1,548 research outputs found
Religiousness and preoperative anxiety: a correlational study
<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Major life changes are among factors that cause anxiety, and one of these changes is surgery. Emotional reactions to surgery have specific effects on the intensity and velocity as well as the process of physical disease. In addition, they can cause delay in patients recovery. This study is aimed at determining the relationship between religious beliefs and preoperative anxiety.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This survey is a correlational study to assess the relationship between religious beliefs and preoperative anxiety of patients undergoing abdominal, orthopaedic, and gynaecologic surgery in educational hospitals. We used the convenience sampling method. The data collection instruments included a questionnaire containing the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), and another questionnaire formulated by the researcher with queries on religious beliefs and demographic characteristics as well as disease-related information. Analysis of the data was carried out with SPSS software using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results were arranged in three tables.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The findings showed that almost all the subjects had high level of religiosity and moderate level of anxiety. In addition, there was an inverse relationship between religiosity and intensity of anxiety, though this was not statistically significant.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The results of this study can be used as evidence for presenting religious counselling and spiritual interventions for individuals undergoing stress. Finally, based on the results of this study, the researcher suggested some recommendations for applying results and conducting further research.</p
Extracting the rho meson wavefunction from HERA data
We extract the light-cone wavefunctions of the rho meson using the HERA data
on diffractive rho photoproduction. We find good agreement with predictions for
the distribution amplitude based on QCD sum rules and from the lattice. We also
find that the data prefer a transverse wavefunction with enhanced end-point
contributions.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, significant improvements over the original
version with a new section on distribution amplitudes adde
Wilson-loop formalism for Reggeon exchange in soft high-energy scattering
We derive a nonperturbative expression for the non-vacuum,
qqbar-Reggeon-exchange contribution to the meson-meson elastic scattering
amplitude at high energy and low momentum transfer, in the framework of QCD.
Describing the mesons in terms of colourless qqbar dipoles, the problem is
reduced to the two-fermion-exchange contribution to the dipole-dipole
scattering amplitudes, which is expressed as a path integral, over the
trajectories of the exchanged fermions, of the expectation value of a certain
Wilson loop. We also show how the resulting expression can be reconstructed
from a corresponding quantity in the Euclidean theory, by means of analytic
continuation. Finally, we make contact with previous work on Reggeon exchange
in the gauge/gravity duality approach.Comment: A few misprints in the expressions for the relevant Wilson loops have
been corrected. 55 pages, 7 figure
High Energy Bounds on Soft N=4 SYM Amplitudes from AdS/CFT
Using the AdS/CFT correspondence, we study the high-energy behavior of
colorless dipole elastic scattering amplitudes in N=4 SYM gauge theory through
the Wilson loop correlator formalism and Euclidean to Minkowskian analytic
continuation. The purely elastic behavior obtained at large impact-parameter L,
through duality from disconnected AdS_5 minimal surfaces beyond the
Gross-Ooguri transition point, is combined with unitarity and analyticity
constraints in the central region. In this way we obtain an absolute bound on
the high-energy behavior of the forward scattering amplitude due to the
graviton interaction between minimal surfaces in the bulk. The dominant
"Pomeron" intercept is bounded by alpha less than or equal to 11/7 using the
AdS/CFT constraint of a weak gravitational field in the bulk. Assuming the
elastic eikonal approximation in a larger impact-parameter range gives alpha
between 4/3 and 11/7. The actual intercept becomes 4/3 if one assumes the
elastic eikonal approximation within its maximally allowed range L larger than
exp{Y/3}, where Y is the total rapidity. Subleading AdS/CFT contributions at
large impact-parameter due to the other d=10 supergravity fields are obtained.
A divergence in the real part of the tachyonic KK scalar is cured by
analyticity but signals the need for a theoretical completion of the AdS/CFT
scheme.Comment: 25 pages, 3 eps figure
On the Energy Dependence of the Dipole-Proton Cross Section in Deep Inelastic Scattering
We study the dipole picture of high-energy virtual-photon-proton scattering.
It is shown that different choices for the energy variable in the dipole cross
section used in the literature are not related to each other by simple
arguments equating the typical dipole size and the inverse photon virtuality,
contrary to what is often stated. We argue that the good quality of fits to
structure functions that use Bjorken-x as the energy variable - which is
strictly speaking not justified in the dipole picture - can instead be
understood as a consequence of the sign of scaling violations that occur for
increasing Q^2 at fixed small x. We show that the dipole formula for massless
quarks has the structure of a convolution. From this we obtain derivative
relations between the structure function F_2 at large and small Q^2 and the
dipole-proton cross section at small and large dipole size r, respectively.Comment: 27 page
Nonperturbative contributions to the quark form factor at high energy
The analysis of nonperturbative effects in high energy asymptotics of the
electomagnetic quark form factor is presented. It is shown that the
nonperturbative effects determine the initial value for the perturbative
evolution of the quark form factor and find their general structure with
respect to the high energy asymptotics. Within the Wilson integral formalism
which is natural for investigation of the soft, IR sensitive, part of the
factorized form factor, the structure of the instanton induced effects in the
evolution equation is discussed. It is demonstrated that the instanton
contributions result in the finite renormalization of the subleading
perturbative result and numerically are characterized by small factor
reflecting the diluteness of the QCD vacuum within the instanton liquid model.
The relevance of the IR renormalon induced effects in high energy asymptotic
behaviour is discussed. The consequences of the various analytization
procedures of the strong coupling constant in the IR domain are considered.Comment: REVTeX, 12 pages, 1 figure. Important references and discussions
added, misprints corrected, minor changes in tex
Validation of the spiritual distress assessment tool in older hospitalized patients
ABSTRACT:¦BACKGROUND: The Spiritual Distress Assessment Tool (SDAT) is a 5-item instrument developed to assess unmet spiritual needs in hospitalized elderly patients and to determine the presence of spiritual distress. The objective of this study was to investigate the SDAT psychometric properties.¦METHODS: This cross-sectional study was performed in a Geriatric Rehabilitation Unit. Patients (N = 203), aged 65 years and over with Mini Mental State Exam score ≥ 20, were consecutively enrolled over a 6-month period. Data on health, functional, cognitive, affective and spiritual status were collected upon admission. Interviews using the SDAT (score from 0 to 15, higher scores indicating higher distress) were conducted by a trained chaplain. Factor analysis, measures of internal consistency (inter-item and item-to-total correlations, Cronbach α), and reliability (intra-rater and inter-rater) were performed. Criterion-related validity was assessed using the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy-Spiritual well-being (FACIT-Sp) and the question "Are you at peace?" as criterion-standard. Concurrent and predictive validity were assessed using the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS), occurrence of a family meeting, hospital length of stay (LOS) and destination at discharge.¦RESULTS: SDAT scores ranged from 1 to 11 (mean 5.6 ± 2.4). Overall, 65.0% (132/203) of the patients reported some spiritual distress on SDAT total score and 22.2% (45/203) reported at least one severe unmet spiritual need. A two-factor solution explained 60% of the variance. Inter-item correlations ranged from 0.11 to 0.41 (eight out of ten with P < 0.05). Item-to-total correlations ranged from 0.57 to 0.66 (all P < 0.001). Cronbach α was acceptable (0.60). Intra-rater and inter-rater reliabilities were high (Intraclass Correlation Coefficients ranging from 0.87 to 0.96). SDAT correlated significantly with the FACIT-Sp, "Are you at peace?", GDS (Rho -0.45, -0.33, and 0.43, respectively, all P < .001), and LOS (Rho 0.15, P = .03). Compared with patients showing no severely unmet spiritual need, patients with at least one severe unmet spiritual need had higher odds of occurrence of a family meeting (adjOR 4.7, 95%CI 1.4-16.3, P = .02) and were more often discharged to a nursing home (13.3% vs 3.8%; P = .027).¦CONCLUSIONS: SDAT has acceptable psychometrics properties and appears to be a valid and reliable instrument to assess spiritual distress in elderly hospitalized patients
Reggeon exchange from gauge/gravity duality
We perform the analysis of quark-antiquark Reggeon exchange in meson-meson
scattering, in the framework of the gauge/gravity correspondence in a confining
background. On the gauge theory side, Reggeon exchange is described as
quark-antiquark exchange in the t channel between fast projectiles. The
corresponding amplitude is represented in terms of Wilson loops running along
the trajectories of the constituent quarks and antiquarks. The paths of the
exchanged fermions are integrated over, while the "spectator" fermions are
dealt with in an eikonal approximation. On the gravity side, we follow a
previously proposed approach, and we evaluate the Wilson-loop expectation value
by making use of gauge/gravity duality for a generic confining gauge theory.
The amplitude is obtained in a saddle-point approximation through the
determination near the confining horizon of a Euclidean "minimal surface with
floating boundaries", i.e., by fixing the trajectories of the exchanged quark
and antiquark by means of a minimisation procedure, which involves both area
and length terms. After discussing, as a warm-up exercise, a simpler problem on
a plane involving a soap film with floating boundaries, we solve the
variational problem relevant to Reggeon exchange, in which the basic geometry
is that of a helicoid. A compact expression for the Reggeon-exchange amplitude,
including the effects of a small fermion mass, is then obtained through
analytic continuation from Euclidean to Minkowski space-time. We find in
particular a linear Regge trajectory, corresponding to a Regge-pole singularity
supplemented by a logarithmic cut induced by the non-zero quark mass. The
analytic continuation leads also to companion contributions, corresponding to
the convolution of the same Reggeon-exchange amplitude with multiple elastic
rescattering interactions between the colliding mesons.Comment: 60+1 pages, 14 figure
TGA2 signaling in response to reactive electrophile species is not dependent on cysteine modification of TGA2
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Reactive electrophile species (RES), including prostaglandins, phytoprostanes and 12-oxo phytodienoic acid (OPDA), activate detoxification responses in plants and animals. However, the pathways leading to the activation of defense reactions related to abiotic or biotic stress as a function of RES formation, accumulation or treatment are poorly understood in plants. Here, the thiol-modification of proteins, including the RES-activated basic region/leucine zipper transcription factor TGA2, was studied. TGA2 contains a single cysteine residue (Cys186) that was covalently modified by reactive cyclopentenones but not required for induction of detoxification genes in response to OPDA or prostaglandin A1. Activation of the glutathione-S-transferase 6 (GST6) promoter was responsive to cyclopentenones but not to unreactive cyclopentanones, including jasmonic acid suggesting that thiol reactivity of RES is important to activate the TGA2-dependent signaling pathway resulting in GST6 activation We show that RES modify thiols in numerous proteins in vivo, however, thiol reactivity alone appears not to be sufficient for biological activity as demonstrated by the failure of several membrane permeable thiol reactive reagents to activate the GST6 promoter.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio
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