Introduction: Many barriers exist to integrating smoking cessation into delivery of lung cancer screening including limited provider time and patient misconceptions.

Aims: To demonstrate that proactive outreach from a telephone counsellor outside of the patient's usual care team is feasible and acceptable to patients.

Methods: Smokers undergoing lung cancer screening were approached for a telephone counselling study. Patients agreeing to participate in the intervention (n = 27) received two telephone counselling sessions. A 30-day follow-up evaluation was conducted, which also included screening participants receiving usual care (n = 56).

Results/Findings: Most (89%) intervention participants reported being satisfied with the proactive calls, and 81% reported the sessions were helpful. Use of behavioural cessation support programs in the intervention group was four times higher (44%) compared to the usual care group (11%); Relative Risk (RR) = 4.1; 95% CI: 1.7 to 9.9), and seven-day abstinence in the intervention group was double (19%) compared to the usual care group (7%); RR = 2.6; 95% CI: 0.8 to 8.9).

Conclusions: This practical telephone-based approach, which included risk messages clarifying continued risks of smoking in the context of screening results, suggests such messaging can boost utilisation of evidence-based tobacco treatment, self-efficacy, and potentially increase the likelihood of successful quitting.

For 40 years, the sizes and shapes of many dozens of asteroids have been determined from observations of asteroidal occultations, and over a thousand high-precision positions of the asteroids relative to stars have been measured. Some of the first evidence for satellites of asteroids was obtained from the early efforts; now, the orbits and sizes of some satellites discovered by other means have been refined from occultation observations. Also, several close binary stars have been discovered, and the angular diameters of some stars have been measured from analysis of these observations. The International Occultation Timing Association (IOTA) coordinates this activity worldwide, from predicting and publicizing the events, to accurately timing the occultations from as many stations as possible, and publishing and archiving the observations.

The consumption of cocoa and dark chocolate is associated with a lower risk of CVD, and improvements in endothelial function may mediate this relationship. Less is known about the effects of cocoa/chocolate on the augmentation index (AI), a measure of vascular stiffness and vascular tone in the peripheral arterioles. We enrolled thirty middle-aged, overweight adults in a randomised, placebo-controlled, 4-week, cross-over study. During the active treatment (cocoa) period, the participants consumed 37 g/d of dark chocolate and a sugar-free cocoa beverage (total cocoa = 22 g/d, total flavanols (TF) = 814 mg/d). Colour-matched controls included a low-flavanol chocolate bar and a cocoa-free beverage with no added sugar (TF = 3 mg/d). Treatments were matched for total fat, saturated fat, carbohydrates and protein. The cocoa treatment significantly increased the basal diameter and peak diameter of the brachial artery by 6 % (+2 mm) and basal blood flow volume by 22 %. Substantial decreases in the AI, a measure of arterial stiffness, were observed in only women. Flow-mediated dilation and the reactive hyperaemia index remained unchanged. The consumption of cocoa had no effect on fasting blood measures, while the control treatment increased fasting insulin concentration and insulin resistance (P= 0·01). Fasting blood pressure (BP) remained unchanged, although the acute consumption of cocoa increased resting BP by 4 mmHg. In summary, the high-flavanol cocoa and dark chocolate treatment was associated with enhanced vasodilation in both conduit and resistance arteries and was accompanied by significant reductions in arterial stiffness in women.

There is considerable debate about the diagnosis of personality disorder in adolescence. It is argued that, because personality is still developing in the teenage years, it is impossible to state with certainty that a young person's personality is disordered. Alternatively, some researchers and clinicians argue that it is possible to diagnose emerging personality disorder on the basis of trait theories of personality. We review the evidence for both sides of the debate.

One of the principal justifications for the military coup of 1936 and the subsequent plan of extermination behind right-wing violence in the Civil War was the accusation that the Second Republic was the anti-Spanish instrument of the Jewish-Masonic-Bolshevik conspiracy. Thus, when the conspirators declared that punishment had to be inflicted on freemasons, liberal politicians, journalists, school-teachers, professors, as well as on leftists and trade-unionists, they used the idea of an evil Jewish conspiracy to destroy the Christian world. Of all of the writers who called for an assault on progressive Spain, those who might be termed the ‘theorists of extermination’, the most influential was the Catalan priest, Juan Tusquets Terrats (1901–1998). Awareness and approval of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was promoted through his enormously popular writings. During the Civil War, he became an adviser to Generals Mola and Franco and his file-card index of names of supposed freemasons was part of the infrastructure of repression.

BOTH during his lifetime, and after his death, General Franco was reviled by his enemies on the left and subjected to the most absurd adulation by his admirers on the right. As the victor in a bloody civil war which inflamed passions throughout the world, that is hardly surprising. Leaving aside his personal political success in remaining in power for nearly four decades, his victory in the Spanish Civil War was his greatest and most glorious achievement, something reflected in the judgements of detractors and hagiographers alike. For the left, Franco the general was a slow-witted mediocrity whose battlefield triumphs were owed entirely to the unstinting military assistance of Hitler and Mussolini. For the right, Franco the general was the twentieth-century incarnation of Alexander the Great, of Napoleon and of the great warrior hero of Spanish legend, El Cid.

The Hitler/Franco encounter at Hendaye in October 1940 was a central myth of Francoist propaganda. Allegedly, faced with threats and blandishments to force Spain into war on the Axis side, Franco coolly stood his ground and thereby secured Spanish neutrality. However, there is little evidence that Hitler did threaten Franco. His purpose in travelling to Hendaye, and to Montoire where he met Laval and Pétain, was to compare the relative cost of closer relationships with Spain and Vichy France. Far from cleverly holding off Hitler, Franco was disappointed that the meeting foundered. Germany's need to maintain good relations with Vichy ensured that Hitler could not meet Franco's price for belligerence, the dismemberment of the French North African empire.

Although auditory hallucinations in schizophrenic patients are usually thought to be private events, several early writers observed vocalizations concurrent with hallucinations. The content of such vocalizations corresponded to what the voices were reported to have said. A schizophrenic patient is described whose whispers were increased to an intelligible level by the use of auditory feedback. This has implications for the self-control of hallucinations, and for neurological theories of verbal hallucinations.

IT IS REPORTED THAT WHEN ALVARO CUNHAL CAME OUT OF PRISON IN the late 1950s, he initiated a purge of the leadership of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP). Their crime was apparently españolismo – or a sympathy with the broad reformist policy of ‘national reconciliation’ adopted by the Spanish Communists in 1956. The Spanish leaders were aware of this implied slur on their revolutionary seriousness, but as both parties battled for survival against repressive dictatorships, it was not an issue over which to break openly the fundamental solidarity between them. Yet a decade and a half later, with Cunhal seemingly leading his Party down the highroad to socialism and his Spanish comrades probably within sight of their immediate goal of the collapse of Francoism, the theoretical discrepancies have re-emerged. Santiago Carrillo, Secretary-General of the PCE, has been sufficiently critical of Cunhal's attempt to create an Eastern European-style socialism in Portugal to earn Soviet accusations of lack of solidarity. Carrillo has described Cunhal's policy during the last year as ‘a good example of how not to make a revolution’. In doing so, the Spanish leader has not only incurred the displeasure of Moscow, something which he has learned to live with since his stand against the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, but also risked serious internal division inside his own party.