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Key summary points: Aim: To evaluate a single-item Verbal Numerical Rating Scale as an initial screening tool for psychological distress (VNRS-PD). Findings: The VNRS-PD is feasible in the setting of inpatient geriatric rehabilitation and suitable to detect patients who need more detailed psychodiagnostic examination to identify potential psychological distress and mental disorders. Message: This work supports a stepwise psychodiagnostic scheme in inpatient geriatric rehabilitation and other settings to identify possible need for interventions. Purpose: Although psychological distress has a negative impact on functional recovery, institutionalisation and mortality rates, there is typically no established procedure to screen for psychological distress in geriatric rehabilitation. The aim of the study was to evaluate a brief single-item Verbal Numerical Rating Scale (VNRS-PD) as a screening tool for psychological distress in multimorbid geriatric rehabilitation patients. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, N = 132 geriatric rehabilitation in-patients (M = 82 years old; 70.5% female) completed a verbal numerical rating scale (VNRS-PD) on satisfaction with their mood as well as the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and the short-form of the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS). Based on the questionnaire data, the rehabilitation patients were classified as high or low in psychopathology. Using receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, optimal cutoff scores of the VNRS-PD were calculated for each questionnaire to detect significant psychological distress. Results: Between 28.8% (HADS ≥ 18) and 43.9% (GDS ≥ 6) of the sample had above-cutoff questionnaire scores. The area under the curve (AUC) of the VNRS-PD varied from 0.785 (95%-CI 0.709–0.861) (GDS ≥ 6) and 0.790 (95%-CI 0.716–0.864) (HADS ≥ 18) to 0.807 (95%-CI 0.734–0.880) (GDS ≥ 7). A score of ≤ 5 in the VNRS-PD proved to be the cutoff with an optimal trade-off between sensitivity (0.776–0.867) and specificity (0.638–0.703). Conclusion: The VNRS-PD may be a suitable screening instrument to detect patients with psychological distress in inpatient geriatric rehabilitation for and to initiate further diagnostics within a graduated psychodiagnostic scheme. This first step may help to identify older patients with psychological distress and mental disorders, to initiate targeted interventions. Further research is needed to replicate these findings in a larger sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remote earthquake triggering is a well-established phenomenon. Triggering is commonly identified from statistically significant increases in earthquake rate coincident with the passage of seismic energy. In establishing rate changes, short duration earthquake catalogs are commonly used, and triggered sequences are not typically analyzed within the context of background seismic activity. Using 500 mainshocks and four western USA 33-yearlong earthquake catalogs, we compare the ability of three different statistical methods to identify remote earthquake triggering. Counter to many prior studies, we find remote dynamic triggering is rare (conservatively, <2% of the time). For the mainshocks associated with remote rate increases, the spatial and temporal signatures of triggering differ. We find that a rate increase coincident in time with mainshock energy alone is insufficient to conclude that dynamic triggering occurred. To classify dynamically triggered sequences, we suggest moving away from strict statistical measurements and instead use a compatibility assessment that includes multiple factors, like spatial and temporal indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present experiments investigated whether the observed associative deficit in older adults' episodic memory is mediated by a reduction of attentional resources. Using a dual-task procedure, younger and older participants studied lists of word pairs either under full attention or while performing a concurrent task. Both experiments showed that dividing attention did not cause a greater impairment to memory for associations than to memory for items in either age group. Furthermore, an analysis of concurrent task performance revealed that older adults' attentional costs for both learning and binding items were not larger than for learning items alone, relative to younger adults. These data provide support for a multicausal interpretation of older adults' memory deficits in which common, depleted attentional resources may be a mechanism that reduces memory for components of an episode in both older and younger adults under divided attention at encoding. In addition, older adults have a unique deficit in memory for the associations between the components, which does not seem to be resource dependent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several studies have demonstrated that divided attention at encoding significantly reduces memory performance, whereas divided attention at retrieval affects memory performance only minimally. However, the possibility exists that retrieval processes have shown such resilience because the concurrent tasks used have often not been very demanding. To assess this possibility, we used independent manipulations of the concurrent task during either encoding or retrieval that included stimulus-response compatibility and participant- versus experimenter-controlled pace. In addition, we manipulated the distribution of practice that the participants received with the primary and the concurrent tasks. The results replicated and extended those recently reported by Rohrer and Pashler (2003), indicating that although memory performance is negatively affected by divided attention at retrieval, especially with noncompatible stimulus-response mapping in the concurrent task, this effect was much smaller than that at encoding, in line with the asymmetry notion. Furthermore, experimenter versus participant control of the concurrent task had no effect on memory retrieval. Finally, under conditions of equal practice with both the memory and the concurrent tasks, memory retrieval was affected only to a small degree. In contrast to encoding processes, the processes involved in retrieval accuracy appear, in many cases, to be less interrupted by divided attention, although this protection requires substantial resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports a comparison of the aftershock pattern of the moment magnitude M[subw]=7.3 Landers earthquake, with static stress changes and transient, oscillatory stress changes transmitted as seismic waves (dynamic stresses). Effect of dynamic stresses on fault zones which can lead to earthquakes; Similar asymmetries found in the aftershock and dynamic stress patterns, which are absent in static stress changes; Proof that dynamic stresses can promote failure nearby.