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PubMed2005

[BUDDA SYNDROME/Hmam Budda].

Hmam Budda is one of the widest spread "culture specific symptom presentations" in Tigrigna, the largest ethnic group in Eritrea. According to the understanding of the Tigrigna Budda is a female or male person who has inherited or acquired the supernatural gift and ability to take over people's body and soul. Mental disorders that are closely associated with possession phenomena are often attributed to Budda. The case study presents a first description of Hmam Budda by using a clinical vignette that was indigenously interpreted (emic approach). The traditional concepts of explaining and approaching mental distress and their meaning in the encounter with main stream psychiatry are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Electronic states of linear Au clusters supported on metal surfaces: why are they like those of a particle in a box?

Scanning tunneling spectroscopy and microscopy show that the empty states of linear Au clusters supported on a metal surface behave as if they are the states of an electron in an empty one-dimensional box. We show here that certain difficulties of this description are removed by a particle-in-a-cylinder model. This interpretation is supported by density functional calculations.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1980

Brunelleschi's perspectives reconsidered.

Accounts by Brunelleschi's biographers of the discovery of linear perspective are briefly reexamined. It is suggested that Brunelleschi's familiarity, as a clockmaker, with sundials may have suggested to him a method of drawing perspectives without recourse to geometrical construction from plans and elevations. This would explain several puzzling features of the first perspective, including the choice of subject (the Baptistery of San Giovanni), the lateral inversion of the painting, the necessity for a hole "as tiny as a lentil bean", and the use of mirrors. The second perspective is then shown to embody lessons learned from the shortcomings of the first. It is concluded that the descriptions written by Vasari and Manetti are essentially sound, but their usual interpretation is thrown into question. In particular they can no longer sustain the centuries-old claim, for which they formed the basis, that the geometrical construction of linear perspective from plans and elevations was discovered by Brunelleschi.

Art↗
PubMed2004

What concept analysis in philosophy of science should be (and why competing philosophical analyses of gene concepts cannot be tested by polling scientists).

What should philosophers of science accomplish when they analyze scientific concepts and interpret scientific knowledge? What is concept analysis if it is not a description of the way scientists actually think? I investigate these questions by using Hans Reichenbach's account of the descriptive, critical, and advisory tasks of philosophy of science to examine Karola Stotz and Paul Griffiths' idea that poll-based methodologies can test philosophical analyses of scientific concepts. Using Reichenbach's account as a point of departure, I argue that philosophy of science should identify and clarify epistemic virtues and describe scientific knowledge in relation to these virtues. The role of concept analysis is to articulate scientific concepts in ways that help reveal epistemic virtues and limitations of particular sciences. This means an analysis of the gene concept(s) should help clarify the explanatory power and limitations of gene-based explanations, and should help account for the investigative utility and biases of gene-centered sciences. I argue that a philosophical analysis of gene concept(s) that helps achieve these critical aims should not be rejected on the basis of poll-based studies even if such studies could show that professional biologists don't actually use gene terminology in precise ways corresponding to the philosophical analysis.

Attitude↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Effects of multi-family housing on marital fertility in Iran: population policy implications.

The hypothesis of the relationship between housing types and fertility, which was originally developed and tested in Bogota, Colombia's housing study, is reexamined using Iranian data of urban married women of reproductive age. The findings of the study clearly and consistently show that women living in single-family housing units have significantly higher actual and desired fertility than women living in multi-family housing units, regardless of their major social, economic and demographic differences. Furthermore, the analysis of the relative effects of socioeconomic and demographic variables on fertility indicate that housing types have greater effects on fertility than wife and husband's level of education, when the effects of other variables are controlled. This study implies that crowding and density, which generally are the outcome of high fertility, do have feedback effects causing fertility to decline. This provides some evidence for the hypothesis of self-generating fluctuations in population growth which maintains that a large population will face stiff economic competition, lower incomes, congestion and crowding if other means of production as well as social infrastructure do not expand simultaneously. Finally, this study suggests an optimistic sign of fertility reduction in the large urban populations where the single-family housing units are being replaced by multi-family housing units mainly because of high cost of land, material, and labor, and the shortage of housing units. Most of the large cities in Iran today fit the above descriptions.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

Erasmus Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and the origins of the evolutionary worldview in British provincial scientific culture, 1770-1850.

The significance of Herbert Spencer's evolutionary philosophy has been generally recognized for over a century, as the familiarity of his phrase "survival of the fittest" indicates, yet accounts of the origins of his system still tend to follow too closely his own description, written many decades later. This essay argues that Spencer's own interpretation of his intellectual development gives an inadequate impression of the debt he owed to provincial scientific culture and its institutions. Most important, it shows that his evolutionism was originally stimulated by his association with the Derby philosophical community, for it was through this group--of which his father, who also appears to have espoused a deistic evolutionary theory, was a member--that he was first exposed to progressive Englightenment social and educational philosophies and to the evolutionary worldview of Erasmus Darwin, the first president of the Derby Philosophical Society. Darwin's scheme was the first to incorporate biological evolution, associationist psychology, evolutionary geology, and cosmological developmentalism. Spencer's own implicit denials of the link with Darwin are shown to be implausible in the face of Darwin's continuing influence on the Derby savants, the product of insecurity in his later years when he feared for his reputation as Lamarckism became increasingly untenable.

Biological Evolution↗
PubMed1989

Staff perceptions of shared governance.

Future research must consider a number of potential influencing variables, focus on before and after comparisons and comparisons among types of shared governance models, and include replications and longitudinal studies. In addition, qualitative, descriptive data regarding the life of the organization will be beneficial in interpreting the more quantitative findings. The ideal of controlling all variables is simply not possible when one is studying a complex organization. With ingenuity, creativity, and a blend of methodologies, however, researchers may come considerably closer to understanding more about how and why shared governance can work effectively.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

Spreading dynamics of water droplets

The spreading dynamics of water droplets on flat silicon surfaces is investigated. It is shown that, for situations close to complete wetting, the radius evolution with time can be described using a power law with a nonstandard exponent of 1/7. This dynamics is interpreted using a hydrodynamic model with an invariant dissipation profile. Such a description is also consistent with the slow dynamics observed for larger contact angles.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2006

Anomalous surfactant diffusion in a living polymer system.

Random processes are generally described by Gaussian statistics as formulated by the central limit theorem. However, there exists a large number of exceptions to this rule that can be found in a variety of fields. Diffusion processes are often analyzed by the scaling law approximately t2beta, where the second moment of the diffusion propagator or molecular mean square displacement, , in the case of Gaussian diffusion is proportional to t, i.e., beta=1/2. A deviation from Gaussian behavior may be either superdiffusion (beta>1/2) or subdiffusion (beta<1/2). In this paper we demonstrate that all three diffusion regimes may be observed for the surfactant self-diffusion, on the length scale of 10(-6) m and the time scale of 0.02-0.8 s. in a system of wormlike micelles, depending on small variations in the sample composition. The self-diffusion is followed by pulsed gradient NMR where one not only measures the second moment of the diffusion propagator, but actually measures the Fourier transform of the full diffusion propagator itself. A generalized diffusion equation in terms of fractional time derivatives provides a general description of all the different diffusion regimes, and where 1beta can be interpreted as a dynamic fractal dimension. Experimentally, we find beta=1/4 and 3/4, in the regimes of sub- and superdiffusion, respectively. The physical interpretation of the subdiffusion behavior is that the dominating diffusion mechanism corresponds to a lateral diffusion along the contour of the wormlike micelles. Superdiffusion is obtained near the overlap concentration where the average micellar size is smaller so that the center of mass diffusion of the micelles contributes to the transport of surfactant molecules.

Journal Article↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Combining the Rorschach test and the Temperament Character Inventory: a new perspective on personality assessment.

BACKGROUND: The numerous reports on research involving the clinical assessment of personality in axis I disorders highlight the importance of temperament features in the current approach to all mental disorders. However, the available instruments of personality assessment have many limits. Self-administered questionnaires depend on the patient's insight, and projective instruments (i.e. the Rorschach test) often lack objectivity. This study compared the results of personality assessment with the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) and the Rorschach test to verify their validity. PATIENTS AND METHODS: TCI and Rorschach tests were administered to a wide sample of patients (n = 180) in a short period. The most common Rorschach siglatures were correlated with the TCI raw scores using the Pearson correlation test. RESULTS: All TCI temperament dimensions and facets displayed at least two correlations with Rorschach siglatures. The description of each dimension and facet of the TCI obtained with the interpretation of Rorschach siglatures was consistent with its original meaning. CONCLUSIONS: The TCI and Rorschach tests adequately validated each other. In the future, the administration and integration of these tests will overcome the biases of both. Further, the theoretical bases of the TCI could facilitate the study of psychological functions, whereas the psychodynamic bases of the Rorschach test provide an in-depth insight into temperament traits.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

Death as a transformation of wholeness: an "aha" experience of health as expanding consciousness.

A nurse-patient clinical experience is presented from a unitary transformative perspective. The experience is interpreted through Newman's theory of health as expanding consciousness. A brief description of Newman's theory is given in order to provide the reader with Newman's key terms and fundamental philosophical principles. The nurse-patient healing partnership is explained using Newman's terminology and theory of health as expanding consciousness. The purpose of this article is to advance the critical importance of uncompromised and nonfragmented nursing care in partnership with the irreducible whole person.

Adult↗
PubMed2001

Oral glucose tolerance test minimal model indexes of beta-cell function and insulin sensitivity.

The simultaneous assessment of quantitative indexes of insulin secretion and action in a single individual is important when quantifying their relative role in the evolution of glucose tolerance in different physiopathological states. Available methods quantify these indexes in relatively nonphysiological conditions, e.g., during glucose clamps or intravenous glucose tolerance tests. Here, we present a method based on a physiological test applicable to large-scale genetic and epidemiologic studies-the oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT). Plasma C-peptide, insulin, and glucose data from a frequently sampled OGTT with 22 samples throughout 300 min (FSOGTT300-22) were analyzed in 11 subjects with various degrees of glucose tolerance. In each individual, two indexes of pancreatic sensitivity to glucose (phis [10(9) min(-1)] and phid [10(9)]) and the insulin sensitivity index (SI) (10(5) dl/kg per min per pmol/l) were estimated by using the minimal model of C-peptide secretion and kinetics originally proposed for intravenous graded glucose infusion and the minimal model approach recently proposed for meal/OGTTs. The indexes obtained from FSOGTT300-22 were used as a reference for internal validation of OGTT protocols with reduced sampling schedules. Our results show that 11 samples in a 300-min period (OGTT300-11) is the test of choice because the indexes it provides (phis = 36 +/- 3 [means +/- SE]; phid = 710 +/- 111; SI = 10.2 +/- 2.4) show excellent correlation and are not statistically different from those of FSOGTT300-22 (phis = 33 +/- 3; phid = 715 +/- 120; SI = 10.1 +/- 2.3). In conclusion, OGTT300-11, interpreted with C-peptide and glucose minimal models, provides a quantitative description of beta-cell function and insulin sensitivity in a single individual while preserving the important clinical classification of glucose tolerance provided by the standard 120-min OGTT.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Onset of puberty in pasture-raised Thoroughbreds born in southern hemisphere spring and autumn.

REASONS FOR PERFORMING STUDY: There is little information on age, weight and time of year of puberty in Thoroughbred horses, and the interpretation of such data is difficult due to the wide variety of descriptions of the onset of puberty. OBJECTIVES: To examine the age, bodyweight and date of onset of puberty in Thoroughbreds born in spring and autumn. METHODS: Bodyweight data and blood samples were collected in 59 pasture-raised Thoroughbred horses. Five autumn-born and 18 spring-born colts and 3 autumn-born and 33 spring-born fillies were examined from birth to age 13 and 17 months. A testosterone concentration >2 s.d. above the baseline concentration was indicative of onset of puberty in colts; and progesterone concentration >2 ng/ml and at least 3 times greater than the previous progesterone concentration was indicative of a first ovulation in fillies. RESULTS: Spring-born fillies and colts were older and heavier than autumn-born fillies and colts at puberty. The age at onset of puberty in spring- and autumn-born foals was 291-408 days and 212-270 days, respectively. The weight at puberty in spring-born foals was 302-409 kg, and in autumn-born foals was 277-344 kg. However, the mean date at onset of puberty was not significantly different between spring- and autumn-born horses, with puberty occurring in October (New Zealand spring). CONCLUSIONS AND POTENTIAL RELEVANCE: Seasonal changes in photoperiod affect the timing of onset of puberty, provided a minimum threshold bodyweight has been reached. Spring-born horses reached this threshold weight during the winter months and remained reproductively inactive until after the stimulus of increasing day-length occurred. The autumn-born horses reached the threshold weight to support puberty at the same time as stimulatory photoperiod and, therefore, reached puberty significantly younger and lighter than the spring-born horses.

Age of Onset↗
PubMed2026

Performance Profiles of Short DNA Barcode Segments for Family Level Detection of Asteraceae Within Asterales.

Short DNA barcodes may facilitate sequence recovery from degraded material, but their ability to retain target-family identity while excluding related taxa varies among genomic regions. We computationally evaluated 16 nuclear, plastid, and mitochondrial marker regions from 11 Asterales families using 279,956 NCBI locus-record matches and an accession-disjoint discovery/test design. Thirty-one candidate segments of 50-200 bp (mean, 98.55 bp) were screened in discovery data and evaluated for within-Asteraceae sequence recall, differentiation from non-Asteraceae Asterales, in silico primer behavior, phylogenetic placement, and exploratory matching across 808 metadata-defined metagenomic samples. Conserved regions such as matR and rbcL showed high within-Asteraceae identity, whereas ITS1, ITS, and trnH-psbA showed larger differences from related-family backgrounds; ITS2 and ycf1 showed intermediate profiles. Candidate segments were placed within or immediately adjacent to Asteraceae reference branches in segment-specific maximum-likelihood analyses, although support and topology varied among regions. Metadata-defined target-containing groups had higher mean query coverage and identity than background groups; because target presence was not independently verified and no classifier was fitted, these comparisons were descriptive and did not estimate diagnostic accuracy. Definitionally linked sequence statistics were interpreted as structural associations rather than evidence of causal evolutionary mechanisms. These results provide a family-level computational comparison of candidate short segments for Asteraceae detection within Asterales. Species identification, operational marker combinations, threshold robustness, and laboratory performance require validation using taxonomically dense, voucher-linked, and experimentally characterized datasets.

Asteraceae↗
PubMed2003

[Pathological work-up and assessment of sentinel lymph nodes in melanoma patients].

This review summarizes data related to the pathological assessment and interpretation issues of sentinel lymph nodes in melanoma patients. After a short description of conventional nodal staging of melanoma, separate sections deal with detailed analysis of sentinel nodes, the use of immunohistochemistry, molecular analysis of occult metastases and the possibilities and limitations of intraoperative assessment. Possible pitfalls of each method are also discussed. Finally, research areas related to sentinel nodes are highlighted, too.

Humans↗
PubMedDate not supplied

1997 survey of salaries & responsibilities for hospital biomedical clinical engineering & technology personnel.

The Journal of Clinical Engineering conducted its twelfth annual survey of the salaries paid to biomedical/clinical engineering and technology personnel in U.S. hospitals. This paper reports the salary and work responsibility data obtained from 276 professionals in relationship to: region of the U.S.; teaching versus nonteaching facilities; years of experience; education; certification; union membership; and gender. Data are included on wage increases and job responsibilities as of 12/31/96, and are compared with data as of 12/31/95. The average BMET I has 2.9 years of experience and earns $26,126 +/- $5,800 (nationwide mean +/- standard deviation). The average BMET II has 8.29 years of experience and ears $34,687 +/- $6,300. The average BMET III has 12.7 years of experience and earns $40,960 +/- $6,900. The average BMET Specialist has 16.7 years of experience and earns $46,131 +/- $9,100. The average BMET Supervisor has 15.0 years of experience and ears $44,248 +/- 47,700. The average Clinical Engineer has 13.6 years of experience and earns $44,839 +/- $10,000. CE Supervisors have an average of 21.6 years of experience and an average salary of $59,789 +/- $13,100. The overall group or department Director or Manager has 17.5 years of experience and earns $55,325 +/- $16,200 on average.

Age Factors↗