The muon Smasher's guide.

We lay out a comprehensive physics case for a future high-energy muon collider, exploring a range of collision energies (from 1 to 100 TeV) and luminosities. We highlight the advantages of such a collider over proposed alternatives. We show how one can leverage both the point-like nature of the muons themselves as well as the cloud of electroweak radiation that surrounds the beam to blur the dichotomy between energy and precision in the search for new physics. The physics case is buttressed by a range of studies with applications to electroweak symmetry breaking, dark matter, and the naturalness of the weak scale. Furthermore, we make sharp connections with complementary experiments that are probing new physics effects using electric dipole moments, flavor violation, and gravitational waves. An extensive appendix provides cross section predictions as a function of the center-of-mass energy for many canonical simplified models.

Patterns of attention and experiences of post-traumatic stress symptoms following childbirth: an experimental study.

Childbirth for some women can be experienced as a traumatic event whereby it is appraised as threatening to life and associated with feelings of fear, helplessness or horror. These women may develop symptoms consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder or its sub-clinical symptoms (post-traumatic stress, PTS). Cognitive processes such as attentional biases have been identified in individuals with PTS exposed to other traumatic events. This study used an experimental design (the modified Stroop task) to investigate the relationship between attentional biases and PTS symptoms in 50 women who experienced their labour and delivery as stressful and responded with fear, helplessness and horror. Attentional biases away from childbirth words were significantly associated with both symptoms of post-traumatic stress and more negative experiences of childbirth. A negative experience was also associated with more severe symptoms of PTS. Positive experiences were unassociated with attentional biases or symptoms. Post-traumatic stress responses, in this population, may be associated with avoidance, and through influencing cognitive processing, acting as a maintaining factor of distress.

Coordination and advocacy for rural elders (CARE): a model of rural case management with veterans.

PURPOSE: To describe a pilot initiative sponsored by the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) to improve the health and community tenure of frail older veterans living in rural counties 50-100 miles from two host VHA medical centers. DESIGN AND METHODS: Veterans aged 75 and older who scored at risk of repeated hospital admission on the PRA-Plus telephone questionnaire were targeted and visited by evaluators who administered a comprehensive health questionnaire prior to being assessed at home by the Coordination and Advocacy for Rural Elders (CARE) program clinical teams. Guided by current state-of-the-art practices, the nurse-social worker teams performed in-home standardized assessments using the MDS-HC, developed patient-specific care plans, and mobilized family, community, and VHA resources to implement plans. RESULTS: On average, eight problems were identified for each patient, most commonly falls risk, social needs, pain, and needs related to IADL disability. As a result of initial assessment, two thirds of CARE participants received referral/linkage to formal services, more than half to medical providers. IMPLICATIONS: Through CARE, the VHA is learning more about the unmet needs of older rural veterans. Further development and evaluation should guide the VHA toward providing efficient, effective community-based services to all frail older veterans.

Automated quantitative analysis of angiogenesis in the rat aorta model using Image-Pro Plus 4.1.

This paper explains the automated image-processing steps for the quantification of microvascular growth formation in the rat thoracic aortic ring model, an ex vivo model using excised rings of rat aorta embedded in a collagen matrix which produce outgrowths of microvessels. This model of angiogenesis is useful to study the mechanism by which external agents inhibit or stimulate endothelial cell proliferation and tube formation. The manual quantification of blood vessel growth in this model is normally a time-consuming, error prone process. Former automated image analysis methods of the ring model are outdated and cannot be used with current software technology. A macro was created using Image-Pro Plus 4.1 software which was chosen for image analysis because it allows a high degree of control and replication of image-processing steps. The accuracy of this macro was determined by comparing automated counts to manual counts in 161 aortic rings. The square root of the manual count versus the square root of the automated count resulted in a root mean square value of 0.8305.