Psychological adjustment of children with sickle cell disease: Stability and change over a 10-month period.

Rates of poor psychological adjustment of children with sickle cell disease remained relatively constant over initial and follow-up assessment points. 50 children (aged 7–12 yrs) and their mothers completed the initial protocol. 30 children completed the follow-up plus 5 additional children and their mothers. These Ss were aged 7–24 yrs at follow-up. With initial levels of adjustment controlled, children's strategies for coping with pain accounted for a significant increment in child-reported symptoms and mother-reported internalizing behavior problems at follow-up beyond the contribution of illness and demographic parameters and follow-up interval. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Enhancing the brightness of thin-film electroluminescent displaysby improving the emission process

AC thin film electroluminescent (ACTFEL) devices emit light laterally in addition to conventional surface emission. Because of the waveguiding in ACTFEL devices, lateral emission is stronger than surface emission. However, the former is ignored for displays. This note demonstrates that mirrors can be fabricated into substrates to reflect upward the lateral emission, which can then be summed with surface emission for displays. Use of standard silicon and thin film technology has demonstrated that the reflected lateral emission is a factor of three brighter than conventional surface emission. hence the effective efficiency of out-coupling the light has been improved for an ACTFEL device     

Spatiotemporal boundary formation: Boundary, form, and motion perception from transformations of surface elements.

Continuous surface boundaries, object shape, and global motion can be perceived from information that is fragmentary in both space and time. The authors report investigations indicating that accretion and deletion of texture is only 1 member of a broader class of element transformations that produce boundaries, shape, and motion, through spatiotemporal boundary formation (SBF). Four experiments exploring SBF are reported. The 1st 3 examine the class of transformations producing SBF, indicating that local element changes in color, orientation, or location are all effective. A 4th experiment examines temporal constraints on SBF. Integration of local element changes to produce boundaries, form, and global motion appears to be confined to a 165-msec window. Two classes of spatiotemporal integration models are considered; the relation between SBF and other cases of boundary interpolation are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Verbesserung des Vakuums in Isoliergefäßen aus Glas

Improving the vacuum would increase the insulation capacity of commercially available glass containers by a factor of about two. To do this, pressures of 10^?4 mbar must be attained. Different approaches were taken to meet this objective. As an alternative to today's commonly practiced sealing method, three possibilities are introduced which eliminate the necessity of pump stub narrowing which causes reduced conductance. Furthermore, depending on the sealing process used, the gases occuring during sealing are either avoided completly or they can at least be reduced by having the chance of exact temperature control resp. by a lower separation temperature. A completly different approach was taken by using Getters, of which a metal hydride on a TiVMn base proved especially suitable. It is activated by heat and can be integrated into the normal production process without any problem. Aside from a shorter pump period, the added advantage here is the containment of the gasses occuring during sealing as well as that of the longterm gasses.     

Erythrocyte sodium lithium countertransport in normal and hypertensive pregnancy: relation to haemodynamic changes

OBJECTIVE: To establish the changes in erythrocyte sodium lithium countertransport (SLC) with advancing normal pregnancy and to determine if these changes were different in pregnancy induced hypertension (PIH). The changes in both groups were assessed in relation to haemodynamic changes. DESIGN: SLC, mean arterial pressure (MAP), cardiac output (CO) and total peripheral vascular resistance (TPVR) were determined serially during normal pregnancy and cross-sectionally in PIH. Women were studied again 20 weeks after delivery where possible. SETTING: Routine antenatal clinic and antenatal ward of a regional reference centre. SUBJECTS: Fifty-one normal primigravid women were studied serially and 41 primigravid women with PIH were studied at time of diagnosis. RESULTS: During normal pregnancy SLC (mmol Li/h/l cells) increased from a nonpregnant value of 0.24 +/- 0.02 (mean +/- SEM) to 0.32 +/- 0.02 at 14 weeks, and 0.37 +/- 0.02 at 20 weeks gestation. This was maintained until 38 weeks (0.40 +/- 0.02). The increase until 20 weeks occurred at the time of greatest change in CO (5.10 +/- 0.18 to 6.79 +/- 0.20 l/min) and TPVR (1327 +/- 58 to 969 +/- 33 dyn/s/cm-5). The decrease in TPVR with a rise in SLC is opposite to the relation reported in essential hypertension so that a functional relation is unlikely. However, the changes within pregnancy were positively correlated (r = 0.43, P < 0.01). In hypertensive pregnancies TPVR was elevated compared with normotensive pregnancies (1543 +/- 100 vs 1090 +/- 37) but the SLC was not different from that found in normotensive pregnancies (0.43 +/- 0.02 vs 0.40 +/- 0.02). CONCLUSIONS: The changes in SLC activity suggest dynamic effects on erythrocyte membrane function during pregnancy. However, no differences could be found between normal and hypertensive pregnancy and SLC is unlikely to be of value as a marker of hypertensive risk during pregnancy.     

Regulated production of type I collagen and inflammatory cytokines by peripheral blood fibrocytes

We recently described a novel population of blood-borne cells, termed fibrocytes, that display a distinct cell surface phenotype (collagen+/CD13+/CD34+/CD45+), rapidly enter sites of tissue injury, and contribute to scar formation. To further characterize the role of these cells in vivo, we examined the expression of type I collagen and cytokine mRNAs by cells isolated from wound chambers implanted into mice. Five days after chamber implantation, CD34+ fibrocytes but not CD14+ monocytes or CD90+ T cells expressed mRNA for type I collagen. Fibrocytes purified from wound chambers also were found to express mRNA for IL-1beta, IL-10, TNF-alpha, JE/MCP, MIP-1alpha, MIP-1beta, MIP-2, PDGF-A, TGF-beta1, and M-CSF. The addition of IL-1beta (1-100 ng/ml), a critical mediator in wound healing, to fibrocytes isolated from human peripheral blood induced the secretion of chemokines (MIP-1alpha, MIP-1beta, MCP-1, IL-8, and GRO alpha), hemopoietic growth factors (IL-6, IL-10, and macrophage-CSF), and the fibrogenic cytokine TNF-alpha. By contrast, IL-1beta decreased the constitutive secretion of type I collagen as measured by ELISA. Additional evidence for a role for fibrocytes in collagen production in vivo was obtained in studies of livers obtained from Schistosoma japonicum-infected mice. Mouse fibrocytes localized to areas of granuloma formation and connective matrix deposition. We conclude that fibrocytes are an important source of cytokines and type I collagen during both the inflammatory and the repair phase of the wound healing response. Furthermore, IL-1beta may act on fibrocytes to effect a phenotypic transition between a repair/remodeling and a proinflammatory mode.     

Simultaneous over- and underconfidence: The role of error in judgment processes.

Two empirical judgment phenomena appear to contradict each other. In the revision-of-opinion literature, subjective probability (SP) judgments have been analyzed as a function of objective probability (OP) and generally have been found to be conservative, that is, to represent underconfidence. In the calibration literature, analyses of OP (operationalized as relative frequency correct) as a function of SP have led to the opposite conclusion, that judgment is generally overconfident. Reanalysis of 3 studies shows that both results can be obtained from the same set of data, depending on the method of analysis. The simultaneous effects are then generated and factors influencing them are explored by means of a model that instantiates a very general theory of how SP estimates arise from true judgments perturbed by random error. Theoretical and practical implications of the work are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rapid analysis of polymer homologues and additives with SFE/SFC-MS coupling

A rapid and easy analysis method for polymers is presented. The method involves sample preparation by SFE, separation of the extracted compounds by SFC and simultaneous quantitative detection by FID, as well as identification of unknowns by MS. The applications illustrate how structural research work and routine polymer analysis can be done with this time saving method.     

Correlation between left ventricular hypertrophy and GAA trinucleotide repeat length in Friedreich's ataxia

BACKGROUND: Friedreich's ataxia (FA), the most common inherited ataxia, is associated frequently with cardiac hypertrophy, and death is often cardiac related. Recently, the disease has been associated with a mutation that consists of an unstable expansion of GAA repeats in the first intron of the gene encoding frataxin on chromosome 9. METHODS AND RESULTS: We studied 44 consecutive patients with FA, determined the size of GAA expansions in the frataxin gene, and examined the relation between the genotype and cardiac phenotype assessed by M-mode and two-dimensional echocardiography. All the patients were homozygous for the mutation. The size of the GAA expansion on the smaller allele varied from 270 to 1200. We found a correlation between the size of GAA expansion and the left ventricular wall thickness (r = .51, P < .001) and the left ventricular mass index (r = .45, P = .002). Left ventricular hypertrophy was observed in 81% of patients with a number of GAA repeats above the median value of 770 compared with only 14% in the other group (P = .002). CONCLUSIONS: These data demonstrate that in FA, the severity of left ventricular hypertrophy is related to the number of GAA repeats. These results suggest that abnormalities of the gene encoding frataxin, a protein of unknown function highly expressed in the normal heart, may play an important role in the modulation of cardiac hypertrophy.     

Predicting posttraumatic growth in breast cancer survivors.

Wide variability exists with respect to how breast cancer survivors respond to common psychological and psychosocial challenges of their disease, ranging from posttraumatic stress disorder to posttraumatic growth. This cross-sectional study examined contextual, disease-related, and intraindividual predictors of posttraumatic growth in 224 randomly selected breast cancer survivors. A series of hierarchical regression analyses found that age at diagnosis, marital status, employment, education, perceived intensity of disease, and active coping accounted for 34%, 35%, and 28% of the variance in growth in relationships with others, new possibilities, and appreciation for life. These findings suggest that a more comprehensive model of growth will be helpful in understanding the various factors that play a role in breast cancer survivors' perception of psychological and psychosocial growth. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)