Progressive subretinal fibrosis and blindness in patients with multifocal granulomatous chorioretinitis

Since women with a first-degree relative with breast cancer are at increased risk for breast cancer, it is of special importance that they adhere to early detection programs. In this study, women with (389) and without (3295) a family history of breast cancer were compared with respect to risk perception, breast cancer anxiety, and early detection behavior. Special attention was paid to the role of knowing that family history is a breast cancer risk factor. It was found that 46% of "family history positives" did not know that their risk was increased by their family history. Still, family history positives had increased risk perception; our results suggest that this was partly caused by their knowing they belonged to a risk group and partly by their having experienced the disease at close range. Although family history positives had higher risk perceptions, no differences in early detection behavior were found. This could not be attributed to high anxiety levels. Implications for health education are discussed.     

Review of It's Not All In Your Head: How Worrying about Your Health Could Be Making You Sick--and What You Can Do about It.

Reviews the book, It's Not All In Your Head: How Worrying about Your Health Could Be Making You Sick--and What You Can Do about It by Gordon J. G. Asmundson and Steven Taylor (see record 2005-07983-000). In this book, Drs. Gordon Asmundson and Steven Taylor provide a 14-week, self-help program designed for people who suffer from health anxiety. The book is organized in a manner consistent with standard cognitive-behavioural therapeutic (CBT) practice, with three sections: Understanding Health Anxiety (Chapters 1-4), Breaking the Health Anxiety Cycle (Chapters 5-7), and Maintaining Your Gains (Chapters 8-10), emulating the treatment process of psychoeducation, skills training, and relapse prevention. Most impressive is the tone adopted by the authors whereby they strive to validate the experience of health anxious individuals by acknowledging the reality of their symptoms and the frustration they must feel when unsatisfactorily served by traditional medical treatments. This approach lends itself to facilitating, rather than demanding, change in behaviour. Readers are encouraged to "take control" of their health, an important message for a population that relies so heavily on the expertise and reassurance of healthcare practitioners. This book is well written and user-friendly although it may be most helpful as a tool to be employed within the therapeutic context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Study on quality control parameters of a TLD system for individual monitoring

This work intends to identify and follow up quality control parameters important for the general improvement of our thermoluminescence dosemeter (TLD) system for Individual Monitoring that is currently preparing its accreditation according to the EN ISO/IEC 17025 Standard. A retrospective analysis of the readers' start-up tests revealed an eventual variation of parameters, like the high voltage, which may affect the light collecting system, and hence the TL dose results. This was investigated and although the high voltage requires a careful look, the stability and reproducibility of the TLD system was ascertained by the results of quality control procedures. As a consequence of this work, the start-up procedure was modified and the warning levels used for the start-up daily tests of the readers were derived from a more realistic approach.     

Mnemonic facilitation of learning disabled students' memory for expository prose.

In two experiments, learning disabled adolescents read passages that described North American minerals, using materials that incorporated either mnemonic or nonmnemonic illustrations. In Experiment 1, the students were instructed to remember attribute dichotomies (e.g., hard vs. soft minerals), whereas in Experiment 2, the students had to remember specific attribute values (e.g., Hardness Levels 1–20). In both experiments, students learned significantly more when they studied passages with mnemonic pictures. This was true both on immediate performance tests (Experiments 1 and 2) and following a 1-week delay (Experiment 2). Moreover, in Experiment 2, mnemonic instruction facilitated student's ability to make correct inferences about attribute dichotomies—even though such information was never explicitly presented in the lesson. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)