Experimental Evidence of Giant Electron - Gamma Bursts Generated by Extensive Atmospheric Showers in Thunderclouds

The existence of a new phenomena - giant electron-gamma bursts is established. The bursts are generated in thunderclouds as a result of the combined action of runaway breakdown and extensive atmosphere showers (RB-EAS). The experiments were fulfilled at the Tien Shan Mountain Scientific Station using EAS-Radio installation. This specially constructed installation consists of a wide spread EAS trigger array and a high time resolution radiointerferometer.Comment: 30 pages, 16 figure

Social Cognition and Social Disability in Schizophrenia: The Role of Emotional Intelligence

Schizophrenia is a severe and persistent mental illness that results in substantial burden and disability for the individuals who suffer from it, their families, and society. Social disability, in particular, is one of the most crippling aspects of the disorder that dramatically limits functioning and quality of life. Recently, social-cognitive impairments in emotional intelligence have shown to be promising potential contributors to social disability in schizophrenia, and consequently might serve as effective targets for treatment. However, measurement in this area has been limited, and no study has examined the longitudinal relationship between emotional intelligence and social disability in schizophrenia within an experimental context. This study makes use of baseline and 1 year follow-up data from an outpatient sample of individuals in the early course of schizophrenia (n = 57 at baseline, n = 47 at year 1) participating in a randomized-controlled trial of Cognitive Enhancement Therapy to investigate the psychometric properties of a promising new measure of emotional intelligence, the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT), and elucidate its longitudinal relations with social disability in this population. A comprehensive psychometric analysis was used to examine the reliability, discriminant validity, and factor structure of the instrument with individuals with schizophrenia; and general linear modeling, including hierarchical linear regression, was used to examine the cross-sectional and longitudinal relations between MSCEIT performance and social disability after accounting for demographic, clinical, and cognitive confounds. Psychometric results generally supported the reliability and discriminant validity of the MSCEIT when applied to individuals with schizophrenia, but also revealed a potential shift in the latent factor structure of the instrument in this population. Analyses of relations with social disability indicated little to no cross-sectional associations between MSCEIT performance and social disability, and modest longitudinal associations between changes in these domains. In particular, significant relationships were observed between longitudinal improvements in emotion regulation and reductions in overall social disability (r = -.31) and household/family relationship problems (r = -.34). These relationships persisted after adjusting for demographic characteristics, neurocognitive function, and psychopathology. Tentative evidence from mediator analyses pointed to the possibility of longitudinal improvements in emotion regulation to serve as a mechanism by which Cognitive Enhancement Therapy achieves its beneficial effects on social disability, although reverse mediation could not be ruled out. Together these findings suggest that changes in emotion regulation may be uniquely associated with changes in social disability in schizophrenia. Future research will need to replicate these findings with larger and more heterogeneous samples, and focus on the development of additional measures to study broader domains of social cognition, beyond emotional intelligence, that may also bear relevance to social disability

Brief Report: Is Impaired Classification of Subtle Facial Expressions in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders Related to Atypical Emotion Category Boundaries?

Impairments in recognizing subtle facial expressions, in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), may relate to difficulties in constructing prototypes of these expressions. Eighteen children with predominantly intellectual low-functioning ASD (LFA, IQ <80) and two control groups (mental and chronological age matched), were assessed for their ability to classify emotional faces, of high, medium and low intensities, as happy or angry. For anger, the LFA group made more errors for lower intensity expressions than the control groups, classifications did not differ for happiness. This is the first study to find that the LFA group made more across-valence errors than controls. These data are consistent with atypical facial expression processing in ASD being associated with differences in the structure of emotion categories

Observations of x-rays produced by strong electric fields in thunderstorms.

A balloon-borne x-ray spectrometer was developed to fly on free balloons into thunderstorms in order to test hypotheses that strong electric-fields could accelerate cosmic-ray secondary electrons and produce bremsstrahlung x-rays. Five flights were made over a period of two years into the stratiform regions of mesoscale convective systems. The x-ray spectrometer flew with an electric-field meter and a meteorological radiosonde. In four instances, increases in x-ray intensity were observed during these flights. All were observed in conjunction with strong electric fields. Both negative and positive polarities (referenced to the vertical field) produced x-rays. These events lasted on the order of 10's of seconds. In three of the cases, the increased x-ray intensity returned to near background levels when lightning flashes reduced the local electric field. These two observations appear to indicate that the increases in x-ray intensity observed are associated with the strong electric field present in thunderstorms. However, the time resolution of these observations does not allow any conclusions to be made about the production of x-rays by lightning

Cognitive Remediation and Psychosocial Rehabilitation for Individuals with Severe Mental Illness

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Sensing the Worst: Neurophenomenological Perspectives on Neutral Stimuli Misperception in Schizophrenia Spectrum

While investigating social cognitive impairments in schizophrenia, prominent evidence has been found that patients with schizophrenia show a tendency to misclassify neutral stimuli as negatively valenced. Within this population, patients presenting delusions are more prone to this phenomenon. In a previous study, Schizophrenia spectrum (SzSp) patients rated positive, negative and neutral stimuli that were multimodally presented, while assessed with a checklist exploring anomalous subjective experiences and evaluated for positive and negative symptomatology. In the present work, we aimed to further explore the relationship between neutral stimuli misperception, anomalous experiences and positive/negative symptoms in SzSp patients. To this end, we adopted a dimensional approach by reconstructing from available data: (1) four a priori scales representing essential dimensions of SzSp experiential pathology following Parnas et al. (2005); and (2) five clinically meaningful factors to describe illness severity derived by Toomey et al. (1997). Results showed that although overall patients correctly recognized the target emotions, those who misinterpreted neutral auditory cues as negatively valenced also presented higher scores in Perplexity (PY), Bizarre Delusions (BD) and Disorganization (Di) dimensions. Moreover, a positive association between BD and both PY and Self-Disorder (SD) dimensions emerged, suggesting that psychotic symptoms may be directly linked to patients’ subjectivity. In an attempt to comprehensively capture the multilayered neutral stimuli misperception phenomenon in SzSp, we aimed at bridging phenomenology and neurobiology by connecting the levels of molecular neurochemistry (i.e., altered dopaminergic neurotransmission), system neuroscience (aberrant salience of perceptual details) and psychopathology (the chain involving hyper-reflexivity, self-disorders and the emergence of delusions)

The perpetual evidence-practice gap: addressing ongoing barriers to chronic pain management in primary care in three steps

BackgroundMost management of chronic pain, a serious illness affecting the physical and psychological wellbeing of millions, occurs in primary care settings. Primary care practitioners (PCPs) attempt to provide evidence-based practices to treat chronic pain. However, there continues to be a gap between the care people receive and the evidence. The objectives for this study were to (1) explore determinants of evidence-based chronic pain management and (2) develop a novel approach to using implementation science to address the evidence-practice gap.MethodA convenience sample of twenty-one Pennsylvania PCPs participated in one-time semi-structured telephone interviews. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and both deductive and inductive approaches were used during analysis. We used the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) and the Expert Recommendations for Implementing Change (ERIC) to inform our analysis and findings.ResultsWe identified determinants of evidence-based chronic pain management across the CFIR domains of Intervention Characteristics, Characteristics of Individuals, and the Outer Setting and reported implementation strategies. Based on identified themes, we developed a three-step process to support the ongoing and pragmatic implementation of evidence-based chronic pain management in primary care settings.ConclusionsPrevious efforts exist to integrate implementation science into chronic pain management; yet a gap persists. Implementation approaches should prioritize the needs of people living with chronic pain and their families. Further, future approaches or strategies used should build on the current three-step model to include the fourth step of tailoring existing implementation strategies to the specific needs of chronic pain in the clinical context

Cognitive Enhancement Therapy Improves Frontolimbic Regulation of Emotion in Alcohol and/or Cannabis Misusing Schizophrenia: A Preliminary Study

Individuals with schizophrenia who misuse substances are burdened with impairments in emotion regulation. Cognitive enhancement therapy (CET) may address these problems by enhancing prefrontal brain function. A small sample of outpatients with schizophrenia and alcohol and/or cannabis substance use problems participating in an 18-month randomized trial of CET (n = 10) or usual care (n = 4) completed posttreatment functional neuroimaging using an emotion regulation task. General linear models explored CET effects on brain activity in emotional neurocircuitry. Individuals treated with CET had significantly greater activation in broad regions of the prefrontal cortex, limbic, and striatal systems implicated in emotion regulation compared to usual care. Differential activation favoring CET in prefrontal regions and the insula mediated behavioral improvements in emotional processing. Our data lend preliminary support of CET effects on neuroplasticity in frontolimbic and striatal circuitries, which mediate emotion regulation in people with schizophrenia and comorbid substance misuse problems

Cognitive Remediation and Psychosocial Rehabilitation for Individuals with Severe Mental Illness

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