Treating addictive patients at suicidal risk.

Presents a model for conceptualizing 4 basic types of suicidality among substance abusers (avoidance of painful consequences, the depressive experience of "crashing," the threat of personal loss, and environmental strain) and offers practical tips for treating the problem. Four general forms of intervention are discussed: pacing the crisis encounter; desensitizing the patient's sense of desperation; talking frankly about the suicidality; and attending to one's own needs as a counselor. These crisis-intervention tips are intended to aid counselors in handling suicidality as it is manifested in substance-abusing populations. Tips and guidelines for suicidal risk assessment with drug and alcohol abusers are given. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Error estimation for numerical differential equations

Given a capable human being and a computer, it is possible to make an approximation to the solution of a nonlinear differential equation. However, under the (usually correct) assumption that the equation is analytically intractable, the result of the computation is not the exact solution; indeed it may be so far from the exact solution as to be completely useless. We are interested in the relationship between the effort expended by the human and the computer, and the duality of the computed approximation to a partial or ordinary differential equation. To be specific, we would like to think in terms of a cost-benefit analysis. The cost of the computation is a combination of the human effort and computer resources used to obtain the approximation. The benefit includes, of course, the computed approximation, but it also includes an estimate of the quality of the approximation, that is, an error estimate. It is our opinion that in computational science, as with the experimental sciences, results should always be presented with some estimate of their accuracy. In addition, however, there is another facet to error estimation: one cannot even attempt a cost-benefit analysis or efficiency comparison of methods without an error estimate to evaluate the results     

Catalyst instabilities during the liquid phase partial oxidation of methane

A promising catalytic system for the low temperature oxidation of methane to a methanol derivative has been investigated under both batch and semi-continuous operation in two different reactor types. The system comprises of a bimetallic palladium and copper(II) chloride catalyst contained in a trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) and an aqueous phase. Methane, oxygen and a co-reductant carbon monoxide constitute the gas phase. Typical operating conditions were a temperature of 85 °C and a pressure of 83 bar.

The yields of the methyl trifluoroacetate product observed in this present work were less than those obtained in other batch autoclave works, which employed only 4 ml of liquid phase, compared with 50 ml in this study. Furthermore, an encouraging initial product formation rate of ca. 40 mol/m³ h, quickly decreased after the first hour, and came to an apparent end after only 2 h. This observation had not been reported previously.

Work performed in a semi-continuous porous tube reactor (300 ml of re-circulating liquid phase) also showed the same reaction characteristics as in the batch reactor. Thus, the deteriorating product formation rate cannot be attributed to gaseous reactant depletion (batch operation). The results suggest problems associated with catalyst instabilities, e.g. with the previously elucidated Wacker chemistry.     

Fundamental properties of radiation from a leaky mode excited on a planar transmission line

By using a specific normalization, it is shown that the TM/sub 0/ radiation field from a leaky mode that is excited by a source on any printed-circuit structure can be represented in a unified manner. The general properties of the normalized leaky-mode radiation field are examined in detail for a variety of phase and attenuation constants, as well as distances from the source, and for different types of source excitations. The normalized leaky-mode radiation field is compared to similarly normalized geometrical-optics and far-field radiation expressions to provide further insight into the nature of the radiation fields in the near- and far-field regions. The results provide a general view of leaky-mode radiation properties independent of the type of planar transmission line or background structure.     

CW high power single-lobed far-field operation of long-cavityAlGaAs-GaAs single-quantum-well laser diodes grown by MOCVD

Data on long-cavity 100-μm-wide broad-stripe laser diodes that lase with a barrow single-lobed far-field pattern in continuous room-temperature operation are presented. Diodes with a cavity length of 1250 μm emit a power of 200 mW per facet into a 2.5° lobe (full width at half maximum). Short-cavity devices (cavity length of 350 μm) lase with a continuously increasing number of lateral modes right from threshold, and exhibit a far-field divergence that is over three times greater than that of 1250-μm diodes. Explanations for the effect of increasing cavity length on the field patterns of these devices are proposed, based on the measured increase in injected carrier diffusion length in long-cavity diodes and the influence of thermal waveguiding and mirror losses on intermodel discrimination     

The effect of metal ions on neutrophil degranulation

This study examined neutrophil activation, after incubation of these cells with metal ions. Activation was examined using lysozyme and chemiluminescence assays. Cobalt ions (0.5–30 p.p.m.), chromium ions (0.5–20 p.p.m.), nickel ions (1–50 p.p.m.) and aluminium ions (0.05–7.5 p.p.m.) did not stimulate neutrophils to release lysozyme and did not stimulate a respiratory burst. Copper ions (0.25–7.5 p.p.m.) stimulated neutrophils to release lysozyme, a result which was significant at the 5% level. This was not as a result of copper ions causing neutrophils to lyse. Lysozyme secretion was inhibited when neutrophils were pre-incubated with cytochalasin B, although cytochalasin B had no effect on the enzyme secretion due to stimulation by opsonized zymosan and zymosan-activated serum. This suggests that the mechanism by which copper ions stimulate neutrophil degranulation is different from that of opsonized zymosan and zymosan-activated serum. Enzyme secretion was not accompanied by a respiratory burst.