2,953 research outputs found
Living with chronic pain: Patients' experiences with healthcare services in Norway
Aim
To explore the experiences with healthcare received by people living with chronic nonmalignant pain in Norway.
Design
A descriptive and explorative qualitative design.
Methods
A total of 18 individual semistructured interviews was conducted in 2015. Qualitative content analysis was applied.
Results
The findings revealed challenges related to a multifaceted pain condition. Participants described interactions with a supportive health care where being listened to, believed in and experiencing mutual trust were emphasized. When interactions with healthcare professionals made the participants feel insignificant, they found it difficult to express their needs, which seemed to reinforce practical difficulties and unfulfilled expectations and make them lose hope in their recovery. This implies the importance of a holistic understanding of and support for more personâcentred practice to accommodate patients' expectations and expressed needs. Here, the nurses have an essential role in having a positive impact on future healthcare services.publishedVersio
Absence of system xcâť on immune cells invading the central nervous system alleviates experimental autoimmune encephalitis
Background: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune demyelinating disease that affects the central nervous system (CNS), leading to neurodegeneration and chronic disability. Accumulating evidence points to a key role for neuroinflammation, oxidative stress, and excitotoxicity in this degenerative process. System x(c)- or the cystine/glutamate antiporter could tie these pathological mechanisms together: its activity is enhanced by reactive oxygen species and inflammatory stimuli, and its enhancement might lead to the release of toxic amounts of glutamate, thereby triggering excitotoxicity and neurodegeneration.
Methods: Semi-quantitative Western blotting served to study protein expression of xCT, the specific subunit of system x(c)-, as well as of regulators of xCT transcription, in the normal appearing white matter (NAWM) of MS patients and in the CNS and spleen of mice exposed to experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), an accepted mouse model of MS. We next compared the clinical course of the EAE disease, the extent of demyelination, the infiltration of immune cells and microglial activation in xCT-knockout (xCT(-/-)) mice and irradiated mice reconstituted in xCT(-/-) bone marrow (BM), to their proper wild type (xCT(+/+)) controls.
Results: xCT protein expression levels were upregulated in the NAWM of MS patients and in the brain, spinal cord, and spleen of EAE mice. The pathways involved in this upregulation in NAWM of MS patients remain unresolved. Compared to xCT(+/+) mice, xCT(-/-) mice were equally susceptible to EAE, whereas mice transplanted with xCT(-/-) BM, and as such only exhibiting loss of xCT in their immune cells, were less susceptible to EAE. In none of the above-described conditions, demyelination, microglial activation, or infiltration of immune cells were affected.
Conclusions: Our findings demonstrate enhancement of xCT protein expression in MS pathology and suggest that system x(c)- on immune cells invading the CNS participates to EAE. Since a total loss of system x(c)- had no net beneficial effects, these results have important implications for targeting system x(c)- for treatment of MS
Pion Freeze-Out Time in Pb+Pb Collisions at 158 A GeV/c Studied via pi-/pi+ and K-/K+ Ratios
The effect of the final state Coulomb interaction on particles produced in
Pb+Pb collisions at 158 A GeV/c has been investigated in the WA98 experiment
through the study of the pi-/pi+ and K-/K+ ratios measured as a function of
transverse mass. While the ratio for kaons shows no significant transverse mass
dependence, the pi-/pi+ ratio is enhanced at small transverse mass values with
an enhancement that increases with centrality. A silicon pad detector located
near the target is used to estimate the contribution of hyperon decays to the
pi-/pi+ ratio. The comparison of results with predictions of the RQMD model in
which the Coulomb interaction has been incorporated allows to place constraints
on the time of the pion freeze-out.Comment: 9 pages, 12 figure
Event-by-Event Fluctuations in Particle Multiplicities and Transverse Energy Produced in 158.A GeV Pb+Pb collisions
Event-by-event fluctuations in the multiplicities of charged particles and
photons, and the total transverse energy in 158 GeV Pb+Pb collisions
are studied for a wide range of centralities. For narrow centrality bins the
multiplicity and transverse energy distributions are found to be near perfect
Gaussians. The effect of detector acceptance on the multiplicity fluctuations
has been studied and demonstrated to follow statistical considerations. The
centrality dependence of the charged particle multiplicity fluctuations in the
measured data has been found to agree reasonably well with those obtained from
a participant model. However for photons the multiplicity fluctuations has been
found to be lower compared to those obtained from a participant model. The
multiplicity and transverse energy fluctuations have also been compared to
those obtained from the VENUS event generator.Comment: To appear in Physical Review C; changes : more detailed discussion on
errors and few figures modifie
Multiplicity Distributions and Charged-neutral Fluctuations
Results from the multiplicity distributions of inclusive photons and charged
particles, scaling of particle multiplicities, event-by-event multiplicity
fluctuations, and charged-neutral fluctuations in 158 GeV Pb+Pb
collisions are presented and discussed. A scaling of charged particle
multiplicity as and photons as have been observed, indicating violation of naive wounded nucleon model.
The analysis of localized charged-neutral fluctuation indicates a
model-independent demonstration of non-statistical fluctuations in both charged
particles and photons in limited azimuthal regions. However, no correlated
charged-neutral fluctuations are observed.Comment: Talk given at the International Symposium on Nuclear Physics
(ISNP-2000), Mumbai, India, 18-22 Dec 2000, Proceedings to be published in
Pramana, Journal of Physic
Centrality Dependence of Neutral Pion Production in 158 A GeV Pb + Pb Collisions
The production of neutral pions in 158AGeV Pb+Pb collisions has been studied
in the WA98 experiment at the CERN SPS. Transverse momentum spectra are studied
for the range 0.3 GeV/c < mT-m0 < 4.0 GeV/c. The results for central collisions
are compared to various models. The centrality dependence of the neutral pion
spectral shape and yield is investigated. An invariance of the spectral shape
and a simple scaling of the yield with the number of participating nucleons is
observed for centralities with greater than about 30 participating nucleons
which is most naturally explained by assuming an equilibrated system.Comment: 5 pages, Latex, including 3 eps figures, submitted to Phys.Rev.Lett;
updated pQCD comparison due to new input from the author, updated references,
corrected plotting error in figure
Recommended from our members
A Search for Dark Higgs Bosons
Recent astrophysical and terrestrial experiments have motivated the proposal
of a dark sector with GeV-scale gauge boson force carriers and new Higgs
bosons. We present a search for a dark Higgs boson using 516 fb-1 of data
collected with the BABAR detector. We do not observe a significant signal and
we set 90% confidence level upper limits on the product of the Standard
Model-dark sector mixing angle and the dark sector coupling constant.Comment: 7 pages, 5 postscript figures, published version with improved plots
for b/w printin
Measurement of the Forward-Backward Asymmetry in the B -> K(*) mu+ mu- Decay and First Observation of the Bs -> phi mu+ mu- Decay
We reconstruct the rare decays , , and in a data sample
corresponding to collected in collisions at
by the CDF II detector at the Fermilab Tevatron
Collider. Using and decays we report the branching ratios. In addition, we report
the measurement of the differential branching ratio and the muon
forward-backward asymmetry in the and decay modes, and the
longitudinal polarization in the decay mode with respect to the squared
dimuon mass. These are consistent with the theoretical prediction from the
standard model, and most recent determinations from other experiments and of
comparable accuracy. We also report the first observation of the {\mathcal{B}}(B^0_s \to
\phi\mu^+\mu^-) = [1.44 \pm 0.33 \pm 0.46] \times 10^{-6}27 \pm 6B^0_s$ decay observed.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, 3 tables. Submitted to Phys. Rev. Let
Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV
The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS
has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions
at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection
criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined.
For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a
muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the
whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4,
while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The
efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than
90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall
momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The
transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity
for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be
better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions
of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO
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