Social support from family and friends as a buffer of low spousal support among mothers of critically ill children: A multilevel modeling approach.

Objective: To investigate whether social support from family and friends (family/friend support) attenuated ("buffered") adverse effects of having low spouse support (spousal support) among mothers of children undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). Design: One hundred sixty-three married mothers who were their child's primary caregiver during treatment completed assessments during the child's hospitalization for HSCT and 3-, 6-, and 12-months post-HSCT. Measures: Family/friend support and spousal support were assessed during hospitalization. Maternal physical and mental health-related functioning (the main outcome measures) were assessed at all timepoints. Results: Multilevel modeling was used to analyze trajectories of maternal functioning. Findings indicated that mothers with low spousal support and low family/friend support demonstrated the worst functioning across all timepoints. Mothers with low spousal support and high family/friend support demonstrated significantly better functioning, supporting the hypothesized buffering effect. Their functioning compared to the functioning of mothers with high spousal support. Moreover, mothers with high family/friend support demonstrated trajectories of physical health-related functioning that were more stable than the trajectories of mothers with low family/friend support. Conclusion: These findings have clinical implications in addition to advancing knowledge of social support processes among couples coping with the shared stressor of a child's life-threatening illness and treatment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Pulsed quantum cascade laser-based cavity ring-down spectroscopy for ammonia detection in breath

Breath analysis can be a valuable, noninvasive tool for the clinical diagnosis of a number of pathological conditions. The detection of ammonia in exhaled breath is of particular interest for it has been linked to kidney malfunction and peptic ulcers. Pulsed cavity ringdown spectroscopy in the mid-IR region has developed into a sensitive analytical technique for trace gas analysis. A gas analyzer based on a pulsed mid-IR quantum cascade laser operating near 970 cm(-1) has been developed for the detection of ammonia levels in breath. We report a sensitivity of approximately 50 parts per billion with a 20 s time resolution for ammonia detection in breath with this system. The challenges and possible solutions for the quantification of ammonia in human breath by the described technique are discussed.     

Off-axis cavity enhanced spectroscopy based on a pulsed quantum cascade laser for sensitive detection of ammonia and ethylene

A pulsed, distributed feedback (DFB) quantum cascade (QC) laser centered at 970 cm(-1) was used in combination with an off-axis cavity enhanced absorption (CEA) spectroscopic technique for the detection of ammonia and ethylene. Here, the laser is coupled into a high-finesse cavity with an optical path length of ～76 m. The cavity is installed into a 53 cm long sample cell with a volume of 0.12 L. The laser is excited with short current pulses (5-10 ns), and the pulse amplitude is modulated with an external current ramp, resulting in a ～0.3 cm(-1) frequency scan. A demodulation approach followed by numerical filtering was utilized to improve the signal-to-noise ratio. We demonstrated detection limits of ~15 ppb and ～20 ppb for ammonia and ethylene, respectively, with less than 5 s averaging time.     

Multirate-based fast parallel algorithms for 2-D DHT-based real-valued discrete Gabor transform

Novel algorithms for the multirate and fast parallel implementation of the 2-D discrete Hartley transform (DHT)-based real-valued discrete Gabor transform (RDGT) and its inverse transform are presented in this paper. A 2-D multirate-based analysis convolver bank is designed for the 2-D RDGT, and a 2-D multirate-based synthesis convolver bank is designed for the 2-D inverse RDGT. The parallel channels in each of the two convolver banks have a unified structure and can apply the 2-D fast DHT algorithm to speed up their computations. The computational complexity of each parallel channel is low and is independent of the Gabor oversampling rate. All the 2-D RDGT coefficients of an image are computed in parallel during the analysis process and can be reconstructed in parallel during the synthesis process. The computational complexity and time of the proposed parallel algorithms are analyzed and compared with those of the existing fastest algorithms for 2-D discrete Gabor transforms. The results indicate that the proposed algorithms are the fastest, which make them attractive for real-time image processing.     

Functional impairment, marital quality, and patient psychological distress as predictors of psychological distress among cancer patients' spouses.

This study investigated contextual determinants of psychological distress among 197 spouses of cancer patients. women, 30–82 years old). It was hypothesized that higher levels of patient functional impairment would lead to greater patient distress. Patient distress, in turn, would lead to lower spouse marital satisfaction and ultimately to higher spouse distress. Spouses completed measures of distress and marital quality at three time points. Cancer patients rated their functional impairment and psychological distress at the same time points. Results indicated that at all time points, greater patient impairment was associated with higher levels of patient distress which, in turn, was related to lower marital satisfaction. However, marital quality was related to spouse distress at only 1 time point, but spouse distress was directly associated with patient distress at each time point. Implications for cancer patients and spouses are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceived control, coping efficacy, and avoidance coping as mediators between spousal unsupportive behaviors and psychological distress.

This study examined whether avoidance, coping efficacy, and perceived control mediate the effects of spouses" unsupportive behaviors on patient psychological distress among 191 married individuals enrolled in cancer treatment. Results of the structural equation analyses suggested that avoidance and coping efficacy mediated the relationship between spouses" unsupportive behaviors and patient psychological distress. Perceived control of emotional aspects of the illness, including emotional responses and relationships with family and friends, and perceived control of the medical course of the cancer did not mediate the relationship between spouses" unsupportive behaviors and patient psychological distress. These findings suggest 2 mechanisms to explain why unsupportive responses from spouses may be associated with psychological distress among cancer patients. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Haptic information in Internet-based teleoperation

Many tasks can be done easily by humans turn out to be very difficult to accomplish with a teleoperated robot. The main reason for this is the lack of tactile sensing, which cannot be replaced by visual feedback alone. Once haptic devices are developed, their potential in many fields is obvious. Especially, in teleoperation systems, where haptic feedback can increase the efficiency and even render some tasks feasible. This paper studies Internet-based teleoperation systems that include haptic feedback, concentrating on the control of such systems and their performance. The potential of this technology and its advantages are explored. In addition, key issues, such as stability, synchronization, and transparency are analyzed and studied. Specifically, an event-based planning and control of Internet-based teleoperation systems is presented with experimental results of several implemented system scenarios in micro- and macro-scales     

On parallel push–relabel based algorithms for bipartite maximum matching

We study multithreaded push–relabel based algorithms for computing maximum cardinality matching in bipartite graphs. Matching is a fundamental combinatorial problem with applications in a wide variety of problems in science and engineering. We are motivated by its use in the context of sparse linear solvers for computing the maximum transversal of a matrix. Other applications can be found in many fields such as bioinformatics (Azad et al., 2010) [4], scheduling (Timmer and Jess, 1995) [27], and chemical structure analysis (John, 1995) [14]. We implement and test our algorithms on several multi-socket multicore systems and compare their performance to state-of-the-art augmenting path-based serial and parallel algorithms using a test set comprised of a wide range of real-world instances.