Laser-direct-drive fusion target design with a high-Z gradient-density pusher shell.

Laser-direct-drive fusion target designs with solid deuterium-tritium (DT) fuel, a high-Z gradient-density pusher shell (GDPS), and a Au-coated foam layer have been investigated through both 1D and 2D radiation-hydrodynamic simulations. Compared with conventional low-Z ablators and DT-push-on-DT targets, these GDPS targets possess certain advantages of being instability-resistant implosions that can be high adiabat (α≥8) and low hot-spot and pusher-shell convergence (CR_{hs}≈22 and CR_{PS}≈17), and have a low implosion velocity (v_{imp}<3×10^{7}cm/s). Using symmetric drive with laser energies of 1.

Oriented mentalization-based treatment for borderline personality disorder patients: preliminary results at Camposampiero Mental Health Center.

This contribution presents two brief reports about preliminary results of 18 months of oriented Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT), with Borderline Personality Disorder patients, recruited at the Camposampiero Mental Health Center. Following in large part Bateman and Fonagy guidelines for MBT in institutional settings, this paper presents preliminary results in two brief reports related to two cohorts of patient underwent to the oriented MBT in Camposampiero Mental Health Center (MHC). In the first study, we analyzed a group of 9 patients: an anamnestic schedule was administered; then, symptoms (SCL-90-R), psychodiagnostic scale and global health functioning (Health of the Nation Outcome Scale, Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis II Disorder [SCID-II], Global Assessment of Functioning, [GAF]), data on service impact and service costs (Cassel Community Adjustment Questionnaire, Patient Evaluation Schedule and folder data) were provided at the beginning (T), at the end of the treatment (T) and 1 year after the end of the MBT project.

Botulinum neurotoxin type A injections for vaginismus secondary to vulvar vestibulitis syndrome.

Objective: To investigate whether botulinum neurotoxin type A improves vaginismus and study its efficacy with repeated treatments.

Methods: Outpatients were referred because standard cognitive-behavioral and medical treatment for vaginismus and vulvar vestibular syndrome failed. From this group, we prospectively recruited consecutive women (n=39) whose diagnostic electromyogram (EMG) recordings from the levator ani muscle showed hyperactivity at rest and reduced inhibition during straining.

A category-specific deficit of spatial representation: the case of autotopagnosia.

Following a vascular lesion in the parietal cortex of the language dominant hemisphere (right in one case), two patients showed a striking dissociation between spared naming, recognition and use of their body parts and an inability in localising on verbal command the same body parts on themselves and on a mannequin (Autotopagnosia, AT). The patients were submitted to a modified version of Reed and Farah Test (1995), a test that taps the ability to encode changes of body position as opposed to changes of position of objects. Their performance differed from normal controls, showing a specific deficit in encoding body position.

Temporal gradient in confabulation.

We report on a patient, PL, who developed an amnesic confabulatory syndrome following heart arrest. PL's confabulation occurred both in episodic and semantic memory tasks. In a task in which she was asked to identify photographs of people and events highly familiar to her, a temporal gradient on her performance emerged.