Juvenile mood disorders and office psychopharmacology

Mood disorders afflict pediatric patients, cause significant impairment, and interfere with normal development. Increasingly, pediatricians are called on to assess and collaborate with mental health practitioners in medicating children and adolescents with mood disorders. Approaching the juvenile with a primary emphasis on clarifying the diagnoses, determining environmental antecedents and sequelae, and investigating suicide risk enables the pediatrician to institute appropriate treatment. Despite limited data from controlled studies, psychotherapy often is used for mild to moderate depression. Pharmacotherapy is indicated in cases unresponsive to psychotherapy and in severe or suicidal cases. First-line pharmacotherapy for depressed adolescents is usually an SRI followed by the atypical or TCA antidepressants. Bipolar disorder typically requires an aggressive medication regimen, including anticonvulsants, lithium, or a combination, as well as environmental modifications. With severe, difficult, or refractory cases, mental health consultation is recommended to clarify diagnoses and to provide psychotherapy and medication input.     

Broadband CDMA for personal communications systems

Multipath propagation in a broadband CDMA environment is described. A propagation model for broadband spread-spectrum signals is presented. Experimental results relating to the sharing of the band by fixed service microwave users and mobile personal communications network (PCN) users are discussed. Field tests indicate that PCN systems can provide high-quality communications when sharing the spectrum with fixed-service microwave systems in suburban and urban areas     

Antisickness conditioning using a nausea-producing nondrug cue.

Most drugs induce conditioned taste aversions and are therefore commonly supposed to produce nausea and sickness. Paradoxically, some drugs appear to lose induction capability when made to serve as a cue for a 2nd drug that produces more severe sickness, perhaps through selective association with a hypothetical homeostatic or antisickness aftereffect of sickness. Using drug–drug pairings has made antisickness conditioning theory difficult to validate. Rotation serves in lieu of a drug cue in rats. Rotation–drug pairings eliminate drug interactions and enable the sorts of parametric manipulations required to validate the theory. By postulating a common sickness mechanism to explain both taste aversion and aversion failure, the theory places the phenomenon within an adaptive evolutionary framework. Successful application could yield a direct countermeasure to severe nausea in clinical settings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anxiety disorders of childhood, Implications for adult psychopathology

Although the exact path of acquisition remains incompletely understood, research supports the association between anxiety disorders in children and psychopathologic conditions in adults. This article addresses this relationship; reviews findings on the temperamental profile and behavioral inhibition, which may be an early identifiable childhood predictor of later anxiety disorders; and discusses the importance of early intervention.     

Neuropsychological function in adults with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder

Pacemaker therapy in patients with atrial fibrillation means the best current pacemaker therapy for patients with bradycardias with the aim to avoid the onset of atrial fibrillation and to establish DDD pacing despite of a history of atrial tachyarrhythmias. The newer application of pacing is the suppression of atrial arrhythmias in patients with medical refractory atrial tachyarrhythmias. Patients with slow ventricular rates and permanent atrial fibrillation should receive a VVI-pacemaker, if the bradycardias causes syncope, dizziness or a decrease of their exercise tolerance. In case of chronotropic incompetence the pacemaker should provide rate responsive pacing. Patients with sick sinus syndrome should receive an atrial (AAI) or dual-chamber (DDD) pacemaker, because patients with these in contrast to VVI-pacemakers develop less often atrial fibrillation and subsequent complications such as atrial thromboembolism. A dual-chamber or VDD-pacemaker--the latter connected to a VDD-single-lead--is indicated in patients with advanced AV-block. Atrial fibrillation occurs in 3 to 6% of the patients with no history of arrythmia and is, if pacemakers have no automatic mode switch, an often reason to program the devices to the VVI-pacing mode. Nowadays, most DDD(R)-pacemakers provide an automatic mode switch: During an atrial tachycardia the pacemaker switches to a VVI/VVIR mode and restores the initial DDD(R)-pacing mode with termination of the arrhythmia. In respect to the newer applications, one approach to prevent atrial tachyarrhythmias is permanent atrial pacing. As lower pacing rates of 80 to 90 ppm are usually needed and many patients hardly tolerate these pacing rates, new algorithms are under clinical investigation. Another approach is the simultaneous depolarization of the right and left atrium. Biatrial pacing is performed with one lead in the high right atrium and another lead in the coronary sinus. Another solution is bifocal atrial pacing with leads placed in the high right atrium and in the coronary sinus ostium. One effect of the new pacing techniques is to shorten interatrial conduction times. Therefore, biatrial pacing has become a therapy to prevent atrial arrhythmias deriving from delayed interatrial conduction times. As atrial reentry circuits seem to be important in atrial fibrillation, multisite atrial pacing is also performed in patients with medical refractory paroxysmal atrial fibrillation. Preliminary results suggest a more effective prevention of atrial fibrillation; nevertheless, these techniques should be still restricted to patients enrolled in clinical studies.     

Isothermal oxidation of physical vapor deposited partially stabilized zirconia thermal barrier coatings

Thermal barrier coatings (TBCs), consisting of physical vapor deposited (PVD) partially stabilized zirconia (PSZ, 8 wt.%Y₂O₃) and a diffusion aluminide bond coat, were characterized as a function of time after oxidative isothermal heat treatment at 1373 K in air. The experimental characterizations was conducted by X-ray diffraction analysis and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with energy-dispersive spectroscopy. During cooling to room temperature, spallation of the PSZ ceramic coatings occurred after 200 and 350 h of isothermal heat treatment. This failure was always sudden and violent, with the TBC popping from the substrate. The monoclinic phase of zirconia was first observed on the bottom surface of the PVD PSZ after 200 h of isothermal heat treatment. The failure of TBCs occurred either in the bond coat oxidation products of αAl₂O₃ and rutile TiO₂ or at the interface between the oxidation products and the diffusion aluminide bond coat or the PSZ coating.     

Pole placement with sensitivity function shaping using 2nd order digital notch filters

This technical note deals with the design of robust digital controllers using pole placement with sensitivity shaping by means of the use of digital notch (band-stop) filters. The use of this type of filters drastically simplifies the effective shaping of the sensitivity functions and the resulting procedure competes with the procedure based on the use of Q-parameterization combined with convex optimization (Automatica 35 (1999) 1111). The feasibility of the technique is illustrated by its application to the control of a very flexible arm.     

A comparative study of direct and indirect evaluation of piezoelectric properties of electrophoreticaly deposited (Ba,Ca) (Zr,Ti)O3 lead-free piezoceramics

The development and optimisation of piezoceramics are targeted usually to enhance their piezoelectric properties evaluated by both the direct or indirect measurement methods. The presented work aims to elaborate on the correlation of one direct (Berlincourt) and two indirect (convert and field-dependent) piezoelectric measurement methods on various material states. The role of the ceramic powder treatment by ball milling and electrophoretic deposition (EPD) technique on the determined electric properties as well as basic physical and mechanical properties of (Ba_0.85Ca_0.15) (Zr_0.1Ti_0.9)O₃ ceramics (BCZT) was investigated. It was found that the EPD technologically supported by milling allows obtaining thick and dense deposits (>2 mm). After sintering, the BCZT ceramics with a relative density of >95%, hardness in the range of 2.3–2.9 GPa and piezoelectric coefficients of d₃₃* = 940 pm/V, d_33(E=0) = 427 pm/V and d₃₃ = 364 pC/N can be achieved. Reported results also suggest that indirect (field-dependent) and direct (Berlincourt) measurements of the piezoelectric coefficients can be comparable at optimal poling conditions.     

Nanostructured thin films prepared from cluster beams

Plasma polymer nanostructures were prepared by cluster beam deposition. The nanocluster source assembled in our laboratory is implementing a 2 in. planar magnetron operated in radio-frequency mode and follows the Haberland concept. Clusters were deposited on glass or silicon substrates without mass separation in order to get high deposition rates. C:H plasma polymer clusters with a typical size of about 100 nm (measured by AFM) were prepared by RF discharge in argon/hexane atmosphere. The influence of deposition conditions was studied with respect to size distribution (AFM and SEM), chemical and physical properties (XPS and FTIR) of resultant clusters.