The Hospital Anxiety And Depression Scale

There is a need to assess the contribution of mood disorder, especially anxiety and depression, in order to understand the experience of suffering in the setting of medical practice. Most physicians are aware of this aspect of the illness of their patients but many feel incompetent to provide the patient with reliable information. The Hospital Anxiety And Depression Scale, or HADS, was designed to provide a simple yet reliable tool for use in medical practice. The term 'hospital' in its title suggests that it is only valid in such a setting but many studies conducted throughout the world have confirmed that it is valid when used in community settings and primary care medical practice. It should be emphasised that self-assessment scales are only valid for screening purposes; definitive diagnosis must rest on the process of clinical examination

An Automated Mobile Game-based Screening Tool for Patients with Alcohol Dependence

Traditional methods for screening and diagnosis of alcohol dependence are typically administered by trained clinicians in medical settings and often rely on interview responses. These self-reports can be unintentionally or deliberately false, and misleading answers can, in turn, lead to inaccurate assessment and diagnosis. In this study, we examine the use of user-game interaction patterns on mobile games to develop an automated diagnostic and screening tool for alcohol-dependent patients. Our approach relies on the capture of interaction patterns during gameplay, while potential patients engage with popular mobile games on smartphones. The captured signals include gameplay performance, touch gestures, and device motion, with the intention of identifying patients with alcohol dependence. We evaluate the classification performance of various supervised learning algorithms on data collected from 40 patients and 40 age-matched healthy adults. The results show that patients with alcohol dependence can be automatically identified accurately using the ensemble of touch, device motion, and gameplay performance features on 3-minute samples (accuracy=0.95, sensitivity=0.95, and specificity=0.95). The present findings provide strong evidence suggesting the potential use of user-game interaction metrics on existing mobile games as discriminant features for developing an implicit measure to identify alcohol dependence conditions. In addition to supporting healthcare professionals in clinical decision-making, the game-based self-screening method could be used as a novel strategy to promote alcohol dependence screening, especially outside of clinical settings

Interpretation of inverted photocurrent transients in organic lead halide perovskite solar cells: proof of the field screening by mobile ions and determination of the space charge layer widths

In Methyl Ammonium Lead Iodide (MAPI) perovskite solar cells, screening of the built-in field by mobile ions has been proposed as part of the cause of the large hysteresis observed in the current/voltage scans in many cells. We show that photocurrent transients measured immediately (e.g. 100 μs) after a voltage step can provide direct evidence that this field screening exists. Just after a step to forward bias, the photocurrent transients are reversed in sign (i.e. inverted), and the magnitude of the inverted transients can be used to find an upper bound on the width of the space charge layers adjacent to the electrodes. This in turn provides a lower bound on the mobile charge concentration, which we find to be ≳1 × 1017 cm−3. Using a new photocurrent transient experiment, we show that the space charge layer thickness remains approximately constant as a function of bias, as expected for mobile ions in a solid electrolyte. We also discuss additional characteristics of the inverted photocurrent transients that imply either an unusually stable deep trapping, or a photo effect on the mobile ion conductivity

Neural representation of reward in recovered depressed patients

These findings support the view that abnormal neural responses to reward may be an endophenotype for depression and a potential target for intervention and prevention strategies

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

Strong performance enhancement in lead-halide perovskite solar cells through rapid, atmospheric deposition of n-type buffer layer oxides

International audienceThin (approximately 10 nm) oxide buffer layers grown over lead-halide perovskite device stacks are critical for protecting the perovskite against mechanical and environmental damage. However, the limited perovskite stability restricts the processing methods and temperatures (≤110 °C) that can be used to deposit the oxide overlayers, with the latter limiting the electronic properties of the oxides achievable. In this work, we demonstrate an alternative to existing methods that can grow pinhole-free TiOx (x ~ 2) films with the requisite thickness in <1 min without vacuum. This technique is atmospheric pressure chemical vapor deposition (AP-CVD). The rapid but soft deposition enables growth temperatures of ≥180 °C to be used to coat perovskites with or without a protective layer of PC61BM. This is ≥ 70 °C higher than achievable by current methods and results in more conductive TiOx films, boosting solar cell efficiencies by >2%. Likewise, when AP-CVD SnOx (x ~ 2) is grown directly on the perovskite, there is also minimal structural damage to the underlying perovskite layer. The SnOx layer is pinhole-free and conformal. When used to cover perovskite devices with a PC61BM electron transport layer, shunting due to the pinholes in the spin-coated PC61BM is reduced, resulting in increases in the steady-state efficiency from 16.5% (no SnOx) to 19.4% (60 nm SnOx), with fill factors reaching 84%. This work shows AP-CVD to be a versatile technique for growing oxides on thermally-sensitive materials

Starlikeness of Libera transformation (II) (Applications of Complex Function Theory to Differential Equations)

The GEOTRACES Intermediate Data Product 2017 (IDP2017) is the second publicly available data product of the international GEOTRACES programme, and contains data measured and quality controlled before the end of 2016. The IDP2017 includes data from the Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic, Southern and Indian oceans, with about twice the data volume of the previous IDP2014. For the first time, the IDP2017 contains data for a large suite of biogeochemical parameters as well as aerosol and rain data characterising atmospheric trace element and isotope (TEI) sources. The TEI data in the IDP2017 are quality controlled by careful assessment of intercalibration results and multi-laboratory data comparisons at crossover stations. The IDP2017 consists of two parts: (1) a compilation of digital data for more than 450 TEIs as well as standard hydrographic parameters, and (2) the eGEOTRACES Electronic Atlas providing an on-line atlas that includes more than 590 section plots and 130 animated 3D scenes. The digital data are provided in several formats, including ASCII, Excel spreadsheet, netCDF, and Ocean Data View collection. Users can download the full data packages or make their own custom selections with a new on-line data extraction service. In addition to the actual data values, the IDP2017 also contains data quality flags and 1-σ data error values where available. Quality flags and error values are useful for data filtering and for statistical analysis. Metadata about data originators, analytical methods and original publications related to the data are linked in an easily accessible way. The eGEOTRACES Electronic Atlas is the visual representation of the IDP2017 as section plots and rotating 3D scenes. The basin-wide 3D scenes combine data from many cruises and provide quick overviews of large-scale tracer distributions. These 3D scenes provide geographical and bathymetric context that is crucial for the interpretation and assessment of tracer plumes near ocean margins or along ridges. The IDP2017 is the result of a truly international effort involving 326 researchers from 25 countries. This publication provides the critical reference for unpublished data, as well as for studies that make use of a large cross-section of data from the IDP2017. This article is part of a special issue entitled: Conway GEOTRACES - edited by Tim M. Conway, Tristan Horner, Yves Plancherel, and Aridane G. González