“Background The importance of faith and its associations w


“Background The importance of faith and its associations with health are well documented. As part of the Patient Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System, items tapping positive and negative impact of illness (PII and NII) were developed across four content domains: Coping/Stress Response, Self-Concept, Social Connection/Isolation, and Meaning and Spirituality. Faith items were included within the concept of meaning and spirituality. Methods This measurement model was tested

on a heterogeneous group of 509 cancer survivors. To evaluate dimensionality, we applied two bi-factor models, specifying a 10058-F4 manufacturer general factor (PII or NII) and four local factors: Coping/Stress Response, Self-Concept, Social Connection/Isolation, and Meaning and Spirituality. Results Bi-factor analysis supported sufficient unidimensionality within PII and NII item sets. The unidimensionality of both PII and NII item sets was enhanced by extraction of the faith items from the rest of the questions. Of the 10 faith items, nine demonstrated higher local than general factor loadings (range for

local factor loadings?=?0.402 to 0.876), suggesting utility as a separate but related faith factor. The same was true for only two of the remaining 63 items across the PII selleck chemical and NII item sets. Conclusions Although conceptually and to a degree empirically related to Meaning and Spirituality, Faith appears to be a distinct subdomain of PII and NII, better handled by distinct assessment. A 10-item measure of the impact of

illness upon faith (II-Faith) was therefore assembled. Copyright (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.”
“The photoluminescence (PL) of poly n-vinyl carbazole (PVK) films formed by solution processing was investigated. PVK films were formed by spincasting onto bare glass or glass covered by films of indium tin oxide (ITO) and poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene): poly(styrenesulfonate)ethylene (PEDOT : PSS). Some of the spincast films were redissolved in chloroform solvent and redried both in the absence or presence of an electric field (6000 V/cm). The broad. aggregate PL peak near 410 nm exhibited both blue and red shifts dependent upon the processing conditions. These check details shifts in PL were attributed to changes in the excimer populations associated with die molecular conformation of adjacent carbazole groups. The PL data were deconvoluted into two component peaks representing two excimers associated with overlap of only one (partial or P) or full overlap (F) of both aromatic rings on adjacent carbazole groups. It was concluded that the excimer population was dependent on the amount of residual solvent left in the film after processing and upon the type of substrate. The mechanism(s) controlling the molecular configurations was discussed. (C) 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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