Therapeutic effects of music therapy on anxiety and quality of life for chronically ill adults with mental illness

Mental Illness impacts many individuals, families and communities. Treatments for chronically mentally ill individuals include a variety of medications and behavioral therapies. Alternative therapies can also help reduce anxiety and improve social behavior. Music therapy has been identified as one method to reduce anxiety, resulting in an increased quality of life. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of music therapy on social anxiety and quality of life for individuals who are chronically mentally ill. This is a replication of Grocke, Bloch and Castle’s (2009) study. The study is based on Group Music Therapy (Bloch & Crouch, 1985). The anticipated sample will include 500 outpatients being treated in a local mental health facility in MD. The WHOQOLBREF Quality of Life Scale, the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale and the Brief Symptom Inventory will be used to collect data. Semi-structured interviews will also be conducted with focus groups. Findings will provide insight about the impact of music therapy as an alternative treatment to reduce anxiety and improve quality of life for chronically ill individuals.School of NursingThesis (M.S.

ARISTOTELES: A European approach for an Earth gravity field recovery mission

Under contract of the European Space Agency a system study for a spaceborne gravity field recovery mission was performed, covering as a secondary mission objective geodetic point positioning in the cm range as well. It was demonstrated that under the given programmatic constraints including dual launch and a very tight development schedule, a six months gravity field mission in a 200 km near polar, dawn-dusk orbit is adequate to determine gravity anomalies to better than 5 mgal with a spatial resolution of 100 x 100 km half wavelength. This will enable scientists to determine improved spherical harmonic coefficients of the Earth gravity field equation to the order and degree of 180 or better

Formation and long-term evolution of 3D vortices in protoplanetary discs

In the context of planet formation, anticyclonic vortices have recently received lots of attention for the role they can play in planetesimals formation. Radial migration of intermediate size solids toward the central star may prevent their growth to larger solid grains. On the other hand, vortices can trap the dust and accelerate this growth, counteracting fast radial transport. Multiple effects have been shown to affect this scenario, such as vortex migration or decay. The aim of this paper is to study the formation of vortices by the Rossby wave instability and their long term evolution in a full three dimensional protoplanetary disc. We use a robust numerical scheme combined with adaptive mesh refinement in cylindrical coordinates, allowing to affordably compute long term 3D evolutions. We consider a full disc stratified both radially and vertically that is prone to formation of vortices by the Rossby wave instability. We show that the 3D Rossby vortices grow and survive over hundreds of years without migration. The localized overdensity which initiated the instability and vortex formation survives the growth of the Rossby wave instability for very long times. When the vortices are no longer sustained by the Rossby wave instability, their shape changes toward more elliptical vortices. This allows them to survive shear-driven destruction, but they may be prone to elliptical instability and slow decay. When the conditions for growing Rossby wave-related instabilities are maintained in the disc, large-scale vortices can survive over very long timescales and may be able to concentrate solids.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&

Theoretical and material studies on thin-film electroluminescent devices

The effect of surface nucleation processes on the quality of ZnS layers grown on (001) GaAs substrates by molecular beam epitaxy is reported. Reflection high energy electron diffraction indicated that nucleation at high temperatures produced more planar surfaces than nucleation at low temperatures, but the crystalline quality as accessed by x ray double crystal diffractometry is relatively independent of nucleation temperature. A critical factor in layer quality was the initial roughness of the GaAs surfaces

Device and method for frictionally testing materials for ignitability

Test apparatus for determining ignition characteristics of various metal in oxidizer environments simulating operating conditions for materials is invented. The test apparatus has a chamber through which the oxidizing agent flows, and means for mounting a stationary test sample therein, a powered, rotating shaft in the chamber rigidly mounts a second test sample. The shaft is axially movable to bring the samples into frictional engagement and heated to the ignition point. Instrumentation connected to the apparatus provides for observation of temperatures, pressures, loads on and speeds of the rotating shaft, and torques whereby components of stressed oxygen systems can be selected which will avoid accidental fires under working conditions

Collisions of inhomogeneous pre-planetesimals

In the framework of the coagulation scenario, kilometre-sized planetesimals form by subsequent collisions of pre-planetesimals of sizes from centimetre to hundreds of metres. Pre-planetesimals are fluffy, porous dust aggregates, which are inhomogeneous owing to their collisional history. Planetesimal growth can be prevented by catastrophic disruption in pre-planetesimal collisions above the destruction velocity threshold. We develop an inhomogeneity model based on the density distribution of dust aggregates, which is assumed to be a Gaussian distribution with a well-defined standard deviation. As a second input parameter, we consider the typical size of an inhomogeneous clump. These input parameters are easily accessible by laboratory experiments. For the simulation of the dust aggregates, we utilise a smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) code with extensions for modelling porous solid bodies. The porosity model was previously calibrated for the simulation of silica dust, which commonly serves as an analogue for pre-planetesimal material. The inhomogeneity is imposed as an initial condition on the SPH particle distribution. We carry out collisions of centimetre-sized dust aggregates of intermediate porosity. We vary the standard deviation of the inhomogeneous distribution at fixed typical clump size. The collision outcome is categorised according to the four-population model. We show that inhomogeneous pre-planetesimals are more prone to destruction than homogeneous aggregates. Even slight inhomogeneities can lower the threshold for catastrophic disruption. For a fixed collision velocity, the sizes of the fragments decrease with increasing inhomogeneity. Pre-planetesimals with an active collisional history tend to be weaker. This is a possible obstacle to collisional growth and needs to be taken into account in future studies of the coagulation scenario.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, 4 table

How primordial is the structure of comet 67P/C-G? Combined collisional and dynamical models suggest a late formation

There is an active debate about whether the properties of comets as observed today are primordial or, alternatively, if they are a result of collisional evolution or other processes. We investigate the effects of collisions on a comet with a structure like 67P/C-G. We develop scaling laws for the critical specific impact energies required for a significant shape alteration. These are then used in simulations of the combined dynamical and collisional evolution of comets in order to study the survival probability of a primordially formed object with a shape like 67P/C-G. The effects of impacts on comet 67P/C-G are studied using a SPH shock physics code. The resulting critical specific impact energy defines a minimal projectile size which is used to compute the number of shape-changing collisions in a set of dynamical simulations. These simulations follow the dispersion of the trans-Neptunian disk during the giant planet instability, the formation of a scattered disk, and produce 87 objects that penetrate into the inner solar system with orbits consistent with the observed JFC population. The collisional evolution before the giant planet instability is not considered here. Hence, our study is conservative in its estimation of the number of collisions. We find that in any scenario considered here, comet 67P/C-G would have experienced a significant number of shape-changing collisions, if it formed primordially. This is also the case for generic bi-lobe shapes. Our study also shows that impact heating is very localized and that collisionally processed bodies can still have a high porosity. Our study indicates that the observed bi-lobe structure of comet 67P/C-G may not be primordial, but might have originated in a rather recent event, possibly within the last 1 Gy. This may be the case for any kilometer-sized two-component cometary nuclei.Comment: Astronomy & Astrophysics, accepted pending minor revision

Projection operator approach to spin diffusion in the anisotropic Heisenberg chain at high temperatures

We investigate spin transport in the anisotropic Heisenberg chain in the limit of high temperatures ({\beta} \to 0). We particularly focus on diffusion and the quantitative evaluation of diffusion constants from current autocorrelations as a function of the anisotropy parameter {\Delta} and the spin quantum number s. Our approach is essentially based on an application of the time-convolutionless (TCL) projection operator technique. Within this perturbative approach the projection onto the current yields the decay of autocorrelations to lowest order of {\Delta}. The resulting diffusion constants scale as 1/{\Delta}^2 in the Markovian regime {\Delta}<<1 (s=1/2) and as 1/{\Delta} in the highly non-Markovian regime above {\Delta} \sim 1 (arbitrary s). In the latter regime the dependence on s appears approximately as an overall scaling factor \sqrt{s(s+1)} only. These results are in remarkably good agreement with diffusion constants for {\Delta}>1 which are obtained directly from the exact diagonalization of autocorrelations or have been obtained from non-equilibrium bath scenarios.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Reconnection in Marginally Collisionless Accretion Disk Coronae

We point out that a conventional construction placed upon observations of accreting black holes, in which their nonthermal X-ray spectra are produced by inverse comptonization in a coronal plasma, suggests that the plasma is marginally collisionless. Recent developments in plasma physics indicate that fast reconnection takes place only in collisionless plasmas. As has recently been suggested for the Sun's corona, such marginal states may result from a combination of energy balance and the requirements of fast magnetic reconnection.Comment: Revised in response to referee. Accepted ApJ. 11 pp., no figures. Uses aastex 5.0