Beyond the "Self in Self-Efficacy: Spouse Confidence Predicts Patient Survival Following Heart Failure.

Ratings of patient efficacy to manage illness, made by 191 congestive heart failure patients and their spouses, were examined as predictors of patients' survival over the next 4 years. When considered alone, both the patient's self-efficacy and the spouse's confidence ratings predicted survival, but only spouse confidence remained significant when both partners" efficacy ratings were included in the same Cox regression model. The overlapping prognostic significance of spouse confidence and a global, multicomponent measure of marital quality positioned the former as a proxy for the latter, reflecting a fundamentally social protective factor in patient survival. Successful adaptation to heart failure appears to involve more than the patient's personal agency, and psychosocial data from spouses can improve prediction of patient outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dynamics of a six degrees-of-freedom parallel robot actuated by three two-wheel carts

This paper deals with a new, six degrees-of-freedom parallel manipulator comprising a platform, three links and three two-wheel carts supporting the links. The wheels are independently driven, allowing the manipulator a workspace which is limited only by the lengths of the links and the size of the plane on which the carts move. The direct and inverse dynamic problems of the manipulator are solved. It is shown that the Jacobian associated with the direct problem becomes identically singular when used to solve the inverse problem, and hence must be redefined; and that once redefined, it losses its standard structure and cannot be used to solve the direct problem. Three solution methods to the inverse problem are presented and are shown to lead to indistinguishable results.     

Molecular modeling and mechanism of action of human decay-accelerating factor

A model of the regulatory region of human decay accelerating factor (DAF) was built based on the known coordinates of a fragment of the structurally and functionally homologous serum protein, factor H. According to this model, the four short consensus repeats (SCRs) in DAF are arranged in a helical fashion. A positively charged surface area on SCRs 2 and 3, two of the three repeating units essential for function, is postulated to be the primary recognition site for the C3 convertases C4b2a and C3bBb. This area encompasses a cavity on SCR 2, as well as part of the groove on the SCR 2-SCR 3 interface. Two additional surface depressions are centered around the C-terminal disulfide bridges of SCRs 3 and 4. These are likely to provide additional ligand binding sites. Based on this model in conjunction with sequence homology to the Ba fragment of factor B, a mechanism of DAF's accelerated convertase decay action is postulated.     

Empirically supported couple and family interventions for marital distress and adult mental health problems.

This article evaluates the efficacy, effectiveness, and clinical significance of empirically supported couple and family interventions for treating marital distress and individual adult disorders, including anxiety disorders, depression, sexual dysfunctions, alcoholism and problem drinking, and schizophrenia. In addition to consideration of different theoretical approaches to treating these disorders, different ways of including a partner or family in treatment are highlighted: (a) partner–family-assisted interventions, (b) disorder-specific partner–family interventions, and (c) more general couple–family therapy. Findings across diagnostic groups and issues involved in applying efficacy criteria to these populations are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Couples coping with congestive heart failure: Role and gender differences in psychological distress.

Psychological distress and marital quality were assessed with male (n=128) and female (n=49) congestive-heart-failure (CHF) patients and their spouses. Hopkins Symptom Check List-25 scores were in the distressed range for 57% of patients and 40% of spouses. This role difference was greater for men than for women, and a gender difference (more distress in women than men) was greater for spouses than for patients. The patient's distress, but not the spouse's, reflected the severity of the patient's illness, and distress for both partners correlated negatively with ratings of marital quality. Female-patient couples reported better relationship quality than male-patient couples, however, and a mediation analysis indicated that the gender difference in spouse distress could be explained by marital quality. Results highlight the contextual nature of CHF distress and suggest that role differences in distress vary by gender. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Singularity condition of six-degree-of-freedom three-legged parallel robots based on grassmann-cayley algebra

This paper addresses the singularity condition of a broad class of six-degree-of-freedom three-legged parallel robots that have one spherical joint somewhere along each leg. First, the actuator screws for each leg-chain are determined. Then Grassmann-Cayley algebra and the associated superbracket decomposition are used to find the condition for which the Jacobian (or rigidity matrix) containing these screws is rank-deficient. These tools are advantageous since they facilitate manipulation of coordinate-free expressions representing geometric entities, thus enabling the geometrical interpretation of the singularity condition to be obtained more easily. Using these tools, the singularity condition of (at least) 144 combinations of this class is delineated to be the intersection of four planes at one point. These four planes are defined by the locations of the spherical joints and the directions of the zero-pitch screws.     

Demand–withdraw couple interaction moderates retention in cognitive–behavioral versus family-systems treatments for alcoholism.

Individually focused Attribute?×?Treatment interaction (ATI) research has neglected attributes of couple and family relationships that may moderate response to different treatments. Sixty-three couples with a male alcoholic partner participated in up to 20 sessions of either cognitive–behavioral therapy (CBT) or family-systems therapy (FST). As hypothesized, couples high on pretreatment measures of demand–withdraw interaction (DWI) attended fewer sessions of CBT, whereas DWI made little difference in FST. A specific, alcohol-related wife-demand/husband-withdraw pattern moderated retention more than the opposite husband-demand/wife-withdraw pattern, although the general affective quality of a couple's relationship may have contributed to ATIs as well. Results illustrate the importance of relational moderators in ATI research and suggest possible benefits of matching alcoholics to treatments when the unit of treatment involves more than 1 person. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ten requirements for a theory of change

In order to focus the discussion on temporal reasoning in Artificial Intelligence, we propose a list of requirements that a rigorous theory of time and change must meet. These requirements refer to the desired expressiveness of the formalism (such as representing continuous change) and to potential pitfalls (such as theinter- andintra-frame problems) that should be avoided. We “benchmark” some of the better known temporal formalisms that have been proposed in Artificial Intelligence by stating which of the requirements are met, in our opinion, by each formalism.