Intense Ones Research Articles

Characterization of Subdaily Rainfall Events over Central Africa: Duration, Intensity, Amount, and Spatial Scale of the Storm Types

Abstract Using half-hourly rainfall data from 14 automated weather stations over central Africa, rainfall events [≥0.1 mm (30 min)−1] characteristics are explored. A total of 10 096 wet events (WEs) were identified and classified into six storm types (STs), mostly discretized by their duration and intensity. ST 1 is very short (<1.5 h) with low rainfall intensities over a small area and contributes the least to the total rainfall (7%) but is by far the most frequent (70% of the WEs). ST 2 is short (∼1.5 h) and sudden with very intense rains and of medium spatial scale (<200 km). ST 3 is short and of medium scale too but with low intensities and rainfall amounts. ST 4 and ST 5 are of large scale and long (∼3–4 h), with high rainfall amounts so that they contribute the most to the total rainfall (29% and 20%). Last, ST 6 is the largest, longest, and rainiest, although moderately intense. A complementary classification is performed on lagged gridded rainfall fields from IMERG to document the possible space–time evolution of the rainfall field during the life cycle of WEs. Four spatial types are identified. Spatial type 1 gathers the most frequent, less intense ones. Spatial type 2 is far less frequent but pictures westward-moving rainfall patterns, probably associated with mesoscale convective systems. Two spatial types (3 and 4) are related to high-intensity near-stationary rainfall events, respectively, located to the southwest and northwest of the stations. ST 4 is mostly present at stations close to the Atlantic Ocean.

Disentangling boredom from depression using the phenomenology and content of involuntary autobiographical memories

Recurrent involuntary autobiographical memories (IAMs) are memories retrieved unintentionally and repetitively. We examined whether the phenomenology and content of recurrent IAMs could differentiate boredom and depression, both of which are characterized by affective dysregulation and spontaneous thought. Participants (n = 2484) described their most frequent IAM and rated its phenomenological properties (e.g., valence). Structural topic modeling, a method of unsupervised machine learning, identified coherent content within the described memories. Boredom proneness was positively correlated with depressive symptoms, and both boredom proneness and depressive symptoms were correlated with more negative recurrent IAMs. Boredom proneness predicted less vivid recurrent IAMs, whereas depressive symptoms predicted more vivid, negative, and emotionally intense ones. Memory content also diverged: topics such as relationship conflicts were positively predicted by depressive symptoms, but negatively predicted by boredom proneness. Phenomenology and content in recurrent IAMs can effectively disambiguate boredom proneness from depressive symptoms in a large sample of undergraduate students from a racially diverse university.

Quantifying the Impact of Street Greening during Full-Leaf Seasons on Emotional Perception: Guidelines for Resident Well-Being

Quantifying the emotional impact of street greening during the full-leaf seasons in spring, summer, and fall is important for well-being-focused urban construction. Current emotional perception models usually focus on the influence of objects identified through semantic segmentation of street view images and lack explanation. Therefore, interpretability models that quantify street greening’s emotional effects are needed. This study aims to measure and explain the influence of street greening on emotions to help urban planners make decisions. This would improve the living environment, foster positive emotions, and help residents recover from negative emotions. In Hangzhou, China, we used the Baidu Map API to obtain street view images when plants were in the full-leaf state. Semantic segmentation was used to separate plant parts from street view images, enabling the calculation of the Green View Index, Plant Level Diversity, Plant Color Richness, and Tree–Sky View Factor. We created a dataset specifically designed for the purpose of emotional perception, including four distinct categories: pleasure, relaxation, boredom, and anxiety. This dataset was generated through a combination of machine learning algorithms and human evaluation. Scores range from 1 to 5, with higher values indicating stronger emotions and lower values indicating less intense ones. The random forest model and Shapley Additive Explanation (SHAP) algorithm were employed to identify the key indicators that affect emotions. Emotions were most affected by the Plant Level Diversity and Green View Index. These indicators and emotions have an intricate non-linear relationship. Specifically, a higher Green View Index (often indicating the presence of 20–35 fully grown trees within a 200 m range in street view images) and a greater Plant Level Diversity significantly promoted positive emotional responses. Our study provided local planning departments with support for well-being-focused urban planning and renewal decisions. Based on our research, we recommend the following actions: (1) increase the amount of visible green in areas with a low Green View Index; (2) plant seasonal and flowering plants like camellia, ginkgo, and goldenrain trees to enhance the diversity and colors; (3) trim plants in areas with low safety perception to improve visibility; (4) introduce evergreen plants like cinnamomum camphor, osmanthus, and pine.

Influence of climate variability on fire generation

This study evaluates the occurrence of dry and wet events and their relationship with fires in southern Pampas, Argentina. The intensity and magnitude of dry and wet events were determined based on the regional series of the Standardized Precipitation and Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) for the 2000-2021 period. The data obtained were related to the El Niño Oceanic Index (ONI) to analyze the incidence of El Niño and La Niña events in generating them. Fires in the region were detected using remote sensing techniques, considering the number of events, their intensity, extent, and duration. The southern Pampas experiences marked rainfall variability, with 15 dry events, 11 wet years, and 2 standard years recorded for the period analyzed. Extreme dry years were, on average, more intense (SPEI = -2.14) and occurred mainly during the negative ONI phase. In contrast, extreme wet years exhibited lower intensity (SPEI = 1.98), and only the most intense ones were related to neutral ONI phases. We analyzed a representative extremely dry (ED) and an extremely wet events (EW) to interpret the relationship between climate variability and the spatiotemporal variability of fires in the region. It was observed that during the EW event (2014-2015, SPEI = 1.52, and El Niño event until 2015) the number of fires was higher compared to an ED event (2008-2009, SPEI = -2.22, and La Niña event during 2008), with 460 and 205 fires, respectively. The intensity was higher in the EW (302.6 and 31.5 MW), while the area presented considerable differences (1722 and 815.5 km2, respectively). Finally, the duration of the fires was shorter in ED than in EW (6 and 8 months, respectively). These results were related to vegetation health (NDVI = 0.29 and 0.41 and EVI = 0.15 and 0.21 in ED and EW, respectively) and changes in land covers. This study provides a solid database for future research efforts and sustainable land management plans.

The role of policy design in policy continuation and ratcheting-up of policy ambition

Abstract Effectively addressing grand societal challenges like climate change and environmental degradation requires policy intervention that is not only continuous but also increasing in ambition over time. However, negative feedback could lead to policies being weakened or even discontinued after a while. An important but unresolved policy question, therefore, is whether policies can be deliberately designed to survive (i.e., to “stick”) and, ideally, be replaced with more ambitious ones over time (i.e., to “ratchet up”). We bridge policy feedback and policy design scholarship to derive hypotheses on the effects of two policy design features—“intensity” (i.e., a measure of policies’ overall design) and “specificity” (i.e., a measure of policies’ targeted focus)—on policy (dis-)continuation and ratcheting-up (-down) of ambition. Focusing on policy design, we contribute to the theorization and empirical understanding of endogenous factors behind policy change. We test our hypotheses with an event history dataset of 627 low-carbon energy policies in eight developed countries. Conducting a multilevel survival analysis, we find statistically significant evidence of more intense policies being replaced with less intense ones, i.e., more intense policies lead to ratcheting-down of ambition. We also find that more specific policies are more likely to be replaced with more intense policies, i.e., more specific policies lead to ratcheting-up of ambition. Based on these novel insights, we discuss how policy design can navigate these complex dynamics. In this sense, our approach also contributes to the discussion about the “forward-looking” potential of the policy sciences.

Stability of the personal relationship networks in a longitudinal study of middle school students

The personal network of relationships is structured in circles of friendships, that go from the most intense relationships to the least intense ones. While this is a well established result, little is known about the stability of those circles and their evolution in time. To shed light on this issue, we study the temporal evolution of friendships among teenagers during two consecutive academic years by means of a survey administered on five occasions. We show that the first two circles, best friends and friends, can be clearly observed in the survey but also that being in one or the other leads to more or less stable relationships. We find that being in the same class is one of the key drivers of friendship evolution. We also observe an almost constant degree of reciprocity in the relationships, around 60%, a percentage influenced both by being in the same class and by gender homophily. Not only do our results confirm the mounting evidence supporting the circle structure of human social networks, but they also show that these structures persist in time despite the turnover of individual relationships—a fact that may prove particularly useful for understanding the social environment in middle schools.

Frequency and Intensity of Landfalling Tropical Cyclones in East Asia: Past Variations and Future Projections

This paper presents the latest analyses and integrates results of many past studies on the spatial and temporal variations of the annual frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones (TCs) making landfall along different areas of the East Asian (EA) coast. Future projections of such variations based on the past investigations are also presented. No statistically significant trend in the number of landfalling TCs could be identified in most of the EA coastal regions, except for an increasing one in Vietnam and a decreasing one in South China. Multi-decadal as well as interannual variations in the frequency of landfalling TCs are prevalent in almost all the EA coastal regions. Only TCs making landfall in Vietnam and the Korean Peninsula showed an increase in landfall intensity, with no trend in the other regions. Nevertheless, more intense landfalling TCs were evident in most regions during the past two decades. Multidecadal variations were not observed in some regions although interannual variations remained large. Various oscillations in the atmospheric circulation and the ocean conditions can largely explain the observed changes in the frequency and intensity of landfalling TCs in different regions of the EA coast. In the future, most climate models project a decrease in the number of TCs making landfall but an increase in the intensity of these TCs in all the EA coastal regions, especially for the most intense ones.

Culturally Acceptable Emotional Expressions Perceived by Non-U.S. Physicians Undergoing U.S.-Based Serious Illness Communication Skills Training: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Responding to emotions is a key feature of U.S.-based serious illness communication skills training, VitalTalk®, of which trained actors portraying seriously ill patients is a component. The cultural appropriateness and perceived utility of the actors' emotional expressions remain to be empirically evaluated outside of the U.S. To determine the cultural appropriateness and educational utility of VitalTalk® actors' emotional expressions, as perceived by clinicians. From January 2021-April 2022, we conducted a cross-sectional study of physicians in Japan attending virtual VitalTalk® training in Japanese, each session focusing on: responding to emotions (#1) and discussing goals of care (#2), respectively. We examined their perceived authenticity and utility of the actively and passively intense emotional expressions portrayed by actors in VitalTalk® role-plays. Physicians (N = 100, 94% response rate) from across Japan voluntarily attended two-session workshops and completed post-session surveys. Eighty-eight participants (88%) responded that both actively and passively intense emotions portrayed by the actors provided useful learning experiences. For session #1, the participants found actively intense emotional expressions to be more clinically authentic, compared to passively intense ones (4.21 vs 4.06 out of a 5-point Likert scale, PP= .02). For session #2, no such difference was observed (4.16 vs 4.08 of a 5-point Likert scale, P = .24). Even in a culture where patients may express emotions passively, any intense and authentic emotional expressions by actors can be perceived as facilitating learning. Most participants perceived both the Name, Understand, Respect, Support, and Explore '(NURSE)' statements and Reframe, Expect emotion, Map out patient goals Align with goals and Propose a plan '(REMAP)' frameworks as useful in routine clinical practice in Japan.

Structure of turbulence in planar rough Couette flows

On roughening one of the walls in a planar Couette flow, it was reported that turbulence augments near the opposite wall [Javanappa and Narasimhamurthy, “Turbulent plane Couette flow with a roughened wall,” Phys. Rev. Fluids 6, 104609 (2021)]. The current direct numerical simulation work further explores this interesting phenomenon by investigating the flow dynamics and anisotropic nature of turbulence. For roughening, transverse square ribs are placed only on the bottom wall with streamwise pitch separations s=5r and 10r, where r=0.2h is the rib height and h is the channel half height. The time series of spanwise vorticity fluctuation in the case of s=10r shows the presence of coherent Kelvin–Helmholtz-like structures behind the ribs. Phase analysis using Hilbert transform reveals that the flow within the cavity for the s=5r case is in-phase, while a phase shift is observed for the s=10r case. The visualization of enstrophy production rate (ωiSijωj) reveals that regions of intense positive ones are observed to be topologically “sheet-like,” while the regions of negative ones are found to be “spotty.” Anisotropy tensors and anisotropic invariant maps are used to explore turbulence anisotropy at both large and small scales of motion. It is observed that anisotropy is reduced in both the cases near the vicinity of roughness.

Mechanochemical preparation of NiCuSn nanoparticles and composites in presence of cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) and the catalytic application of the products in homocoupling and hydration of terminal alkynes

We report the synthesis of the NiCuSn nanoparticles and nanocomposites in mechanochemical route using CTAB as milling additive. The study of grinding intensity (frequency) and time interval drew up the importance of the well-chosen operation parameters. The mild milling resulted in formation of NiSn intermetallics, while the intense ones aided the evolution of bronze and copper(I) oxide phases. The utilization of CTAB proved to be the key factor to prevent or slow down the process of mechanical alloying and to fritter the metal grains into the nanodimensions. The dynamic light scattering data demonstrated positively charged particles with average solvodynamic diameters of around 70 nm applying intense or long-term millings. Without CTAB or with relatively short or weak grindings, these values remained between 230 and 550 nm, as in the case of the surface areas getting around 20 m2/g with and 1 m2/g without CTAB. The catalytic transformation of p-methoxyphenylacetylene in dimethyl sulfoxide showed that the copper, copper(I) oxide and bronze particles managed the reaction toward the evolution of 1,3-diyne in Glaser-Hay homocoupling without base addition, while the Sn and SnO2 phases assisted to the Markovnikov-type hydration of alkyne groups. The formation of α-diketone signed that the anti-Markovnikov route was also occurred. The use of CTAB was found to exert a profound effect on the quality of catalytic end-products through the controlled generation of bronze and tin oxide phases and the solid solution of nickel atoms.

Brain Tumor Detection via Asymmetry Quantification Across Mid Sagittal Plane

Introduction: Brain tumor is among the major causes of morbidity and mortality rates worldwide. According to National Brain Tumor Foundation (NBTS), the death rate has nearly increased by as much as 300% over last couple of decades. Tumors can be categorized as benign (non-cancerous) and malignant (cancerous). The type of the brain tumor significantly depends on various factors like the site of its occurrence, its shape, the age of the subject etc. On the other hand, Computer Aided Detection (CAD) has been improving significantly in recent times. The concept, design and implementation of these systems ascend from fairly simple ones to computationally intense ones. For efficient and effective diagnosis and treatment plans in brain tumor studies, it is imperative that an abnormality is detected at an early stage as it provides a little more time for medical professionals to respond. The early detection of diseases has predominantly been possible because of medical imaging techniques developed from past many decades like CT, MRI, PET, SPECT, FMRI etc. The detection of brain tumors however, has always been a challenging task because of the complex structure of the brain, diverse tumor sizes and locations in the brain. Method: This paper proposes an algorithm that can detect the brain tumors in the presence of the Radio-Frequency (RF) inhomoginiety. The algorithm utilizes the Mid Sagittal Plane as a landmark point across which the asymmetry between the two brain hemispheres is estimated using various intensity and texture based parameters. Result: The results show the efficacy of the proposed method for the detection of the brain tumors with an acceptable detection rate. Conclusion: In this paper, we have calculated three textural features from the two hemispheres of the brain viz: Contrast (CON), Entropy (ENT) and Homogeneity (HOM) and three parameters viz: Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Correlation Co-efficient (CC), and Integral of Absolute Difference (IAD) from the intensity distribution profiles of the two brain hemispheres to predict any presence of the pathology. First a Mid Sagittal Plane (MSP) is obtained on the Magnetic Resonance Images that virtually divides brain into two bilaterally symmetric hemispheres. The block wise texture asymmetry is estimated for these hemispheres using the above 6 parameters.

Pair-Correlated Imaging of Cl + CH3D(v4, v1-I, v1-II = 1, |jK⟩) → CH2D(vi) + HCl(v).

The title reactions were studied at a collisional energy of 10.0 kcal mol-1 in a crossed-beam, product-imaging experiment. In terms of integral cross sections, all three CH3-stretching excited CH3D(vCH3 = 1) reagents promote the reactivity in forming the predominant product pair of (vCH2D, vHCl)s = (00, 0/1)s with a prominent mode-propensity of v4 > v1-I > v1-II, where v4 denotes the degenerate mode of CH3 asymmetric stretch and v1-I and v1-II are a pair of Fermi-coupled, symmetric-stretch states. The vibrationally excited CH2D product pairs of (61, 0)s, (11, 0)s, and (31, 0)s appear to be minor channels and display a reverse propensity of v4 < v1-I ≈ v1-II for (61, 0)s, while v4 > v1-I for (11, 0)s. Based on the observed angular distributions, we conjecture that, irrespective of the initial mode of excitation, the (00, 0)s product pair proceeds by a direct abstraction of the peripheral type, whereas the (00,1)s pair is mediated via a resonance pathway. Intriguingly, the angular distributions of the excited product pairs-(61, 0)s, (11, 0)s, and (31, 0)s-are remarkably similar and comprise the traits of both the peripheral mechanism and resonance pathway. Possible interpretation and implication are suggested. In addition, due to the spectral overlap of the REMPI bands and heavily congested image features, a robust data analysis method is developed, which enables us to extract the dynamics attributes of a weak feature buried in the proximate, more intense ones with high fidelity.

Annals of Neurology: Volume 90, Number 1, July 2021

A series of schematic drawings of EEG functional connectivity in the alpha range (upper row) and delta range (lower row) across the brain, with more intense connections in warmer colors, and less intense ones in cooler colors. The two images on the left represent patients in the unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS) and on the right in healthy controls. Patients in the minimally conscious state (MCS) are shown in the third column, and to their left are patients in the MCS* state, who are behaviorally unresponsive but have a better outcome than typical UWS patients. See Thibaut et al., (pp. 89–100, this issue) for details.

Projected hydrologic changes over the north of the Iberian Peninsula using a Euro-CORDEX multi-model ensemble.

This study explores the impacts of climate change on the hydrology of the headwater areas of the Duero River Basin, the largest basin of the Iberian Peninsula. To this end, an ensemble of 18 Euro-CORDEX model experiments was gathered for two periods, 1975-2005 and 2021-2100, under two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5), and were used as the meteorological forcings of the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) during the hydrological modelling exercise. The projected hydrologic changes for the future period were analyzed at annual and seasonal scales using several evaluation metrics, such as the delta changes of the atmospheric and land variables, the runoff and evapotranspiration ratios of the overall water balance, the snowmelt contribution to the total streamflow and the centroid position for the daily hydrograph of the average hydrologic year. Annual streamflow reductions of up to 40% were attained in various parts of the basin for the period 2071-2100 under the RCP8.5 scenario, and resulted from the precipitation decreases in the southern subwatersheds and the combined effect of the precipitation decreases and evapotranspiration increases in the north. The runoff and the evapotranspiration ratios evinced a tendency towards an evaporative regime in the north part of the basin and a strengthening of the evaporative response in the south. Seasonal streamflow changes were mostly negative and dependent on the season considered, with greater detriments in spring and summer, and less intense ones in autumn and winter. The snowmelt contribution to the total streamflow was strongly diminished with decreases reaching -80% in autumn and spring, thus pointing to a change in the snow regime for the Duero mountains. Finally, the annual and seasonal changes of the centroid position accounted for the shape changes of the hydrograph, constituting a measure of seasonality and reflecting high correlations degrees with the streamflow delta changes.

Non-uniform sampling for NOESY? A case study on spiramycin.

To date, most nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)-based 3-D structure determinations of both small molecules and of biopolymers utilize the nuclear Overhauser effect (NOE) via NOESY spectra. The acquisition of high-quality NOESY spectra is a prerequisite for quantitative analysis providing accurate interatomic distances. As the acquisition of NOE build-ups is time-consuming, acceleration of the process by the use of non-uniform sampling (NUS) may seem beneficial; however, the quantitativity of NOESY spectra acquired with NUS has not yet been validated. Herein, NOESY spectra with various extents of NUS have been recorded, artificial NUS spectra with two different sampling schemes created, and by using two different NUS reconstruction algorithms the influence of NUS on the data quality was evaluated. Using statistical analyses, NUS is demonstrated to influence the accuracy of quantitative NOE experiments. The NOE-based distances show an increased error as the sampling density decreases. Weak NOE signals are affected more severely by NUS than more intense ones. The application of NUS with NOESY comes at two major costs: the interatomic distances are determined with lower accuracy and long-range correlations are lost.

Subliminal affective priming effect: Dissociated processes for intense versus normal facial expressions

Positive vs. negative intense-facial expressions are difficult to explicitly distinguish; yet, whether they dissociate when subliminally presented remains unclear. Through three experiments using affective priming paradigms, we assessed how intense facial expressions, when presented briefly (17 ms) and masked, influenced following neutral ambiguous words (Experiment 1) or visible facial expressions (Experiments 2&3). We also compared these results with those of using normal facial expressions as primes in each experiment. All experiments indicated masked affective priming effects (biasing valence judgement of neutral words or facilitating reaction time to faces with the same valence as the prime) in normal facial expression, but not those intense ones. Experiment 3 using event related potentials (ERPs) further revealed that two ERP components N250 and LPP were consistent with behavioral changes in the normal condition (larger when valences of primes and targets were different), but inconsistent in the intense condition. Taken together, our results provided behavioral and neural evidence for distinctive processing between normal and intense facial expressions under masked condition.

Climatic analysis of tropopause during the northwestern Indian Ocean tropical cyclones

In this research, tropopause temperature (TT) and tropopause geopotential height (TGH) over the inner-core and environmental regions of all tropical cyclones (TCs) over the northwest of the Indian Ocean (NWIO) from 1990 to 2019 were investigated. To this aim, observational/analysis/reanalysis data and also simulated data from both historical and Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5) experiments of some global climate models (GCMs) from the Coupled Model Intercomparision Project (CMIP5) were used. Dynamical and thermo-dynamical environmental factors controlling TC, together with their correlation with different phases of some climatic indices were considered. Results indicated that the eastern part of the NWIO was more favorable for TC genesis and intensification.Lower-level stratospheric (upper-level tropospheric) cooling (warming) was detected over the NWIO during 1990−2019. Over the both inner-core and environmental regions of the NWIO TCs, the coldest tropopause occurred at a CS-Category and the warmest tropopause happened at the first stage of a VSCS event. Over the inner-core (environmental) region, the highest tropopause was detected at the first stage of a CS event (at the end of a VSCS life cycle). A significant majority of the used CMIP5 GCMs produced stratospheric cooling and tropospheric warming trends over the NWIO, similar to those obtained using ERA5 reanalysis dataset. Finally, the decreasing trend of TT over the both inner-core and environmental regions of NWIO TCs together with temperature decreasing trend obtained from the CMIP5 GCMs simulations suggest that the NWIO is prone to experience more TCs, especially the intense ones, in the future.

El doloroso camino del duelo, (y, sin embargo, hay luz)

Cuando me plantearon impartir la conferencia de clausura del XLV congreso de SEDEN, propuse hablar sobre el duelo, ese gran desconocido por el que todos vamos a pasar a lo largo, o a lo corto, de nuestra existencia; lo propuse porque a pesar del permanente contacto que tenemos los profesionales de la salud con personas en duelo, no estamos preparados para normalizar y acompañar de manera eficaz la tormenta emocional que implica la pérdida de la salud o de la vida. Ciertamente llama la atención esa laguna de formación en los profesionales, si tenemos en cuenta que en la actualidad la mayoría de las personas mueren en el hospital y las primeras reacciones de dolor, las más intensas, dolorosas y contradictorias las tienen ante nosotros, los profesionales de la salud. Queramos o no, nuestra actitud va a influir en el desarrollo inicial del duelo.

Breeding value of spring durum wheat accessions for performance traits under environment of Ukrainian Forest-Steppe

Purpose. To identify spring durum wheat accessions with high yield level and by yield components for their involvement in breeding programs as a source material.Methods. Field, statistical.Results. The results of the study of 65 collection samples of spring durum wheat of various ecological and geographical origin in terms of productivity in 2016–2018 are presented. The research results indicate that the samples of spring durum wheat had different yield level depending on the conditions of the year of cultivation. According to the calculations of the degree of yield stability parameters, the samples were found that ensure its level under fluctuations in weather conditions with regression coefficient close to one as follows ‘Omskiy izumrud’ (RUS), ‘Korona’, ‘Toma’, ‘Nauryz 6’ (KAZ), ‘Dura king’, ‘Candura’ (CAN), ‘Tera’, ‘Novatsiia’ (UKR), thus indicating their semi-intensive type. Collection samples of spring durum wheat that under optimal weather conditions are capable of producing significant yield increase are distinguished by wide ecological reaction. These are samples with regression coefficient more than one ‘MIP Raiduzhna’, ‘Hordeiforme 13-07’ (UKR), ‘Lan’, ‘Salaut’, ‘Ertol’ (KAZ), ‘Bezenchukskaya 205’, ‘Lilek’ (RUS). These samples can be characterized by their adaptive properties as intense ones, with a pronounced response to the environment. Over the years of the research, grain number per spike varied from 35.9 to 38.8 pcs. Year conditions in 2016 were the most favorable for plant growth and development, while index of conditions was 4.1, and the average grain number per spike was 41.4 pcs. Year conditions in 2017 and 2018 were less favorable for growth and development of durum spring wheat, and therefore there was a negative value of index of year conditions (lj = -5.1 and lj = 0.5, respectively) with less grain number per spike (32.2 and 38.2 pcs., respectively). According to the trait «1000 kernel weight», the samples were identified with regression coefficient close to one under fluctuations of weather conditions, i.e ‘Korona’, ‘Raya’ (KAZ), ‘Lilek’, ‘Bezenchukskaya 205’ (RUS), ‘MIP Raiduzhna’ (UKR). The grain weight per spike in the collection samples varied from 1.27 to 1.77 g. The stable samples ‘Ertol’, ‘Salaut’, ‘Damsinskaya yantarnaya’ (KAZ), ‘Lilek’ (RUS), ‘Novatsiia’ (UKR), ‘Duraking’, ‘Candura’ (CAN) promising in spring wheat breeding were identified and can be involved in hybridization.Conclusions. Stable and plastic samples were identified among collection material of spring durum wheat in terms of productivity for involvement in scientific programs as source material.

Effectiveness of psychological interventions for smoking cessation in adults with mental health problems: A systematic review

People with long-term mental health problems are heavier smokers than the general population, and suffer greater smoking-related morbidity and mortality. Little is known about the effectiveness of psychological smoking cessation interventions for this group. This review evaluates evidence from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on the effectiveness of psychological interventions, used alone or with pharmacotherapy, in reducing smoking in adults with mental health problems. We searched relevant articles between January 1999 and March 2019 and identified 6,200 papers. Two reviewers screened 81 full-text articles. Outcome measures included number of cigarettes smoked per day, 7-day point prevalence abstinence, and continuous abstinence from smoking. Thirteen RCTs, involving 1,497 participants, met the inclusion criteria. Psychological interventions included cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), motivational interviewing (MI), counselling, and telephone smoking cessation support. Three trials resulted in significant reductions in smoking for patients receiving psychological interventions compared with controls. Two trials showed higher 7-day point prevalence in intervention plus nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) versus standard care groups. Four trials showed that participants who combined pharmacotherapy (bupropion or varenicline) with CBT were more likely to reduce their smoking by 50% than those receiving CBT only. Four out of five trials that compared different psychological interventions (with or without NRT) had positive outcomes regardless of intervention type. This study contributes to our understanding in a number of ways: The available evidence is consistent with a range of psychological interventions being independently effective in reducing smoking by people with mental health problems; however, too few well-designed studies have been conducted for us to be confident about, for example, which interventions work best for whom, and how they should be implemented. Evidence is clearer for a range of psychological interventions - including CBT, MI, and behavioural or supportive counselling - being effective when used with NRT or pharmacotherapy. Telephone-based and relatively brief interventions appear to be as effective as more intense and longer-term ones. There is also good evidence for a strong dose-response relationship - increased attendance predicts improved outcomes - and for interventions having more positive than negative effects on psychiatric symptoms.