calculations with fully realistic interactions (the Argonne v{sub 18} potential) to the seven-nucleon system, and interesting results have been obtained for the structure of deformed nuclei through meanfield calculations and for the structure of baryons with QCD calculations based on the Dyson-Schwinger approach. Brief summaries are given of the individual research programs

Physics division annual report 1999

This report summarizes the research performed in the past year in the Argonne Physics Division. The Division's programs include operation of ATLAS as a national heavy-ion user facility, nuclear structure and reaction research with beams of heavy ions, accelerator research and development especially in superconducting radio frequency technology, nuclear theory and medium energy nuclear physics. The Division took significant strides forward in its science and its initiatives for the future in the past year. Major progress was made in developing the concept and the technology for the future advanced facility of beams of short-lived nuclei, the Rare Isotope Accelerator. The scientific program capitalized on important instrumentation initiatives with key advances in nuclear science. In 1999, the nuclear science community adopted the Argonne concept for a multi-beam superconducting linear accelerator driver as the design of choice for the next major facility in the field a Rare Isotope Accelerator (WA) as recommended by the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee's 1996 Long Range Plan. Argonne has made significant R&D progress on almost all aspects of the design concept including the fast gas catcher (to allow fast fragmentation beams to be stopped and reaccelerated) that in large part defined the RIA concept the superconducting rf technology for the driver accelerator, the multiple-charge-state concept (to permit the facility to meet the design intensity goals with existing ion-source technology), and designs and tests of high-power target concepts to effectively deal with the full beam power of the driver linac. An NSAC subcommittee recommended the Argonne concept and set as tie design goal Uranium beams of 100-kwatt power at 400 MeV/u. Argonne demonstrated that this goal can be met with an innovative, but technically in-hand, design. The heavy-ion research program focused on GammaSphere, the premier facility for nuclear structure gamma-ray studies. One example of the ground-breaking research with Garnmasphere was the first study of the limits of stability with angular momentum in the shell stabilized nobelium isotopes. It was found that these heaviest nuclei could be formed at surprisingly high angular momentum, providing important new insight into the production mechanisms for super-heavy elements. Another focus continues to be experiments with short-lived beams for critical nuclear astrophysics applications. Measurements revealed that {sup 44}Ti is more readily destroyed in supernovae than was expected. Major progress was made in collecting and storing unstable ions in the Canadian Penning Trap. The technique of stopping and rapidly extracting ions from a helium gas cell led directly to the new paradigm in the production of rare isotope beams that became RIA. ATLAS provided a record 6046 hours of beam use for experiments in FY99. The facility pressed hard to support the heavy demands of the GammaSphere Research program but maintained an operational reliability of 93%. Of the 29 different isotopes provided as beams in FY99, radioactive beams of {sup 44}Ti and {sup 17}F comprised 6% of the beam time. The theoretical efforts in the Division made dramatic new strides in such topics as quantum Monte Carlo calculations of light nuclei to understand microscopic many-body forces in nuclei; QCD calculations based on the Dyson-Schwinger approach which were extended to baryon systems and finite temperatures and densities; the structure of heavy nuclei; and proton decay modes of nuclei far from stability. The medium-energy program continues to focus on new techniques to understand how the quark-gluon structure of matter impacts the structure of nuclei. The HERMES experiment began making measurements of the fraction of the spin of the nucleon carried by the glue. Drell-Yan experiments study the flavor composition of the sea of the proton. Experiments at Jefferson lab search for clues of QCD dynamics at the hadronic level. A major advance in trace isotope analysis was realized with pioneering work on Atom Trap Trace Analysis, exploiting the exquisitely sensitive nature of laser-atom traps to detect background free, {sup 81}Kr at the 10{sup -13} level. This technique provides a valuable new approach to such diverse problems as dating old ground water, the solar neutrino problem, measuring charge radii of exotic nuclei and medical applications

Effect of parasympathetic stimulation on brain activity during appraisal of fearful expressions

Autonomic nervous system activity is an important component of human emotion. Mental processes influence bodily physiology, which in turn feeds back to influence thoughts and feelings. Afferent cardiovascular signals from arterial baroreceptors in the carotid sinuses are processed within the brain and contribute to this two-way communication with the body. These carotid baroreceptors can be stimulated non-invasively by externally applying focal negative pressure bilaterally to the neck. In an experiment combining functional neuroimaging (fMRI) with carotid stimulation in healthy participants, we tested the hypothesis that manipulating afferent cardiovascular signals alters the central processing of emotional information (fearful and neutral facial expressions). Carotid stimulation, compared with sham stimulation, broadly attenuated activity across cortical and brainstem regions. Modulation of emotional processing was apparent as a significant expression-by-stimulation interaction within left amygdala, where responses during appraisal of fearful faces were selectively reduced by carotid stimulation. Moreover, activity reductions within insula, amygdala, and hippocampus correlated with the degree of stimulation-evoked change in the explicit emotional ratings of fearful faces. Across participants, individual differences in autonomic state (heart rate variability, a proxy measure of autonomic balance toward parasympathetic activity) predicted the extent to which carotid stimulation influenced neural (amygdala) responses during appraisal and subjective rating of fearful faces. Together our results provide mechanistic insight into the visceral component of emotion by identifying the neural substrates mediating cardiovascular influences on the processing of fear signals, potentially implicating central baroreflex mechanisms for anxiolytic treatment targets

Determining the direction of prediction of the association between parasympathetic dysregulation and exhaustion symptoms

Stress-related exhaustion symptoms have a high prevalence which is only likely to increase further in the near future. Understanding the physiological underpinnings of exhaustion has important implications for accurate diagnosis and the development of effective prevention and intervention programs. Given its integrative role in stress-regulation, the parasympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous systems has been a valid starting point in the exploration of the physiological mechanisms behind exhaustion. The aim of the present study was to examine the directionality and specificity of the association between exhaustion symptoms and vagally-mediated heart rate variability (vmHRV), a relatively pure measure of parasympathetic tone. Exhaustion symptoms and vmHRV were measured at four annually assessment waves (2015–2018) of the Dresden Burnout Study. A total sample of N = 378 participants who attended at least two of the four annual biomarker measurements were included in the present analyses. Cross-lagged multi-level panel modelling adjusting for various covariates (e.g., age, sex, BMI) revealed that vmHRV was meaningfully predictive of exhaustion symptoms and not vice versa. In addition, these effects were specific for exhaustion symptoms as no effect was shown for the other burnout sub-dimensions, or for depressive symptoms. Our findings indicate a clear link between exhaustion symptoms and vmHRV which may hold great potential for both enhancing the diagnosis and treatment of exhaustion symptoms

Examining the association between perceived discrimination and heart rate variability in African Americans.

Previous research attempting to delineate the role of discrimination in racial/ethnic disparities in hypertension has focused largely on blood pressure, which is chiefly governed by the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system. Consequently, few studies have considered the role of the parasympathetic branch and particularly its regulation of the heart via the vagus nerve