Increasing the sensitivity of the Jaffe reaction for creatinine

Study of analytical procedure has revealed that linearity of creatinine calibration curve can be extended by using 0.03 molar picric acid solution made up in 70 percent ethanol instead of water. Three to five times more creatinine concentration can be encompassed within linear portion of calibration curve

A randomised controlled pilot study: the effectiveness of narrative exposure therapy with adult survivors of the Sichuan earthquake

Background: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a common psychological reaction after large-scale natural disasters. Given the number of people involved and shortage of resources in any major disaster, brief, pragmatic and easily trainable interventions are needed. The aim of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) as a short-term treatment for PTSD using Chinese earthquake survivors. Methods: A randomized waiting-list control pilot study was conducted between December 2009 and March 2010, at the site of the Sichuan earthquake in Beichuan County, China. Adult participants with newly diagnosed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) were randomly allocated to Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) or a Waiting-List (WL) condition. The latter received NET treatment after a two-week waiting period. To compare the effectiveness of NET in traumatised earthquake survivors, both groups were assessed on PTSD symptoms, general mental health, anxiety and depression, social support, coping style and posttraumatic change before and after treatment and two months post treatment. Results: Adult participants (n=22) were randomly allocated to receive NET (n=11) or WL (n=11). Twenty two participants (11 in NET group, 11 in WL) were included in the analysis of primary outcomes. Compared with WL, NET showed significant reductions in PTSD symptoms, anxiety and depression, general mental stress and increased posttraumatic growth. The WL group later showed similar improvements after treatment. These changes remained stable for a two-month follow-up. Measures of social support and coping showed no stable effects. Conclusions: NET is effective in treating post-earthquake traumatic symptoms in adult Chinese earthquake survivors. The findings help advance current knowledge in the management of PTSD after natural disasters and inform future research. Larger sample sizes are needed to extend the present findings

Short form of the changes in outlook questionnaire: translation and validation of the Chinese version

Background: The Changes in Outlook Questionnaire (CiOQ) is a self-report instrument designed to measure both positive and negative changes following the experience of severely stressful events. Previous research has focused on the Western context. The aim of this study is to translate the short form of the measure (CiOQ-S) into simplified Chinese and examine its validity and reliability in a sample of Chinese earthquake survivors. Method: The English language version of the 10-item CiOQ was translated into simplified Chinese and completed along with other measures in a sample of earthquake survivors (n = 120). Statistical analyses were performed to explore the structure of the simplified Chinese version of CiOQ-S (CiOQ-SCS), its reliability and validity. Results: Principal components analysis (PCA) was conducted to test the structure of the CiOQ-SCS. The reliability and convergent validity were also assessed. The CiOQ-SCS demonstrated a similar factor structure to the English version, high internal consistency and convergent validity with measures of posttraumatic stress symptoms, anxiety and depression, coping and social support. Conclusion: The data are comparable to those reported for the original version of the instrument indicating that the CiOQ-SCS is a reliable and valid measure assessing positive and negative changes in the aftermath of adversity. However, the sampling method cannot permit us to know how representative our samples were of the earthquake survivor population

Reionization Histories of Milky Way Mass Halos

We investigate the connection between the epoch of reionization and the present day universe, by examining the extended mass reionization histories of dark matter halos identified at z=0. We combine an N-body dark matter simulation of a 600 Mpc volume with a three-dimensional, seminumerical reionization model. This provides reionization redshifts for each particle, which can then be connected with the properties of their halos at the present time. We find that the vast majority of present-day halos with masses larger than ~ few x 10^11 Msun reionize earlier than the rest of the universe. We also find significant halo-to-halo diversity in mass reionization histories, and find that in realistic inhomogenous models, the material within a given halo is not expected to reionize at the same time. In particular, the scatter in reionization times within individual halos is typically larger than the scatter among halos. From our fiducial reionization model, we find that the typical 68% scatter in reionization times within halos is ~ 115 Myr for 10^(12 \pm 0.25) Msun halos, decreasing slightly to ~ 95 Myr for 10^(15 \pm 0.25) Msun halos. We find a mild correlation between reionization history and environment: halos with shorter reionization histories are typically in more clustered environments, with the strongest trend on a scale of ~ 20 Mpc. Material in Milky Way mass halos with short reionization histories is preferentially reionized in relatively large HII regions, implying reionization mostly by sources external to the progenitors of the present-day halo. We investigate the impact on our results of varying the reionization model parameters, which span a range of reionization scenarios with varying timing and morphology.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures, 1 table. Submitted to Ap

Precise LIGO Lensing Rate Predictions for Binary Black Holes

We show how LIGO is expected to detect coalescing binary black holes at $z>1$, that are lensed by the intervening galaxy population. Gravitational magnification, $\mu$, strengthens gravitational wave signals by $\sqrt{\mu}$, without altering their frequencies, which if unrecognised leads to an underestimate of the event redshift and hence an overestimate of the binary mass. High magnifications can be reached for coalescing binaries because the region of intense gravitational wave emission during coalescence is so small ($\sim$100km), permitting very close projections between lensing caustics and gravitational-wave events. Our simulations incorporate accurate waveforms convolved with the LIGO power spectral density. Importantly, we include the detection dependence on sky position and orbital orientation, which for the LIGO configuration translates into a wide spread in observed redshifts and chirp masses. Currently we estimate a detectable rate of lensed events \rateEarly{}, that rises to \rateDesign{}, at LIGO's design sensitivity limit, depending on the high redshift rate of black hole coalescence.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

ChemInk: A Natural Real-Time Recognition System for Chemical Drawings

We describe a new sketch recognition framework for chemical structure drawings that combines multiple levels of visual features using a jointly trained conditional random field. This joint model of appearance at different levels of detail makes our framework less sensitive to noise and drawing variations, improving accuracy and robustness. In addition, we present a novel learning-based approach to corner detection that achieves nearly perfect accuracy in our domain. The result is a recognizer that is better able to handle the wide range of drawing styles found in messy freehand sketches. Our system handles both graphics and text, producing a complete molecular structure as output. It works in real time, providing visual feedback about the recognition progress. On a dataset of chemical drawings our system achieved an accuracy rate of 97.4%, an improvement over the best reported results in literature. A preliminary user study also showed that participants were on average over twice as fast using our sketch-based system compared to ChemDraw, a popular CAD-based tool for authoring chemical diagrams. This was the case even though most of the users had years of experience using ChemDraw and little or no experience using Tablet PCs.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant 0729422)United States. Dept. of Homeland Security (Graduate Research Fellowship)Pfizer Inc