The question "what makes therapy work?" has many facets. For instance, if there is evidence for a certain form of psychotherapy, one must question whether the positive effects are due to its methods or rather to "common factors" that may be shared with a number of other procedures. Second, because all evidence-based forms of psychotherapy represent treatment packages that involve a large number of

This paper discusses recent advances that have been made in the field of psychometrics, specifically, the application of Rasch analysis to the instrument development process. It emphasizes the importance of assessing the fundamental scaling properties of an instrument prior to consideration of traditional psychometric indicators. The paper introduces Rasch analysis and shows how it has been applie

ABSTRACT: INTRODUCTION: Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) is usually caused by aspiration of pathogenic bacteria from the oropharynx. Oral decontamination with antiseptics, such as chlorhexidine (CHX) or antibiotics, has been used as prophylaxis against this complication. We hypothesised that the probiotic bacteria Lactobacillus plantarum 299 (Lp299) would be as efficient as CHX in reducing th

Argon clusters have been doped with krypton atoms in a pick-up setup and investigated by means of ultraviolet and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS and XPS). The width of the krypton surface feature in the XPS spectra from mixed krypton/argon clusters has been studied and found to be narrower than in the case of homogeneous krypton clusters. By considering known spectral broadening mechanisms

PEG self-diffusion coefficients of poly(ethylene glycol)s (PEGs) (1080, 8500, and 82 250 g/mol) were measured by PFG-NMR spectroscopy in whey protein solutions and gels in relation to whey protein concentration effects (from 6.49 to 40.45 g/100 g) and whey protein heat denaturation effects (30 min at 70 degrees C). A strong dependency of diffusion on probe size was observed in both whey protein so

Theoretical studies on hyperfine-interaction-dependent lifetimes of the 4s4p P-3(2) states of Zn-like ions are reported in this paper. A systematic investigation along the isoelectronic sequence shows that the lifetime of the 4s4p P-3(2) level is very sensitive to hyperfine interaction at the beginning of the sequence, but gets less sensitive going to the higher end. The intensity ratio between th

Tissue firmness and stiffness are functions of tissue and cell wall structure, water status and temperature, and their interactions. This investigation elaborates the physiological basics of temperature and water status effects on firmness of fresh intact carrots and radish tubers. The results can add to a better understanding of the mechanical properties at least of these succulent plant storage

Butterflies of the genus Papilio have polarisation-sensitive photoreceptors in all regions of the eye, and different spectral types of receptor are sensitive to different e-vector orientations. We have studied the consequences of this eye design for colour vision in behavioural tests and find that Papilio spp. see false colours due to the polarisation of light. They discriminate between vertically

For proteomic monitoring of processes such as allergy or inflammation an efficient pre-fractionation strategy is required. We isolated plasma membranes from human peripheral blood mononuclear (PBM) cells by aqueous two-phase partitioning. After 1DE combined with LC-MS/MS, several cell surface marker proteins and in total 60 different plasma membrane proteins (out of 84 identified proteins, i.e., 7

A new approach to attack A5/1 is proposed. The proposed attack is a refinement of a previous attack by Ekdahl and Johansson. We make two important observations that lead to a new attack with improved performance

Objectives To evaluate the annual direct medical cost of managing adult systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients with active autoantibody positive disease in Europe. Methods A 2-year, retrospective, multicentre, observational study was conducted in five countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK). Data included patients' characteristics, disease activity and severity, flare assessments

Background: Synaptic degeneration is an early pathogenic event in Alzheimer's disease, associated with cognitive impairment and disease progression. Cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers reflecting synaptic integrity would be highly valuable tools to monitor synaptic degeneration directly in patients. We previously showed that synaptic proteins such as synaptotagmin and synaptosomal-associated protein 25

The recent progress in our work to implement salt (NaCl) as a dosemeter is presented. Laboratory investigations have indicated a linear dose response from 1 mGy to about 100 mGy and detection limits down to 0.1 mGy. Investigations in the clinic comparing TL-dosimetry in LiF and OSL in NaCl have indicated a similar dose response for the two dosemeters at different photon energies. Field studies wit

We report on the use of grazing-incidence time-resolved x-ray diffraction to investigate the evolution of strain in natural graphite excited by femtosecond-laser pulses in the fluence range of 6-35 mJ/cm(2). Strains corresponding to up to similar to 2.8% c-axis expansion were observed. We show that the experimental data is in good agreement with calculations based on the Thomsen strain model in co

Två helt olika alternativa möjligheter att förkorta torktiderna för byggfukt i betonggolv har undersökts. Den ena möjligheten var att försöka utnyttja de resultat som erhållits i ett antal tidigare projekt där det visat sig att fuktbelastningen på ett mer eller mindre tätt ytskikt under vissa förhållanden varit mycket lägre efter omfördelning av kvarvarande byggfukt än vad man kunde förvänta sig