It is increasingly appreciated that amongst psychiatric cigarette smokers, those with schizophrenia have elevated rates of smoking compared to the general population. Nicotine seems to improve cognitive functions critically affected in schizophrenia. There is substantial evidence that nicotine could be used by patients with schizophrenia as a "self-medication" to improve deficits in attention, ...

Mindfulness is defined as "paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally". Mindfulness is associated with positive affect, life satisfaction, self-esteem, lower negative affect and rumination. Conversely, evidence suggests a relationship between nicotine dependence and psychiatric disorders. This study aimed to compare the levels of Mindfulness and...

Individuals consume alcohol for a variety of reasons (motives), and these reasons may be differentially associated with the types of drinking outcomes that result. The present study examined whether specific affect-relevant motivations for alcohol use (i.e., coping, enhancement) are associated with distinct types of consequences, and whether such associations occur directly, or only as a functi...

BACKGROUND Smoking may have a beneficial effect on either schizophrenic symptoms or antipsychotic side-effects, but studies are hampered by the lack of control of confounding factors. AIMS To explore the self-medication hypothesis in a large sample of stable out-patients with schizophrenia. METHOD Symptoms, assessed with the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), and number of hospit...

Background: Many psychiatric patients have nicotine and other substance dependence. Objective: To determine the prevalence of nicotine and opium dependence among psychiatric in-patients inKerman, a city in southwesternIran. Methods: Three groups of psychiatric inpatients, chronic medical patients and a sample from local population, each including 400 subjects were selected.  Nicotine dependence...

Several systems or networks display self-organizing behavior that is characterized by a state with the maximum production of entropy. Such systems are complex in that they are open, i.e. they are not thermally isolated and therefore, the system has access to a continuous supply of energy, and dissipative, i.e. they output energy to external energy reservoirs. The nature of entropy production in...

Rates of tobacco use among individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia have been estimated as high as 80%. A variety of hypotheses have been proposed to explain the high rate of tobacco use among this vulnerable group. This study examined the tobacco industry's efforts to establish and promulgate beliefs about schizophrenic individuals' need to smoke and the hazards of quitting. The current study ...

Aerosol indirect effects suffer from large uncertainty in climate models and among observations. This study focuses on two plausible factors: regime dependence of aerosol-cloud interactions and the effect of cloud droplet spectral shape. We show, using a new parcel model, that combined consideration of droplet number concentration (Nc) and relative dispersion (ε, ratio of standard deviation to ...

In the early 1970s, it was already evident that nicotine dependence was the major factor underlying the maintenance of smoking (1); it was also clear that smokers unconsciously regulate their nicotine intake by reducing puff rate when smoking a high-nicotine cigarette and by increasing it to compensate for the drop in yield when smoking a low-nicotine cigarette (2-5). Confirmation of this self-...

The cytoskeleton protein actin assembles into large bundles when supporting stresses in the cell, but grows into a fine branched network to induce cell motion. Such self-organization processes are studied in artificial networks of cytoskeleton proteins with thick actin bundles and large motor protein aggregates to enable optical observation. The effect of motor aggregate size on the cytoskeleto...