Bereavement and marriage are associated with antibody response to influenza vaccination in the elderly

Stressful life events exposure including bereavement, an event commonly experienced by elderly people, social support, marital status and satisfaction were examined in relation to antibody response to the annual trivalent influenza vaccination in an elderly community sample (N = 184). Antibody response was assessed at baseline, and at one and 12 months following vaccination. Taking into account baseline antibody titer, overall life events exposure and social support were not associated with response to any of the influenza strains. However, bereavement in the year prior to vaccination was negatively associated with the one-month response to the A/Panama and B/Shangdong strains. Being married and having higher marital satisfaction was also associated with higher peak responses to the A/Panama influenza strain at one month. The positive association between marital satisfaction and A/Panama response was particularly evident in the younger half of the married sample. These associations largely withstood adjustment for potential confounders. Thus, in the elderly, peak antibody response was associated with bereavement and marriage, and not the more general factors, life events and social support, related to antibody response in student samples. This suggests the importance of taking a life course approach to examining relationships between psychosocial factors and immunity, and that interventions to modify the impact of these factors should address those most salient for each age group

Creating Family: A Phenomenological Needs-Assessment of Adoptive Parents for Implications in Dance/Movement Therapy

The purpose of this study was to identify adoptive parents’ predominant, post-adoption needs through a phenomenological needs-assessment. While the initial lens of attachment theory was utilized, the phenomenological methodology allowed for a variety of needs and experiences to emerge. The results served as a basis for exploring how dance/movement therapy (DMT) may effectively play a role in adoption services. The participants of the study included five adoptive parents and two adoption counselors. The data were collected through semi-structured, in-depth interviews and analyzed using Anderson’s intuitive inquiry, including a resonance panel of individuals who had experience with adoption, personally or professionally. Findings suggested that mother/child bonding was a central focus for the participants, and that secure attachments were attained without outside intervention. The creation of these secure attachments, despite some challenges and the absence of biological processes, reflected the resilience of the families and the power of parent child connection. Other needs came forward because of the foundation of these secure attachments. These needs included validation of parenting abilities, addressing child’s identity concerns, finding community support, integrating adopted children into family units, maintaining maternal health, and calming the child at different developmental stages. Implications are explored, suggesting that DMT may play an effective role in adoption support in various ways. These include allowing space and techniques for focusing on parent-child connection, facilitating identity exploration, and increasing connection between biological and adopted family members, among others. This study suggests that further research, including program development, is warranted to explore the variety of ways DMT can support adoptive families

Limited availability of cardiac rehabilitation for heart failure patients in the United Kingdom: findings from a national survey

Background: Participation of patients with heart failure in cardiac rehabilitation in the UK is low. This study investigated the availability of cardiac rehabilitation services for patients with heart failure in the UK and the views of service coordinators on ideal service models. Design: Our study was a cross-sectional national postal survey that was mailed to 342 service coordinators in the UK between April and June 2009. Methods: We developed a 38-item questionnaire to survey all cardiac rehabilitation service coordinators on theNational Audit of Cardiac Rehabilitation register in the UK in 2009. Results: The survey response rate was 71% (244/342). Forty three per cent (105/244) of coordinators did not accept patients with heart failure to their cardiac rehabilitation services. Most coordinators who did accept patients with heart failure offered their services to patients with a variety of cardiac conditions, though referral criteria and models of care varied widely. Services inconsistently used New York Heart Association classes and left ventricular ejection fraction measures to select patients. Few offered separate dedicated heart failure programmes (14%; 33/244) but where these existed they ran for longer than programmes which included patients with heart failure alongside other cardiac patients (10.9 vs 8.5 weeks; F=4.04; p=0.019). Few offered home-based options for patients with heart failure (11%; 27/244). Coordinators accepting patients with heart failure to their cardiac rehabilitation services tended to agree that patients with heart failure should be included in services alongside other cardiac patients (X2=6.2; p=0.013). Conclusions: There is limited access for patients with heart failure to cardiac rehabilitation in the UK. Local policies on referral and selection criteria differ and reflect coordinators views rather than clinical guidance. © The European Society of Cardiology 2013 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav

Error-resistant Single Qubit Gates with Trapped Ions

Coherent operations constitutive for the implementation of single and multi-qubit quantum gates with trapped ions are demonstrated that are robust against variations in experimental parameters and intrinsically indeterministic system parameters. In particular, pulses developed using optimal control theory are demonstrated for the first time with trapped ions. Their performance as a function of error parameters is systematically investigated and compared to composite pulses.Comment: 5 pages 5 figure

Origin of the Second-Order Proton Catalysis of Ferriin Reduction in Belousov-Zhabotinsky Reactions: Density Functional Studies of Ferroin and Ferriin Aggregates with Outer Sphere Ligands Sulfate, Bisulfate, and Sulfuric Acid

The detailed mechanisms of Belousov-Zhabotinsky oscillating reactions continue to present grand challenges, even after half a century of study. The origin of the pH dependence of the oscillation pattern had never been rigorously identified. In our recent kinetic study of one of the key Belousov-Zhabotinsky reactions, the iron-catalyzed bromate oxidation of malonic acid, compelling agreement between experiments and kinetic simulations was achieved only with the inclusion of second-order proton catalysis of the reduction of the [Fe(phen)3]3+ species. After exhausting all other avenues in search of an explanation of this proton catalysis, we considered the possibility that the parent iron-phenanthroline complexes could aggregate with neutral and anionic outer sphere ligands (OSLs) in the highly concentrated sulfuric acid solution, and we hypothesized that OSL protonation would increase the capacity of the aggregated complex to oxidize the organic fuel. We performed potential energy surface analyses at the SMD(APFD/6-311G*) level of complexes of the types [Fe(phen)3(SO42-)m(HSO4-)n(H2SO4)o](c-2m-n)+ for ferriin (c = 3) and ferroin (c = 2) aggregated with m sulfate, n bisulfate, and o sulfuric acid OSLs. We present structures of the OSL aggregates, develop a nomenclature for their description, and characterize their electronic structure. The structural chemistry provides the foundation to discuss the ferroin/ferriin redox couple with emphasis on the relationship between the vertical electron affinities of ferriin aggregates and their OSL protonation states. For proton catalysis to manifest itself, double-protonation paths that are slightly endergonic should be present, and proton affinities of aggregated OSLs allow the identification of such double-protonation chains. As a first test of our mechanistic proposal for the second-order proton catalysis of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction, the results presented here provide compelling evidence in support of the importance of outer sphere ligation of the iron catalyst

Evolution of the Sweetness Receptor in Primates. I. Why Does Alitame Taste Sweet in all Prosimians and Simians, and Aspartame only in Old World Simians?

In the order Primates the responses to sucrose, alitame and aspartame were ascertained. All primates tested to date like sucrose and prefer this sweet substance to tap water. The artificial dipeptide aspartame was found to be not sweet in Prosimii and Platyrrhini (New World monkeys). Only the Cercopithecoidea (Old World monkeys) and Hominoidea (apes and humans) show the same response to aspartame and to sucrose. In contrast, all primates tested so far prefer alitame, another artificial dipeptide sweetener, which is structurally closely related to aspartame. This phylogenetic difference is consistent with the existence in catarrhine primates of a sweetness receptor containing two differently located hydrophobic recognition sites, one for the hydrophobic binding site of alitame, the other for the hydrophobic binding site of aspartame. On the basis of these results, it is suggested that the alitame-related hydrophobic recognition site, which is found in the sweetness receptor of all primates, could be a requisite for the interaction of the receptor with sucrose, while the aspartame-related hydrophobic recognition site, which is found exclusively in the sweetness receptor of Old World simians, could have been a crucial factor in the improvement in detection or selection of sucrose in foods, so favouring the mental development of these simians and maybe the emergence of humans. Chem. Senses 20: 573-584, 199