Enhancing engagement in evidence-based tobacco cessation treatment for smokers with mental illness: A pilot randomized trial.

ObjectiveTo evaluate the efficacy of a brief telephone-delivered Motivational Interviewing (MI)-based intervention to facilitate engagement in evidence-based cessation treatment for Veterans with mental illness referred to smoking cessation treatment.Methods86 military Veteran smokers with mental illness were recruited from a tobacco cessation consult clinic and randomized to receive either a MI-based treatment engagement intervention (TE; n = 48) or a non-MI assessment and information control (CON; n = 38) condition. Intervention was delivered during a single brief telephone contact. Primary engagement outcomes were 1) attending a treatment session within 30 days and 2) combination treatment (attending session plus using pharmacotherapy). Cessation outcomes included self-reported 24 h cessation attempts and 7 day point abstinence at 3 months post-intervention. Outcomes were assessed at 1 and 3 months post intervention.ResultsOutcome analyses included 85 participants (47 TE, 38 CON) using an intent-to-treat analytic approach. Participants were on average 49.5 (13.4) years old, 88% Male, 59% white, 18% African American and 14% Hispanic/Latino(a). Following intervention delivery TE and CON participants did not differ on likelihood of attending a treatment session during the subsequent 30 days (47% vs 45%, respectively). A significant difference was observed when classified as utilizing combination treatment, 40% of TE versus 18% of CON reported use of smoking cessation medication and behavioral counseling (p = 0.04). No statistical differences were observed for cessation outcomes, although more TE than CON participants reported 7 day point abstinence at 3 months post-intervention (30% vs 18%).ConclusionsThe present pilot study provides initial evidence for the feasibility, acceptability and efficacy of a telephone delivered TE intervention for enhancing engagement in combinationevidence evidence-based treatment in a sample of Veteran smokers with mental illness referred to smoking cessation treatment. Smokers with mental illness typically have greater difficulty stopping smoking than those without mental illness. Increased engagement in combination treatment thus has the potential to increase quit rates and ultimately reduce the burden of tobacco use for this population

Black Holes with a Generalized Gravitational Action

Microscopic black holes are sensitive to higher dimension operators in the gravitational action. We compute the influence of these operators on the Schwarzschild solution using perturbation theory. All (time reversal invariant) operators of dimension six are included (dimension four operators don't alter the Schwarzschild solution). Corrections to the relation between the Hawking temperature and the black hole mass are found. The entropy is calculated using the Gibbons-Hawking prescription for the Euclidean path integral and using naive thermodynamic reasoning. These two methods agree, however, the entropy is not equal to 1/4 the area of the horizon.Comment: plain tex(uses phyzzx.tex), 8 pages, CALT-68-185

Revealing hidden states in visual working memory using electroencephalography

It is often assumed that information in visual working memory (vWM) is maintained via persistent activity. However, recent evidence indicates that information in vWM could be maintained in an effectively "activity-silent" neural state. Silent vWM is consistent with recent cognitive and neural models, but poses an important experimental problem: how can we study these silent states using conventional measures of brain activity? We propose a novel approach that is analogous to echolocation: using a high-contrast visual stimulus, it may be possible to drive brain activity during vWM maintenance and measure the vWM-dependent impulse response. We recorded electroencephalography (EEG) while participants performed a vWM task in which a randomly oriented grating was remembered. Crucially, a high-contrast, task-irrelevant stimulus was shown in the maintenance period in half of the trials. The electrophysiological response from posterior channels was used to decode the orientations of the gratings. While orientations could be decoded during and shortly after stimulus presentation, decoding accuracy dropped back close to baseline in the delay. However, the visual evoked response from the task-irrelevant stimulus resulted in a clear re-emergence in decodability. This result provides important proof-of-concept for a promising and relatively simple approach to decode "activity-silent" vWM content using non-invasive EEG

The Alcohol Relapse Situation Appraisal Questionnaire: Development and Validation

Background: The role of cognitive appraisal of the threat of alcohol relapse has received little attention. A previous instrument, the Relapse Situation Appraisal Questionnaire (RSAQ), was developed to assess cocaine users’ primary appraisal of the threat of situations posing a high risk for cocaine relapse. The purpose of the present study was to modify the RSAQ in order to measure primary appraisal in situations involving a high risk for alcohol relapse. Methods: The development and psychometric properties of this instrument, the Alcohol Relapse Situation Appraisal Questionnaire (A-RSAQ), were examined with two samples of abstinent adults with alcohol abuse or dependence. Factor structure and validity were examined in Study 1 (N= 104). Confirmation of the factor structure and predictive validity was assessed in Study 2 (N= 159). Results: Results demonstrated construct, discriminant and predictive validity and reliability of the ARSAQ. Discussion: Results support the important role of primary appraisal of degree of risk in alcohol relapse situations

Coarse-Graining the Lin-Maldacena Geometries

The Lin-Maldacena geometries are nonsingular gravity duals to degenerate vacuum states of a family of field theories with SU(2|4) supersymmetry. In this note, we show that at large N, where the number of vacuum states is large, there is a natural `macroscopic' description of typical states, giving rise to a set of coarse-grained geometries. For a given coarse-grained state, we can associate an entropy related to the number of underlying microstates. We find a simple formula for this entropy in terms of the data that specify the geometry. We see that this entropy function is zero for the original microstate geometries and maximized for a certain ``typical state'' geometry, which we argue is the gravity dual to the zero-temperature limit of the thermal state of the corresponding field theory. Finally, we note that the coarse-grained geometries are singular if and only if the entropy function is non-zero.Comment: 29 pages, LaTeX, 3 figures; v2 references adde

A Quantum Mechanical Model of Spherical Supermembranes

We present a quantum mechanical model of spherical supermembranes. Using superfields to represent the cartesian coordinates of the membrane, we are able to exactly determine its supersymmetric vacua. We find there are two classical vacua, one corresponding to an extended membrane and one corresponding to a point-like membrane. For the ${\mathcal N} = 2$ case, instanton effects then lift these vacua to massive states. For the ${\mathcal N} = 4$ case, there is no instanton tunneling, and the vacua remain massless. Similarities to spherical supermembranes as giant gravitons and in Matrix theory on pp-waves is discussed.Comment: 9 page