Misinterpretation of body sensations in panic disorder

Cognitive accounts of panic predict that panic disorder patients will be particularly prone to misinterpret autonomic sensations. Several studies have produced results consistent with this prediction, but each is open to alternative interpretation. To clarify matters, 2 studies administered the Body Sensations Interpretation Questionnaire (BSIQ) to panic patients and controls. Panic patients were more likely to interpret ambiguous autonomic sensations as signs of immediately impending physical or mental disaster and were more likely than other anxiety disorder patients and nonpatients to believe these interpretations. In a 3rd study, a brief version of the BSIQ was shown to have satisfactory test-retest reliability, to change with treatment, and to discriminate treatments that varied in their effects on panic.     

Implementation Strategies for First-Class Continuations

Scheme and Smalltalk continuations may have unlimited extent. This means that a purely stack-based implementation of continuations, as suffices for most languages, is inadequate. We review several implementation strategies for continuations and compare their performance using instruction counts for the normal case and continuation-intensive synthetic benchmarks for other scenarios, including coroutines and multitasking. All of the strategies constrain a compiler in some way, resulting in indirect costs that are hard to measure directly. We use related measurements on a set of benchmarks to calculate upper bounds for these indirect costs.     

Consolidation disruption and inhibition in classical conditioning.

Discusses implications of posttrial consolidation of the memory trace for classical conditioning theory, and explores similarities and differences between consolidation-process disruption and existing concepts of inhibition. Experimental designs are proposed and discussed in relation to the operational requirements for demonstration of consolidation-process disruption. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Pseudo-Starvation Driven Energy Expenditure Negatively Affects Ovarian Follicle Development

In the present investigation, we examined whether a change in whole body energy fluxes could affect ovarian follicular development, employing mice ectopically expressing uncoupling protein 1 in skeletal muscle (UCP1-TG). Female UCP1-TG and wild-type (WT) mice were dissected at the age of 12 weeks. Energy intake and expenditure, activity, body weight and length, and body composition were measured. Plasma insulin, glucose, leptin, plasma fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21) and plasma insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1) levels were analyzed and ovarian follicle and corpus luteum numbers were counted. IGF1 signaling was analyzed by immunohistochemical staining for the activation of insulin receptor substrate 1/2 (IRS1/2) and AKT. UCP1-TG female mice had increased energy expenditure, reduced body size, maintained adiposity, and decreased IGF1 concentrations compared to their WT littermates, while preantral and antral follicle numbers were reduced by 40% and 60%, respectively. Corpora lutea were absent in 40% of the ovaries of UCP1-TG mice. Phospho-IRS1, phospho-AKT -Ser473 and -Thr308 immunostaining was present in the granulosa cells of antral follicles in WT ovaries, but faint to absent in the antral follicles of UCP1-TG mice. In conclusion, the reduction in circulating IGF1 levels due to the ectopic expression of UCP1 is associated with reduced immunostaining of the IRS1-PI3/AKT pathway, which may negatively affect ovarian follicle development and ovulation.     

Experimental Study and Numerical Simulation of the Large-Scale Testing of Polymeric Composite Journal Bearings: Two-Dimensional Modeling and Validation

The self-lubricating properties of some polymeric materials make them very valuable in bearing applications, where the lubrication is difficult or impossible. Composite bearings combine the self-lubricating properties of polymeric materials with better mechanical and thermal properties of the fibers. At present, there are few studies about these bearings and their design is mainly based on manufacturers’ experiences. This study includes an experimental and numerical study of the large-scale testing of fiber-reinforced polymeric composite bearings. In the first part of this article, a new tribological test setup for large composite bearings is demonstrated. Besides, a two-dimensional finite-element model is developed in order to study the stress distribution in the composite bearing and kinematics of the test setup. A mixed Lagrangian–Eulerian formulation is used to simulate the rotation of the shaft and the contact between the composite bearing and the shaft. Simulation results correspond closely to the experimental data, and provide careful investigation of the stress distribution in the bearing. In the second part of this article, three-dimensional quasi-static and two-dimensional dynamic models are studied.     

Growth of self-assembled InP quantum islands for red-light-emittinginjection lasers

In order to achieve laser emission in the visible part of the spectrum, we have investigated the growth of self-assembled InP quantum dots on GaInP by low-pressure metal-organic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE) using the Stranski-Krastanow growth mode. Unlike the well-established InAs-GaAs system, when InP is deposited on GaInP, typically, two types of coherently strained islands with different sizes are formed. A high density of small islands is favored when using growth conditions with a reduced surface diffusion, i.e., low temperatures, high growth rates, and substrates with high misorientation angles. After the deposition of 3.4 monolayers of InP at 580°C on GaAs-substrates with a surface angle of 15° to the next (111)B-plane, 2.10¹⁰ InP dots per square centimeter with an average height of 4 nm were assembled. The emission of these InP islands at 1.72 eV (4.2 K) shows an inhomogeneous broadening of 42 meV because of the size fluctuation of the quantum dots. At 90 K, lasing from self-assembled InP quantum islands was observed above a threshold current density of 288 A/cm². The detected laser line is located at 1.8 eV, about 80 meV higher than is the ground-state transition energy. We attribute this behavior to lasing from excited states in agreement with power-dependent photoluminescence experiments. For temperatures above 150 K, the threshold current density increases dramatically because of a thermally activated escape of carriers up to 4.9 k17/cm² at room temperature, where the characteristic temperature is 35 K. Injection lasers containing stacked InP quantum islands and AlGaInP barrier layers with a higher band offset may exhibit an improved temperature dependence     

Wavelength-graded horizontal cavity laser array with postgrowthadjustment of wavelength

Wavelength-graded emission from a visible red GaInP-AlGaInP laser diode array has been achieved with the contradirectional surface-mode coupling technique. The wavelength control is attained by postgrowth adjustment of the thickness of the surface waveguide. The horizontal cavity lasers show both edge and surface emission (beam divergence 0.12°). The thermal red-shift of the wavelength is 0.028±0.002 nm/K. They show single-mode emission with a typical spectral linewidth of 0.09 nm and a sidemode suppression ratio up to 29 dB. The wavelength spacing between the individual lasers is 0.76±0.08 nm yielding a total range across the array of 5.4 nm (from 681.5 to 686.9 nm)     

Social phobia: a preliminary cross-national comparison

A simple protocol for the growth and differentiation of adult Mongolian gerbil epidermal cells is reported. Insulin (8 micrograms/ml) and reduced levels of serum supplementation (2%) were sufficient for the maintenance of these cells in culture. Primary cultures were maintained as a proliferative monolayer in a medium with low calcium concentration (< 0.3 mM). Terminal differentiation of cultures was induced by raising the calcium concentration (1.6 mM) in the medium. These results support the concept derived from mouse epidermal cell culture that calcium is an important regulator of mammalian epidermal cell growth and differentiation. The present protocol also represents a useful tool for studies of mechanisms involved in epidermal cell growth and differentiation in a laboratory animal.