Treatment Outcomes for At-Risk Young Children With Behavior Problems: Toward a New Definition of Success

This study examined the outcomes of Early Pathways (EP), an in-home parent–child therapy program with 447 at-risk children younger than 5 years of age who were referred for severe behavior and emotional problems, such as aggression, oppositional behavior, and separation anxiety. EP emphasized parent-directed training of child behavior strategies including psychoeducation regarding child development, child-led play, and cognitive-behavioral techniques. Outcomes were assessed using a unique 2-dimensional definition of treatment completion, which consisted of treatment duration and an assessment of reliable change for the primary outcome measure of child behavior problems. Results showed that the majority of children (63.4%) met or exceeded treatment completion. In addition, repeated-measures multivariate analyses of variance at pretest, posttest, and follow-up revealed increased child prosocial behaviors, reduced child behavior problems, improved caregiver nurturing, an increase in parents’ developmentally appropriate expectations of children, improved parent–child relationships, and a decrease in clinical diagnoses following treatment. This study offers guidance for developing effective early-intervention services for families in poverty to enhance outcomes for their young children. Along with its existing large-scale, community-based effectiveness studies, future research should establish additional statistical support including a randomized, waitlist control design of EP

Exploiting the Symmetry of the Resonator Mode to Enhance PELDOR Sensitivity.

Pulsed electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy using microwaves at two frequencies can be employed to measure distances between pairs of paramagnets separated by up to 10 nm. The method, combined with site-directed mutagenesis, has become increasingly popular in structural biology for both its selectivity and capability of providing information not accessible through more standard methods such as nuclear magnetic resonance and X-ray crystallography. Despite these advantages, EPR distance measurements suffer from poor sensitivity. One contributing factor is technical: since 65 MHz typically separates the pump and detection frequencies, they cannot both be located at the center of the pseudo-Lorentzian microwave resonance of a single-mode resonator. To maximize the inversion efficiency, the pump pulse is usually placed at the center of the resonance, while the observer frequency is placed in the wing, with consequent reduction in sensitivity. Here, we consider an alternative configuration: by spacing pump and observer frequencies symmetrically with respect to the microwave resonance and by increasing the quality factor, valuable improvement in the signal-to-noise ratio can be obtained

Optical Torque from Enhanced Scattering by Multipolar Plasmonic Resonance

We present a theoretical study of the optical angular momentum transfer from a circularly polarized plane wave to thin metal nanoparticles of different rotational symmetries. While absorption has been regarded as the predominant mechanism of torque generation on the nanoscale, we demonstrate numerically how the contribution from scattering can be enhanced by using multipolar plasmon resonance. The multipolar modes in non-circular particles can convert the angular momentum carried by the scattered field, thereby producing scattering-dominant optical torque, while a circularly symmetric particle cannot. Our results show that the optical torque induced by resonant scattering can contribute to 80% of the total optical torque in gold particles. This scattering-dominant torque generation is extremely mode-specific, and deserves to be distinguished from the absorption-dominant mechanism. Our findings might have applications in optical manipulation on the nanoscale as well as new designs in plasmonics and metamaterials.Comment: main article 20 pages, 4 figures; supplementary material 6 pages, 2 figure

Van der Waals bond lengths and electronic spectral shifts of the benzene---Kr and benzene---Xe complexes

Rotationally resolved UV-spectra are presented for the 610 bands of benzene---Kr and benzene---Xe complexes yielding precise rotational constants and van der Waals bond lengths for the ground and excited vibronic state, and electronic band shifts. These value complement the previously published data for the other rare gases and the various quantities have now been determined for all the benzene—rare gas complexes. Measured values of the bond length were used to calculate the band shifts from recent theoretical predictions. They are compared with the experimental values of this work

Do Institutional Owners Monitor? Evidence from Voting on Connected Transaction Proposals in Hong Kong-Listed Companies

The conventional view in Hong Kong has been that institutional owners tend to be passive owners and that they do little to monitor the companies’ management. We investigated whether the presence of institutional owners in Hong Kong-listed companies was associated with greater monitoring of management through dissent voting by hand-collecting information for a sample (n= 96) of connected transaction proposals (“CT proposals”) and of their voting outcomes, as announced in the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong during the period from 2012–14. Our study shows that voting approval rates on CT proposals were lower (i.e. greater dissent voting) when institutional owners had at least 5 percent shareholdings and when the CT proposals were likely to expropriate or when the company holding the vote did not have a controlling shareholder. These findings support the view that the presence of institutional ownership in Hong Kong can be consistent with monitoring effects and, to that extent, with good governance

Acute pancreatitis after liver transplantation: incidence and contributing factors

In order to assess the incidence and possible predisposing and contributing factors in the development of acute pancreatitis after liver transplantation, we reviewed the medical records of all 1832 adult patients who underwent 2161 orthotopic liver transplantation (OLTx) procedures in our center between January 1987 and September 1992. Of these patients, 55 (3 % incidence) developed clinical pancreatitis and 247 (13.4 % incidence) developed hyperamylasemia (biochemical pancreatitis). Overall mortality in cases of clinical pancreatitis was 63.6 %. The mortality in cases of hyperamylasemia was similar to that found in the general liver transplant population (i. e., 23 %). A strong correlation was found between pancreatitis after liver transplantation and end-stage liver disease due to hepatitis B (30 % of the cases, P = 0.00001). Extensive surgical dissection around the pancreas (P < 0.05), the type of biliary reconstruction following liver transplantation (P < 0.05), and the number of liver grafts received by the same patient (P = 0.00001) appeared to be possible contributing factors as did the duration of venovenous bypass and the quantity of IV calcium chloride administered intraoperatively

Citation of non-English peer review publications – some Chinese examples

Articles published in English language journals with citations of non-English peer reviewed materials are not very common today. However, as epidemiologists are becoming more aware of data and information being readily available and accessible in the non-English literature, the question of whether non-English materials can be cited in English language journals and if so, how should they be cited, has become an increasingly important issue. Bringing together personal insights from the author's familiarity with both the English and Chinese language epidemiological literature and results from a survey on the use of citations of non-English peer reviewed materials across a sample of epidemiology and public health journals, this commentary discusses the different ways authors cite non-English articles in different English language journals and the different methods used by journals to handle non-Latin scripts (e.g. transliteration). This commentary will be useful to both epidemiologists and editors alike