22,830 research outputs found
Psychotherapy and social support - Integrating research on psychological helping
Psychotherapy interactions and social support conversations have many similarities, as well as some important differences. Researchers studying these two manifestations of psychological helping - often known as formal and informal helping - usually apply a separate set of concepts and methods to each and tend to locate their work in separate bodies of literature. This paper argues that such a division of the field is unnecessary and unproductive. It outlines several ways in which the two bodies of literature might inform each other and argues for conceptual integration of the two fields. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
Vibrophonocardiograph Patent
Vibrophonocardiograph comprising low weight and small volume piezoelectric microphone with amplifier having high imput impedance for high sensitivity and low frequency respons
Mutual help groups for mental health problems: A review of effectiveness studies
This paper reviews empirical studies on whether participating in mutual help groups for people with mental health problems leads to improved psychological and social functioning. To be included, studies had to satisfy four sets of criteria, covering: (1) characteristics of the group, (2) target problems, (3) outcome measures, and (4) research design. The 12 studies meeting these criteria provide limited but promising evidence that mutual help groups benefit people with three types of problems: chronic mental illness, depression/anxiety, and bereavement. Seven studies reported positive changes for those attending support groups. The strongest findings come from two randomized trials showing that the outcomes of mutual help groups were equivalent to those of substantially more costly professional interventions. Five of the 12 studies found no differences in mental health outcomes between mutual help group members and non-members; no studies showed evidence of negative effects. There was no indication that mutual help groups were differentially effective for certain types of problems. The studies varied in terms of design quality and reporting of results. More high-quality outcome research is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of mutual help groups across the spectrum of mental health problems
Localization of the Functional Domains of Human Tissue Inhibitor of Metalloproteinases-3 and the Effects of a Sorsby's Fundus Dystrophy Mutation
A transient COS-7 cell expression system was used to
investigate the functional domain arrangement of tissue
inhibitor of metalloproteinases-3 (TIMP-3), specifically
to assess the contribution of the amino- and carboxylterminal
domains of the molecule to its matrix metalloproteinase
(MMP) inhibitory and extracellular matrix
(ECM) binding properties. Wild type TIMP-3 was entirely
localized to the ECM in both its glycosylated (27
kDa) and unglycosylated (24 kDa) forms. A COOH-terminally
truncated TIMP-3 molecule was found to be a non-
ECM bound MMP inhibitor, whereas a chimeric TIMP
molecule, consisting of the NH2-terminal domain of
TIMP-2 fused to the COOH-terminal domain of TIMP-3,
displayed ECM binding, albeit with a lower affinity than
the wild type TIMP-3 molecule. Thus the functional domain
arrangement of TIMP-3 is analogous to that seen in
TIMP-1 and -2, namely that the NH2-terminal domain is
responsible for MMP inhibition whereas the COOH-terminal
domain is most important in mediating the specific
functions of the molecule. A mutant TIMP-3 in
which serine 181 was changed to a cysteine, found in
Sorsbyâs fundus dystrophy, a hereditary macular degenerative
disease, was also expressed in COS-7 cells. This
gave rise to an additional 48-kDa species (possibly a
TIMP-3 dimer) that retained its ability to inhibit MMPs
and localize to the ECM. These data favor the hypothesis
that the TIMP-3 mutations seen in Sorsbyâs fundus dystrophy
contribute to disease progression by accumulation
of mutant protein rather than by the loss of functional
TIMP-3
Super-resolution imaging of a low frequency levitated oscillator
We describe the measurement of the secular motion of a levitated nanoparticle
in a Paul trap with a CMOS camera. This simple method enables us to reach
signal-to-noise ratios as good as 10 with a displacement sensitivity
better than 10/Hz. This method can be used to extract trap
parameters as well as the properties of the levitated particles. We demonstrate
continuous monitoring of the particle dynamics on timescales of the order of
weeks. We show that by using the improvement given by super-resolution imaging,
a significant reduction in the noise floor can be attained, with an increase in
the bandwidth of the force sensitivity. This approach represents a competitive
alternative to standard optical detection for a range of low frequency
oscillators where low optical powers are require
Analytical simulation of the Langley Research Center integrated life-support system, volume 1
Analytical simulation of integrated life support system and oxygen recovery syste
Exploiting correlogram structure for robust speech recognition with multiple speech sources
This paper addresses the problem of separating and recognising speech in a monaural acoustic mixture with the presence of competing speech sources. The proposed system treats sound source separation and speech recognition as
tightly coupled processes. In the first stage sound source separation is performed in the correlogram domain. For periodic sounds, the correlogram exhibits symmetric tree-like structures whose stems are located on the delay
that corresponds to multiple pitch periods. These pitch-related structures are exploited in the study to group spectral components at each time frame. Local
pitch estimates are then computed for each spectral group and are used to form simultaneous pitch tracks for temporal integration. These processes segregate a spectral representation of the acoustic mixture into several time-frequency regions such that the energy in each region is likely to have originated from a single periodic sound source. The identified time-frequency regions, together
with the spectral representation, are employed by a `speech fragment decoder' which employs `missing data' techniques with clean speech models to simultaneously search for the acoustic evidence that best matches model sequences. The paper presents evaluations based on artificially mixed simultaneous speech utterances. A coherence-measuring experiment is first reported which quantifies the consistency of the identified fragments with a single source. The system is then evaluated in a speech recognition task and compared to a conventional fragment generation approach. Results show that the proposed system produces more coherent fragments over different conditions,
which results in significantly better recognition accuracy
The B Neutrino Spectrum
Knowledge of the energy spectrum of B neutrinos is an important
ingredient for interpreting experiments that detect energetic neutrinos from
the Sun. The neutrino spectrum deviates from the allowed approximation because
of the broad alpha-unstable Be final state and recoil order corrections to
the beta decay. We have measured the total energy of the alpha particles
emitted following the beta decay of B. The measured spectrum is
inconsistent with some previous measurements, in particular with a recent
experiment of comparable precision. The beta decay strength function for the
transition from B to the accessible excitation energies in Be is fit to
the alpha energy spectrum using the R-matrix approach. Both the positron and
neutrino energy spectra, corrected for recoil order effects, are constructed
from the strength function. The positron spectrum is in good agreement with a
previous direct measurement. The neutrino spectrum disagrees with previous
experiments, particularly for neutrino energies above 12 MeV.Comment: 15 pages, 13 figures, 4 tables, submitted to Phys. Rev. C, typos
correcte
New broad 8Be nuclear resonances
Energies, total and partial widths, and reduced width amplitudes of 8Be
resonances up to an excitation energy of 26 MeV are extracted from a coupled
channel analysis of experimental data. The presence of an extremely broad J^pi
= 2^+ ``intruder'' resonance is confirmed, while a new 1^+ and very broad 4^+
resonance are discovered. A previously known 22 MeV 2^+ resonance is likely
resolved into two resonances. The experimental J^pi T = 3^(+)? resonance at 22
MeV is determined to be 3^-0, and the experimental 1^-? (at 19 MeV) and 4^-?
resonances to be isospin 0.Comment: 16 pages, LaTe
Implicit cognition is impaired and dissociable in a head-injured group with executive deficits
Implicit or non-conscious cognition is traditionally assumed to be robust to pathology but Gomez-Beldarrain et al (1999, 2002) recently showed deficits on a single implicit task after head injury. Laboratory research suggests that implicit processes dissociate. This study therefore examined implicit cognition in 20 head-injured patients and age- and I.Q.-matched controls using a battery of four implicit cognition tasks: a Serial Reaction Time task (SRT), mere exposure effect task, automatic stereotype activation and hidden co-variation detection. Patients were assessed on an extensive neuropsychological battery, and MRI scanned. Inclusion criteria included impairment on at least one measure of executive function. The patient group was impaired relative to the control group on all the implicit cognition tasks except automatic stereotype activation. Effect size analyses using the control mean and standard deviation for reference showed further dissociations across patients and across implicit tasks. Patients impaired on implicit tasks had more cognitive deficits overall than those unimpaired, and a larger Dysexecutive Self/Other discrepancy (DEX) score suggesting greater behavioural problems. Performance on the SRT task correlated with a composite measure of executive function. Head-injury thus produced heterogeneous impairments in the implicit acquisition of new information. Implicit activation of existing knowledge structures appeared intact. Impairments in implicit cognition and executive function may interact to produce dysfunctional behaviour after head-injury. Future comparisons of implicit and explicit cognition should use several measures of each function, to ensure that they measure the latent variable of interest
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