Age-related differences in ambulatory blood pressure during daily stress: Evidence for greater blood pressure reactivity with age.

Prior research on age and emotions has found that older adults may show better physiological regulation to stressful stimuli than do younger adults. However, the stress reactivity literature has shown that age is associated with higher cardiovascular reactivity to laboratory stress (J. R. Jennings et al., 1997). The authors investigated these conflicting findings further by examining daily ambulatory blood pressure in 428 middle-aged to older adults. Consistent with the age and reactivity literature, relatively old individuals showed significantly greater increases in ambulatory diastolic blood pressure compared with younger individuals when dealing with daily stressors. However, results also revealed that relatively old individuals reported less of an increase in negative affect during daily stress compared with their younger counterparts. The results of this study are consistent with the age-related increase in cardiovascular risk but highlight the complex links between stress and different facets of the aging process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive and subjective acute dose effects of intramuscular ketamine in healthy adults.

Ketamine is a noncompetitive N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) antagonist. Given the purported role of the NMDA receptor in long-term potentiation, the primary purpose of the present study was to further understand the dose-related effects of ketamine on memory. The study was also designed to provide information about the relative effects of ketamine on memory versus nonmemory effects and to more fully characterize ketamine's overall pattern and time course of effects. Single intramuscular injections of ketamine (0.2 mg/kg, 0.4 mg/kg) were administered to 18 healthy adult volunteers using a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover design. Word lists were used to evaluate episodic memory (free recall, recognition memory, source memory) and metamemory. Working memory, time estimation, psychomotor performance, and subjective effects were assessed repeatedly for 5 hours after drug administration. Ketamine selectively impaired encoding (as measured by free recall) while sparing retrieval, working memory while sparing attention, and digit symbol substitution task speed while sparing accuracy. Ketamine did not significantly impair recognition or source memory, metamemory, or time estimation. There were no hallucinations or increases in mystical experiences with ketamine. Memory measures were less sensitive to ketamine effects than subjective or psychomotor measures. Subjective effects lasted longer than memory and most psychomotor impairments. Ketamine produces selective, transient, dose- and time-related effects. In conjunction with previous studies of drugs with different mechanisms of actions, the observed selectivity of effects enhances the understanding of the pharmacological mechanisms underlying memory, attention, psychomotor performance, and subjective experience. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Estimation of ethanol mass delivery to groundwater from silicone polymer mats

Hollow-fiber silicone tubing, coiled and shaped as mats, has been evaluated for its potential to provide predictable delivery of ethanol to aquifers to promote reducing conditions for enhanced bioremediation of a range of contaminants in groundwater. A model was developed to predict the steady-state mass flux of diffusional ethanol delivery to an external aqueous phase from an aqueous ethanol solution present inside the polymer tubing mat, and an effective diffusion coefficient of ethanol through the silicone tubing of 1.22 x 10(-6) cm2 s(-1) was determined experimentally. The model was then validated in column-scale laboratory and field experiments where polymer mats configured as permeable reactive barriers maintained uniform diffusive delivery of ethanol. Steady-state mass flux delivery ratios of ethanol through the polymer tubing wall of 1.45 (+/-0.18) x 10(6) to 1.64 (+/-0.17) x 10(6) s cm(-1) were determined under laboratory conditions, and 2.43 (+/-1.47) x 10(6) s cm(-1) under field conditions, which were found to be statistically similar to model-predicted ethanol mass flux delivery ratios.     

Patterned when wet: environment-dependent multifunctional patterns within amphiphilic colloidal crystals

A simple integration of molecular and colloidal self-assembly approaches with photopatterning is shown to produce multifunctional patterns of amphiphilic colloidal crystals. These crystals display binary spatial patterns of wettability by water and a single photonic stop-band in air. Upon exposure to water, the uniform stop-band is replaced by a pattern of coexisting stop-bands that reflect the underlying pattern of surface wetting. These hydration-dependent photonic patterns within single colloidal crystals form because of near-complete water rejection from the three-dimensionally disposed nanoscale interstices in hydrophobic regions and its exclusive permeation within the hydrophilic regions. This water permeation pattern is further structured by the three-dimensional (3D) distribution and contiguity of the nanoscale interstices between individual colloids, allowing 3D patterned organization of functional units in secondary self-assembly processes, as illustrated using quantum dots, metal nanoparticles, and fluorescent probes.     

Varieties of Home Ownership: Ireland’s Transition from a Socialised to a Marketised Policy Regime

This article presents an historical institutional analysis of government supports for home ownership in Ireland. In doing so, it critiques the interpretation of the Irish home ownership system and, by extension, of this tenure’s meaning and role as a neo-liberal project which dominates the comparative housing literature. Rather than liberal policies, the article argues that between the 1920s and 1970s, government subsidies slowly expanded, in terms of generosity, variety and universal availability, to such a scale that Ireland’s home ownership regime was effectively ‘socialised’. This regime (not market forces) raised home ownership to 80 per cent of households. However, ideological, financial and socio-economic supports for this regime weakened and during the 1980s home ownership was marketised as universal subsidies were withdrawn and mortgage lending privatised. The implications of this redirection were initially disguised by low house price inflation, but when the economy boomed in the 1990s home ownership contracted sharply to levels which could be supported solely by the market.     

National,regional and local patterns in the residualisation of the social rented tenure: the case of ireland and dublin

To date, research on the socio-economic characteristics of the social renting population in the Republic of Ireland has focused on the national level and has found that in common with many other Western European countries the years since the mid-1980s have seen an increased concentration of low income and socially excluded households in this tenure. Drawing on data on the incomes and socio-demographic status of the households who rent their dwellings from Ireland's largest social landlord, Dublin City Council, this paper explores the impact of this macro-process of residualisation on tenants in this region, and also on different localities within it. It demonstrates that residualisation has resulted in higher concentrations of poor households in social rented accommodation in Dublin compared to the general social renting population of the country and at the micro-level has impacted differently on different districts of the city and contemplates the factors which have contributed to this uneven pattern of residualisation.