Stress appraisal, coping, and work engagement among police recruits: an exploratory study.

This study investigated the influence of stress appraisal and coping on work engagement levels (Absorption, Vigour, and Dedication) of police recruits. Participants were 387 men, ages 20 to 33 yr. (M = 24.1, SD = 2.4), in their last month of academy training before becoming police officers. Partially in support of predictions, work engagement was associated with Stressor control perceived, but not Stress intensity experienced over a self-selected stressor. Although the three dimensions of work engagement were explained by Stressor control and coping, Absorption was the dimension better explained by these variables. Police recruits reporting higher Absorption, Vigour, and Dedication reported using more Active coping and less Behavioural disengagement. Results showed that stress appraisal and coping are important variables influencing work engagement among police recruits. Findings suggested that future applied interventions fostering work engagement among police recruits should reinforce perceptions of control over a stressor as well as Active coping strategies

Interplanetary flow systems associated with cosmic ray modulation in 1977 - 1980

The hydromagnetic flow configurations associated with cosmic ray modulation in 1977 to 1980 were determined using solar wind plasma and magnetic field data from Voyagers 1 and 2 and Helios 1. The modulation was related to two types of large scale systems of flows: one containing a number of transients such as shocks, post shock flows and magnetic clouds; the other consisting primarily of a series of quasi-stationary flows following interaction regions containing a stream interface and often bounded by a forward reverse shock pair. Each of the three major episodes of cosmic ray modulation was characterized by the passage of the system of transient flows. Plateaus in the cosmic ray intensity time profile were associated with the passage of systems of corotating streams

Finfish resources in the north eastern region in the Indian EEZ

Bottom trawling conducted in 53 stations lat. 16°00'N -20°30'N; long. 81°30'E - 87°15'E revealed a production range of 3 - 15000 kg/haul with a mean of 581 kg/haul; the average catch in the region was 567.3 kg/hr. The dominant finfish in the surveyed area were Indian drift fish (36.4%), carangids (22.5%), catfishes (7.1%), bull's eye (6.9%), goat fishes (3.9%), nemipterids (3.3%) etc. The bathymetric zones above 200 m and 51-100 m were found to be highly productive with average catch rate of 1615 and 830 kg/hr respectively. In the surveyed region the highest production rate was at lat. 19°N (1384 kg/hr)

The role of cerebral edema in ischemic cerebral neuropathy after cardiac arrest in dogs and monkeys and its treatment with hypertonic urea

1. 1. The value of hypertonic urea in forestalling the neurologic sequellae after cardiac arrest has been assessed in dogs and monkeys. Simulated cardiac arrest was produced with an inflow-outflow occlusion technique in which the blood supply to the heart was maintained during the period of complete cerebral ischemia. 2. 2. A number of factors increase the duration of cardiac arrest which can be tolerated without gross neurologic sequellae. These include the presence of an effective circulatory state before and after the arrest, the administration of 100 per cent oxygen before and after the test period, the use of an efficient respirator, and avoidance of premature efforts to promote spontaneous respirations postoperatively. 3. 3. Under optimum conditions almost all dogs and monkeys will recover completely after 12 minutes of simulated cardiac arrest. With longer occlusions, death and serious neurologic morbidity occur. 4. 4. Monkeys and dogs were subjected to simulated cardiac arrest for 14 minutes. Hypertonic urea did not materially decrease either the mortality rate or neurologic morbidity in either species, as compared to the recovery rate in controls, despite the fact that the urea-treated animals had demonstrably less brain swelling. 5. 5. From this it is concluded that cerebral edema is an overemphasized factor in the post-cardiac arrest syndrome, and that the principal deterrent to recovery is anoxic injury to the neurons which is not beneficially influenced by reduction of brain volume. © 1960

Pengujian Ketahanan Kekeringan Pada Tanaman Garut (Maranta Arundinacea L.) Hasil Mutasi Dengan Radiasi Sinar Gamma

Drought Tolerance Assay on Resulted Mutation of Arrowroot Plant (Maranta arundinacea L.) with Gamma Irradiation. Selection of garut (Maranta arundinacea L.) toward drought stress was conducted in induced mutant by using provenance plants from some semi aridregions of East Jawa. In this research three provenance were used 1) Garut from Dusun Pogal, Desa Lebakrejo, Kec. Purwodadi, Kab. Pasuruan (N1); 2) Garut from Dusun Sembung, Desa Parerejo, Kec. Purwodadi, Kab. Pasuruan (N5); 3) Garut from Dusun Genitri, Desa Gunting, Kec. Sukorejo, Kab. Pasuruan (N8). Provenance plants were treated with mutation induction using several levels of gamma radiation i.e. 0, 10, 20 and 40 Gy. The inducted plants were thenplanted in optimum environmental condition for acclimatization. After 5 months the plants were placed in a greenhouse for water stress treatments. Three levels of water regimes 1) optimum water (field capacity Ø = -0,3 to -1,5 Mpa); 2) 7 days watering interval (Ø =-1,0 to -11,0 Mpa); 3) 14 days interval (Ø = -4,0 to -15,0 Mpa). Plant drought tolerance was examined by analyzing morphological and physiological characteristics related to drought tolerant characteristics, including stomatal conductance (stomatal opening), transpiration, rate of CO2 assimilation, biomass production and yield, Harvest Index and drought Tolerance Index. The resultsshowed that radiation treated plants were more capable of maintaining their water potential (Ø). This indicated by significantly higher values of Ø in treated plants i.e. -2.95 Mpa(10 Gy),-2.86 Mpa (20 Gy) and -2.84 Mpa (40 Gy), compared to -3.74 (Untreated plants). Drought stressed plants produced total biomass 79,55 g/plant, much lower compared to unstressed plants (308,20 g/plant). The highest yield was N8 (219,53 g biomass and 139,83 g tuber), followed by N1 (183,32 g biomass and 126,20 g tuber) and N5 (178,8 g biomass and 136,64 g tuber). Drought Tolerance Index of untreated N1 was the highest (1,27), followed by N5 treatedwith 40 Gy (1.22), N1 with 10 Gy (1.17) and N8 with 40 Gy (1.00). Among radiation treatments, untreated plant produced the highest yield followed by the plants treated with 10 Gy, and the lowest was treated with 40 Gy

Kinetics of coherent order-disorder transition in Al3ZrAl_3 Zr

Within a phase field approach which takes the strain-induced elasticity into account, the kinetics of the coherent order-disorder transition is investigated for the specific case of $Al_3 Zr$ alloy. It is shown that a microstructure with cubic $L1_2$ precipitates appears as a transient state during the decomposition of a homogeneous disordered solid solution into a microstructure with tetragonal $DO_{23}$ precipitates embedded into a disordered matrix. At low enough temperature, favored by a weak internal stress, only $L1_2$ precipitates grow in the transient microstructure preceding nucleation of the $DO_{23}$ precipitates that occurs exclusively at the interface of the solid solution with the $L1_2$ precipitates. Analysis of microstructures at nanoscopic scale shows a characteristic rod shape for the $DO_{23}$ precipitates due to the combination of their tetragonal symmetry and their large internal stress.Comment: 2 postscript figures and 1 JPG pag

Thyroid screening in early pregnancy: Pros and cons

Universal thyroid screening in pregnancy is a key debate in thyroidology and obstetrics. It is well-established that thyroid hormones are essential for maintaining pregnancy and optimal fetal development. Thyroid dysfunction is common in women of child-bearing age and also results in substantial adverse obstetric and child neurodevelopmental outcomes. Furthermore, thyroid dysfunction is readily diagnosed with reliable blood tests and easily corrected with inexpensive and available treatments. Screening only high-risk patients appears to miss the majority of cases and economic models show that compared to high-risk screening, universal screening is cost effective even if only overt hypothyroidism was assumed to have adverse obstetric effects. As a result, several countries now implement universal screening. Opponents of universal thyroid screening argue that asymptomatic borderline thyroid abnormalities such as subclinical hypothyroidism and isolated hypothyroxinemia form the bulk of cases of thyroid dysfunction seen in pregnancy and that there is a lack of high quality evidence to support their screening and correction. This review critically appraises the literature, examines the pros and cons of universal thyroid screening using criteria laid down by Wilson and Jungner. It also highlights the growing evidence for universal thyroid screening and indicates the key challenges and practicalities of implementation

Physically plausible K-space trajectories for Compressed Sensing in MRI: From simulations to real acquisitions

International audienceMagnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a medical imaging technique used in radiology to image the anatomy and function of the body in both health and disease. MRI is probably one of the most successful application fields of compressed sensing (CS). Despite recent advances, there is still a large discrepancy between theories and actual applications. Overall, many important questions related to sampling theory remain open. In this work, we address one of them: given a set of hardware constraints (e.g. sampling Fourier coefficients along smooth curves), how to optimally design a sampling pattern? We first derive three key aspects that should be carefully designed by inspecting the literature, namely admissibility, limit of the empirical measure and coverage speed. To fulfill them jointly, we then propose an original approach which consists of projecting a probability distribution onto a set of admissible measures. The proposed algorithm allows to handle arbitrary hardware constraints (gradient magnitude, slew rate) and then automatically generates efficient sampling patterns. The MR images reconstructed using the proposed approach have a significantly higher SNR (2-3 dB) than those reconstructed using more standard sampling patterns (e.g. radial, spiral), both for medium and very high resolution imaging. Likewise, reconstructions from highly undersampled data acquired in experiments performed on a 7T SIEMENS MR scanner show the superiority of our sampling schemes over traditional MR samplings and proved that very large acceleration factor (up to 40-fold) are practically achievable with CS-MRI

Early and efficient detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in sputum by microscopic observation of broth cultures.

Early, efficient and inexpensive methods for the detection of pulmonary tuberculosis are urgently needed for effective patient management as well as to interrupt transmission. These methods to detect M. tuberculosis in a timely and affordable way are not yet widely available in resource-limited settings. In a developing-country setting, we prospectively evaluated two methods for culturing and detecting M. tuberculosis in sputum. Sputum samples were cultured in liquid assay (micro broth culture) in microplate wells and growth was detected by microscopic observation, or in Löwenstein-Jensen (LJ) solid media where growth was detected by visual inspection for colonies. Sputum samples were collected from 321 tuberculosis (TB) suspects attending Bugando Medical Centre, in Mwanza, Tanzania, and were cultured in parallel. Pulmonary tuberculosis cases were diagnosed using the American Thoracic Society diagnostic standards. There were a total of 200 (62.3%) pulmonary tuberculosis cases. Liquid assay with microscopic detection detected a significantly higher proportion of cases than LJ solid culture: 89.0% (95% confidence interval [CI], 84.7% to 93.3%) versus 77.0% (95% CI, 71.2% to 82.8%) (p = 0.0007). The median turn around time to diagnose tuberculosis was significantly shorter for micro broth culture than for the LJ solid culture, 9 days (interquartile range [IQR] 7-13), versus 21 days (IQR 14-28) (p<0.0001). The cost for micro broth culture (labor inclusive) in our study was US $4.56 per sample, versus US$11.35 per sample for the LJ solid culture. The liquid assay (micro broth culture) is an early, feasible, and inexpensive method for detection of pulmonary tuberculosis in resource limited settings