We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To send content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about sending content to .
To send content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about sending to your Kindle.
Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
We investigated the prevalence of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) among patients with schizophrenia. We also investigated the differences in the psychotic symptoms and suicidality between patients with schizophrenia who did or did not have OC symptoms.
Methods:
Seventy-one subjects with the DSM-IV diagnosis of schizophrenia were evaluated by the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I disorders, the Yale-Brown Obsessive-compulsive Scale and the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale.
Results:
The OCD patients with schizophrenia were 20 (28.2%) among 71 subjects. The 20 subjects with OCD had significantly more severe negative and total psychotic symptoms evaluated with PANSS than subjects without OCD. The schizophrenia with OCD had significant higher recent suicidal attempt rate than the subjects without OCD.
Conclusions:
The results of this study suggest the possibility that OCD symptoms in schizophrenia may be related to negative symptoms and the OC symptoms may be related to the impulsivity expressed as suicidal attempts.
It has been suggested that dopamine as well as serotonin are associated with the pathophysiology of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Using iodine-123 labelled N-(3-iodopropen-2-yl)-2β-carbomethoxy-3β-(4-chlorophenyl) tropane ([123I]IPT) single-photon emission tomography (SPECT), we investigated the dopamine transporter (DAT) density of the basal ganglia in patients with OCD before and after treatment with serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SRI). Ten patients with OCD before and after treatment with SRI were included. We performed brain SPECT 2 hours after intravenous administration of [123I]IPT and carried out analyses of the obtained SPECT data, which were reconstructed for the assessment of the specific/non-specific DAT binding ratio in the basal ganglia. We then examined the correlation between the scores of OCD symptoms changes, assessed with Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS), and DAT binding ratio.
Patients with OCD after treatment with SRI showed a significantly decreased DAT binding ratio in right basal ganglia compared with pre-treatment. The significant correlation was found between the rates of total scores and compulsion scores changes of the Y-BOCS and the changes of DAT binding ratio of the right basal ganglia. These findings suggest that the dopaminergic neurotransmitter system of the basal ganglia could play an important role in the symptoms improvement of OCD patients.
In many cultures, weather and season have been thought to influence our physical and mental health. However studies of the effect of meteorological factors on suicidal behavior have yielded inconclusive and often contradictory results. Furthermore, little attention has been paid to weather is associated with suicide in Asian countries as shown in Western countries, even though suicide rates in Korea have increased steadily.
Objectives:
To study the effect of weather condition on suicidal behavior in Daejon, Korea. in this study, suicidal attempters who had visited the Eulji Medical Center were included.
Aims:
The aim of this study is to further explore the differential effect of certain climatic factors on suicidal attempt probabilities in Daejon, Korea between 2009 and 2011.
Methods:
Three-year data of suicidal attempts within Daejon, Korea were analysed in relation to meteorological data, which were measured at the Daejon Meteorological Administration. Data on suicidal attempt and weather were matched.
Results:
Our study indicates that temperature and duration of sunshine are significant associated with the suicidal attempts (p < 0.05). These correlation were independent of age and sex.
Conclusions:
Within the interaction of biological and environmental influences in the development of suicidal ideation and behavior, some weather conditions may additionally contribute to the risk of suicidal attempt.
This research aimed to identify the effects of depressive mood of female high school students on dysmenorrhea and sleep quality.
Methods
This research was conducted for 2 months from September 2015 to October 2015. A total of 3 types of self-reported questionnaire were adopted for the research. Control group was separated by Zung Self-rating Depression Scale (ZSDS). Each group adopted a self-made questionnaire for research on menstruation and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) for research on sleep. Chi2 test and AVOVA analysis through SPSS-21 were used as statistics methods.
Results
Analysis was made on 72 female students who submitted clear answers to the questionnaire. There were 34 students from normal mood group and 38 from depressive mood group. Depressive group presented meaningful results on regularity, pain severity, and drug treatment history of menstruation. Particularly, depressive group had 51.4% among subjects having severe menstrual pain of grade 3 by VMS (verbal multidimensional scoring system), way higher than 27.6% among subjects in the normal group. PSQI for sleep showed a meaningful result that 20.8% of those in the normal group were diagnosed with sleep disorder compared to 86.8% for the depressive group. A meaningful difference was seen in sleep latency, sleep duration, sleep disturbance, use of sleep medication, daytime functional disturbance among 7 items of PSQI.
Conclusion
This research showed that female high school students with depressive mood had high frequency and severity in dysmenorrhea and sleep quality disturbance.
Disclosure of interest
The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.
Although prenatal maternal smoking is an established risk factor for offspring's attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), the studies of association between paternal smoking and childhood ADHD have produced inconsistent results.
Objective
The objective of the present study was to determine whether paternal smoking during early developmental period is associated with an increased risk of offspring's ADHD.
Methods
We conducted hospital-based case-control study with 107 medically diagnosed ADHD cases and 205 controls (aged 6–12 years). The diagnoses of ADHD were assessed with DSM-IV based semi-structured diagnostic interviews. Paternal smoking behavior was assessed with spouse-report questionnaire. The association between exposure to paternal smoking and ADHD were analyzed using multivariate logistic regression analysis. The primary outcome of interest was an odds ratio (ORs) reflecting the risk of offspring's ADHD incidence associated with father's smoking during the index pregnancy, up to one year after birth, and current smoking status. Control variables in our regression model were age, sex, financial status, parents’ education levels, low birth weight, and premature birth.
Results
Our final regression model revealed that paternal smoking during pregnancy (OR = 1.68, 95% CI = 1.03–2.76) and up to one year after birth (OR = 1.69, 95% CI = 1.04–2.77) were significantly related to their offspring's ADHD.
Conclusions
The current results suggest that exposure to paternal smoking during the fetal and newborn period is associated with increased risk of ADHD. This study warrants public health policies to reduce children's exposure to secondhand smoke and their risk of ADHD.
Disclosure of interest
The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.
A new approach is proposed to analyze Bremsstrahlung X-rays that are emitted from laser-produced plasmas (LPP) and are measured by a stack type spectrometer. This new method is based on a spectral tomographic reconstruction concept with the variational principle for optimization, without referring to the electron energy distribution of a plasma. This approach is applied to the analysis of some experimental data obtained at a few major laser facilities to demonstrate the applicability of the method. Slope temperatures of X-rays from LPP are determined with a two-temperature model, showing different spectral characteristics of X-rays depending on laser properties used in the experiments.
The organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs) incorporating pentacene/SU-8 interface were fabricated and characterized. SU-8, a reliable epoxy-based photoresist, is tested as a potential highly-stable polymeric gate dielectric for OTFTs. The fabricated devices showed promising electrical performance with on-off ratio up to 107 and field-effect mobility up to 0.56 cm2/V s. Several device characteristics are further analyzed. There existed a leakage current path due to the uncontrolled pentacene coverage and we revealed that precise alignment of the evaporation mask of pentacene is critical for eliminating this problem. Pentacene grain formation largely depended on the growth condition on the SU-8 surface and small-grain films offered outstanding performance possibly owing to enhanced inter-domain connections. Natural degradation of the OTFTs is also discussed in terms of environmental stability and the pentacene/SU-8 transistor operated with noticeable air stability under ambient conditions.
Organic metal-semiconductor field-effect transistors (OMESFETs) were fabricated with a polycrystalline organic semiconductor (pentacene) and characterized in order to systematically analyze their operation mechanism. Impedance measurements confirmed full depletion of the thick pentacene film (1 μm) due to the low doping concentration of unintentional doping (typically less than 1014 cm−3). The necessity of developing a specific device model for OMESFET is emphasized as the classical (inorganic) MESFET theory based on the depletion modulation is not applicable to a fully-depleted organic semiconductor. By means of joint electrical measurements and numerical simulation, it is pointed out that the gate voltage controls the bulk distribution of injected carriers, so that the competition between the gate and drain currents is critical for determining the operation mode. Finally, the geometrical effect is investigated with comparing a number of transistors with various channel widths and lengths.
Background Recently the number of disaster and mass casualty incident (MCI) is increasing in Korea, but there have been few administrative reports or technical reports for disaster and MCI. An ad hoc basis data collection method is usually incomplete and outdated. This study was conducted to investigate the new surveillance system composed of EMS based real time survey and medical records based in-depth survey.
Methods
A retrospective review was conducted of the 119 fire department call center database and ambulance running sheets in one metropolitan city. The data on all transported patients with non-medical reasons (fire, rescue and others) between May 2006 and December 2008 was reviewed. We selected all data from the accidents which had more than 2 casualties to exam the feasibility and conducted in-depth surveillance based on medical records.
Results
The total number of accidents was 2,027 with 2,625 patients. The number of accidents which had more than 2 patients was 307 (total 898 patients) and more than 6 patients was 19 (total 176 patients). Among the “MCI” events, 15 cases were traffic accidents (125 patients, 71.0%), 4 cases were fire (51 patients, 29%). Total 142 medical records (80.7%) were reviewed. Admission rate was 32.4% (46 patients) and overall mortality was 3.5% (5 patients).
Conclusion
This nationwide public EMS system could contribute to the establishment of the systematic disaster database.
We report soft X-ray spectra (4–18 nm) produced by the
interaction of 25–100-fs laser pulses at an intensity of up
to 7 × 1016 W/cm2 with a cryogenically
cooled Ar gas jet. New spectral lines from Ar8+,
Ar9+, and Ar10+ charge states appeared
with decreasing preexpansion gas temperature. A nonlinear increase
of X-ray line emission from Ar7+, Ar8+, and
Ar9+ was observed with cooling, which saturated below a
certain temperature. The drastic change in the spectrum is attributed
to efficient collisional heating and collisional ionization of growing,
small- to medium-sized (102–103 atoms) Ar
clusters from the cooled jet. When the laser pulse was extended from 25
to 100 fs we observed considerably stronger emission on lines from high
charge states, such as Ar8+, Ar9+, and
Ar10+, which suggests that the resonance absorption condition
could be reached for the 100-fs pulse.
The long-term dissolution behavior of spent PWR fuel in synthetic granitic groundwater has been investigated since June of 1998 in order to identify the release mechanism of spent fuel in contact with domestic Ca-bentonite, which was compacted as a density of 1.4g/cm3. Several spent fuel specimens were cut to around 3-mm thick, and these specimens were then loaded into each leaching cell. Every half year, one specimen was collected and the bentonite block was sliced into several pieces. The element distribution on the specimen surface was measured by EPMA and an optical microscope, and the gamma activities in the sliced bentonite pieces were measured. All the leachates were sampled and then the gamma and gross alpha activities were measured. By the results, coming from leaching up to about 1.5 years, the fraction of radiocesium released through the compacted bentonite layer from the spent fuel is approximately a hundredth lower than that without the bentonite layer. By the depth profile of the gamma activity on the bentonite, the activity gradually decreased in accordance with more distance from the specimen and the fractional release rates of cesium were nearly the same. On the other hand, the EPMA results indicate that more time and more information is required in order to identify the surface alteration of spent fuel by leaching. This experiment will therefore be continued at least into the year 2006.
We demonstrated that the quality of siloxane spin-on glass (SOG) films, widely used as interlevel planarization dielectrics, is improved significantly by curing in argon plasma. The wet etch rate of SOG film decreases with increasing plasma treatment temperature or treatment time, and is much lower than that cured in a furnace. Long-time plasma treatment reduces the density of silanols (Si-OH) and methyl (−CH3) group, which act as adsorption sites of water. The results were compared with those obtained from the N2O (or H2 ) plasma treated SOG films. The modification of the SOG film by Ar plasma is related to the radiation damage and the reconstruction of the atomic structure during the plasma exposure. The role of metastable Ar (Ar*) appears to be very important to improve the SOG film; SOG film is more relaxed by the energy released from the conversion of Ar* to Ar.
Internal cavities often develop during the deformation of superplastic alloys. Experiments were conducted to determine whether a nondestructive photoacoustic method may be used to detect the presence of internal cavities in two different commercial Al-based alloys. An analytical procedure was developed to provide quantitative information on the volume fraction of cavitation. The results confirm that the photoacoustic signal can be used to detect the presence of cavities, and it is demonstrated that the quantitative measurements derived from the photoacoustic data are consistent with observations obtained by sectioning and standard metallographic techniques.
Diamond is suitable for use as an ionizing particle detector for high rate, high radiation, and/or chemically harsh environments. A sampling calorimeter, a detector measuring the total energy of an incident particle, consisting of 20 alternating layers of diamond and tungsten has been constructed and tested. The diamond for the detector layers was grown by chemical vapor deposition with an averaged thickness of 500 μm. The active area of each layer was 3×3 cm2 with ohmic contacts on opposite faces forming a metal-insulator-metal structure. The calorimeter was tested with electrons of energies up to 5.0 GeV. The response of the diamond/tungsten calorimeter was found to be linear as a function of incident energy. A direct comparison of diamond/tungsten and silicon/tungsten calorimeters was made.
We have investigated the annealing effects of ultraviolet (UV) irradiation on the characteristics of hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) thin films and hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) thin film transistors (TFT's) using XeCl excimer laser. The pulse duration of laser was 30nsec/shot and its intensity was varied from 10mJ/cm2 to 80 mJ/cm2. By irradiating the excimer laser on the a-Si:H TFT's degraded by the electrical stress and/or the visible light illumination, the characteristics of TFT's, such as the on- current, threshold voltage, field-effect mobility and subthreshold sharpness, have been effectively restored to those of virgin sample, while the leakage current changed little. It should be noted that the a-Si:H channel layer was not crystallized by varying the laser intensity.
A prevalence study was carried out on a 100-bed Veterans Administration nursing home care unit to determine the extent of colonization with gentamicin-resistant gram-negative bacilli (GRGNB). Hand cultures of 12 employees and 17 environmental cultures were negative. Twenty-six of 86 (30%) patients were colonized with 49 GRGNB. Sixteen patients (19%) had urinary colonization. Multivariate analysis revealed significant associations between rectal or perineal colonization (P<0.01), and the presence of a urinary device (82% condom catheters) (P<0.05), with urinary colonization. The most common isolates were Providencia stuartii (20), Escherichia coli (nine) and Klebsiella pneumoniae (nine). Twenty-six of 49 isolates carried plasmids. Restriction endonuclease digestion of plasmid DNA was performed for 21. Cross-colonization, as defined by the presence of the identical species with the identical restriction endonuclease digestion profile of purified plasmid DNA found in different patients, was observed for eight of 21 (38%) strains. All were geographically clustered. No strains could transfer gentamicin-resistance by conjugation and only two plasmids could transform our E coli recipient to gentamicin resistance. One E coli plasmid was identical to two Citrobacter freundii plasmids and a P stuartii plasmid isolated from three different patients. This 105 kb plasmid is conjugative and encodes resistance to ampicillin, carbenicillin, tetracycline, and sulfonamides. Thus, 57% of strains were cross-colonizing or contained identical R-plasmids. Southern hybridization using a 1 kb TEM-1 gene probe demonstrated sequences homologous to this probe in five of five nursing home plasmids examined. These data demonstrate the utility of plasmid analysis in epidemiologic typing of multiple species of Enterobacteriaceae, and suggest wide dissemination of R-plasmids bearing the TEM-1β-lactamase gene among gram-negative bacilli colonizing patients residing in our nursing home.
Techniques have been developed at NCSU for fabricating cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy (XTEM) foils from monocrystalline beta silicon carbide thin films grown by chemical vapor deposition. The results of the TEM observations are utilized to discern the efficacy of the various processing parameters in terms of film quality and defect structure as well as oxidation, ion implantation and annealing procedures.
Recommend this
Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this to your organisation's collection.