Effectiveness of Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment for Panic Disorder Versus Treatment as Usual in a Managed Care Setting.

Eighty clients enrolled in a managed care health plan who identified panic disorder as their primary presenting problem were randomly assigned to treatment by a therapist recently trained in a manual-based empirically supported psychotherapy (M. G. Craske, E. Meadows, & D. H. Barlow, 1994) or a therapist conducting treatment as usual (TAU). Participants in both conditions showed significant change from pre- to posttreatment on a number of measures. Those receiving panic control therapy (PCT) showed greater levels of change than those receiving TAU. Among treatment completers, an average of 42.9% of those in PCT and 18.8% in TAU achieved clinically significant change across measures. The results are discussed with reference to the dissemination of PCT and other evidence-based psychotherapies to clinical practice settings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An improved method for combined autoradiography and histochemistry: the simultaneous detection of 6-3H thymidine and acid phosphatase activity in cryostat sections of mouse thymus and duodenum

A new method is described that enables the simultaneous detection of 6-³H thymidine incorporation and acid phosphatase activity in the same tissue section. Histochemically, naphthol AS B1 released by tissue based acid phosphatase activity from the substrate naphthyl AS B1 phosphoric acid is coupled with a range of diazonium salts to produce insoluble azo dyes. The azo dye tests result in a particulate localization of lysosomal acid phosphatase and also label diffuse sources associated with cell death. The tests selected permit the application of photographic emulsion without the necessity of an inert barrier layer to separate the emulsion from the histochemically treated cryosections. The localization of 6-³H thymidine incorporation and cell death in mouse thymus and duodenum is demonstrated and comparative counts estimating the distribution of 6-³H thymidine incorporation and hydrolase labelled cell death in the thymus are presented. Young mouse thymus (5 weeks) was found to contain 1·36 ± 0·12% dying cells and 6·78 ± 0·03% thymidine incorporating cells, whilst old mouse thymus (53 weeks) was found to contain 2·34 ± 0·6% dying cells and 5·29 ± 0·37% thymidine incorporating cells.     

Does who you marry matter for your health? Influence of patients' and spouses' personality on their partners' psychological well-being following coronary artery bypass surgery.

Research suggests that presurgical personality attributes influence postsurgical well-being in both patients and their spouses in the context of coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) surgery. The authors hypothesized that a spouse's characteristics would influence a partner's psychological well-being, regardless of whether he or she was the patient or the caregiver. In this study, 111 male patients and their caregiver spouses completed measures of neuroticism, optimism, perceived marital satisfaction, and depression prior to elective CABG. Follow-up was conducted at 18 months. As expected, higher caregiver presurgical neuroticism predicted higher patient depressive symptoms at follow-up, with caregiver's concurrent 18-month affect controlled for. Likewise, higher patient presurgical neuroticism predicted higher caregiver depressive symptoms at follow-up. Additionally, higher patient presurgical depressive symptoms and lower presurgical optimism contributed to greater caregiving burden. Relationship satisfaction moderated these effects. These results suggest that partners' personality traits are important determinants of both patients' and their caregiving spouses' well-being. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Superplastic Al-Cu-Li-Mg-Zr alloys

Superplastic properties have been developed in Al-Cu-Li-Mg-Zr alloys. The alloys have low Zr levels (≤0.2 wt pct) and are experimental compositions that were originally designed as low-density, highmodulus, and high strength alloys for room temperature, aerospace structural applications. The alloys have been manufactured both by an ingot metallurgy (IM) route and a powder metallurgy (PM) route involving rapid solidification processing. After conventional manufacturing, the alloys are not superplastic but require further thermomechanical processing. The microstructural changes that occur during this processing are described. Superplastic properties have been evaluated as a function of temperature, strain rate, and processing history. Prior to thermomechanical processing, the alloys have elevated-temperature ductilities of 100 to 200 pct, strain rate sensitivities of about 0.25, and activation energies corresponding to lattice diffusion. After thermomechanical processing, the alloys have ductilities of 500 to 1000 pct, strain rate sensitivities of about 0.4, and activation energies corresponding to grain boundary diffusion. In addition, room temperature properties have been measured in the solution-treated and peak aged (T6) condition for all the alloys and comparison is made with other commercial, non-Li containing, superplastic alloys. Particular emphasis is placed on properties of interest in aerospace applications such as specific modulus, specific strength, and a buckling failure criterion.     

Fitting in and feeling fine: Conformity and coping motives as mediators of the relationship between social anxiety and problematic drinking.

The present research was conducted to clarify the relationships among social anxiety, alcohol consumption, alcohol-related problems, and negative-reinforcement drinking motives among college students. Heavy drinking students (N = 316, 53.80% female) completed self-report measures of social anxiety, alcohol consumption, alcohol-related problems, and drinking motives. Findings indicated that students higher in social anxiety consumed less alcohol but experienced more negative consequences. Moreover, the relationship between social anxiety and negative consequences was mediated by coping and conformity drinking motives in addition to alcohol consumption. In the context of social anxiety, the current research demonstrates the importance of examining problematic drinking as distinct constructs: alcohol consumption and negative consequences. Findings are also discussed in terms of implications for interventions with socially anxious students. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Managing cooperation in e-business systems

E-Business management involves monitoring and controlling all forms of business transactions conducted over the Internet, extranets, and related communications technologies and services. As such, it includes the management of networks, systems, and software applications. E-Business management is beginning to depend increasingly on knowledge of the cooperative aspects of partners in a business chain and the cooperative aspects of stake-holders in e-business operations. The study of cooperation offers many opportunities to apply social network analyses to derive software solutions for the management of e-business. This article provides a methodology and case study that recognises the dimension of cooperation among a multiplicity of organisations, coined “Awareness-based Cooperative Management.” It is aimed towards the design or re-engineering of effective e-business management systems, where the key concept involves the degree of awareness held by e-business stake-holders. Awareness is defined in terms of stake-holder interactions and artefacts used in those interactions such as buyer specifications, requests for proposals, offers, service level agreements, and the like. Since awareness is an indispensable, albeit an inherently vague concept, we cast it and reason about it with the apparatus of fuzzy logic.

A Database and Evaluation Methodology for Optical Flow

The quantitative evaluation of optical flow algorithms by Barron et al. (1994) led to significant advances in performance. The challenges for optical flow algorithms today go beyond the datasets and evaluation methods proposed in that paper. Instead, they center on problems associated with complex natural scenes, including nonrigid motion, real sensor noise, and motion discontinuities. We propose a new set of benchmarks and evaluation methods for the next generation of optical flow algorithms. To that end, we contribute four types of data to test different aspects of optical flow algorithms: (1) sequences with nonrigid motion where the ground-truth flow is determined by tracking hidden fluorescent texture, (2) realistic synthetic sequences, (3) high frame-rate video used to study interpolation error, and (4) modified stereo sequences of static scenes. In addition to the average angular error used by Barron et al., we compute the absolute flow endpoint error, measures for frame interpolation error, improved statistics, and results at motion discontinuities and in textureless regions. In October 2007, we published the performance of several well-known methods on a preliminary version of our data to establish the current state of the art. We also made the data freely available on the web at . Subsequently a number of researchers have uploaded their results to our website and published papers using the data. A significant improvement in performance has already been achieved. In this paper we analyze the results obtained to date and draw a large number of conclusions from them.     

Col4a3-/- Mice on Balb/C Background Have Less Severe Cardiorespiratory Phenotype and SGLT2 Over-Expression Compared to 129x1/SvJ and C57Bl/6 Backgrounds

Alport syndrome (AS) is a hereditary renal disorder with no etiological therapy. In the preclinical Col4a3^-/- model of AS, disease progression and severity vary depending on mouse strain. The sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) is emerging as an attractive therapeutic target in cardiac/renal pathologies, but its application to AS remains untested. This study investigates cardiorespiratory function and SGLT2 renal expression in Col4a3^-/- mice from three different genetic backgrounds, 129x1/SvJ, C57Bl/6 and Balb/C. male Col4a3^-/- 129x1/SvJ mice displayed alterations consistent with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). Female, but not male, C57Bl/6 and Balb/C Col4a3^-/- mice exhibited mild changes in systolic and diastolic function of the heart by echocardiography. Male C57Bl/6 Col4a3^-/- mice presented systolic dysfunction by invasive hemodynamic analysis. All strains except Balb/C males demonstrated alterations in respiratory function. SGLT2 expression was significantly increased in AS compared to WT mice from all strains. However, cardiorespiratory abnormalities and SGLT2 over-expression were significantly less in AS Balb/C mice compared to the other two strains. Systolic blood pressure was significantly elevated only in mutant 129x1/SvJ mice. The results provide further evidence for strain-dependent cardiorespiratory and hypertensive phenotype variations in mouse AS models, corroborated by renal SGLT2 expression, and support ongoing initiatives to develop SGLT2 inhibitors for the treatment of AS.