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People with serious mental illness (SMI) have identified barriers to engaging in behavioral weight management interventions (BWMIs). We assessed whether BWMIs that addressed these barriers were more effective. First, we systematically reviewed qualitative literature and used a thematic analysis to identify the characteristics of BWMIs that promote engagement for adults with SMI. Second, we systematically reviewed randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of BWMIs in adults with SMI. Data on the characteristics that promoted engagement and weight outcomes were extracted. We then used a crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis (CsQCA) to identify which characteristics were associated with weight loss. For the qualitative review, 20 studies in 515 people with SMI were analyzed and nine characteristics were reported to promote engagement in BWMIs. For the systematic review, 34 RCTs testing 36 interventions in 4305 participants were included. The active interventions resulted in more weight loss (mean = −4.37 to +1 kg at 6 weeks to 18 months follow-up) compared with controls (−1.64 to +3.08 kg). The CsQCA showed BWMIs that offered regular contact, tools to support enactment, and tailored materials were associated with effectiveness. As these are all supplementary strategies, it may be possible to augment BWMIs available for the general population to engage people with SMI.

Rationale Nitrogen isotopic compositions (δ15 N) of source and trophic amino acids (AAs) are crucial tracers of N sources and trophic enrichments in diverse fields including archeology, astrobiochemistry, ecology, oceanography, and paleo-sciences. The current analytical technique using gas chromatography-combustion-isotope ratio mass spectrometry (GC/C/IRMS) requires derivatization which is not compatible with some key AAs.. Another approach using the high-performance liquid chromatography-elemental analyzer-IRMS (HPLC/EA/IRMS) may experience co-elution issues with other compounds in certain types of samples and the highly sensitive Nano-EA/IRMS instrumentations are not widely available. Methods We present a method for high-precision δ15 N measurements of amino acids (δ15 N-AA) optimized for canonical source AA-phenylalanine (Phe) and trophic AA-glutamic acid (Glu). This offline approach entails a purification and separation step via high-pressure ion-exchange chromatography (IC) with automated fraction collection, followed by sequential chemical conversion of AA to nitrite and then to nitrous oxide (N2 O), and final determination of δ15 N of the produced N2 O via purge-and-trap continuous-flow isotope ratio mass spectrometry (PT/CF/IRMS). Results The cross-plots of δ15 N of Glu and Phe standards (four different natural abundance levels) generated by this method and their accepted values have a linear regression slope of 1 and small intercepts demonstrating high accuracy. The precisions were 0.36~0.67‰ for Phe standards, and 0.27~0.35‰ for Glu standards. Our method and the GC/C/IRMS approach produced equivalent δ15 N values for two lab standards (McCarthy Lab AA mixture and cyanobacteria) within error. We further tested our method on a wide range of natural sample matrices and obtained reasonable results. Conclusions Our method provides a reliable alternative to the current methods for δ15 N-AA measurement as IC or HPLC-based techniques that can collect underivatized AAs are widely available. Our chemical approach that converts AA to N2 O can be easily implemented into laboratories currently analyzing δ15 N of N2 O using PT/CF/IRMS. This method will help promote the use of δ15 N-AA in important studies of N cycling and trophic ecology in a wide range of research areas.

This article examines the place of hope in Hebel's Kalendergeschichten, both as a theme and as a mode. Many of the stories have an anticipatory flavour: both natural growth and human self-development are signifiers of hope. Moreover, a number of the texts stimulate critical engagement on the part of the reader, which constitutes a first step towards agency and potential (self-) improvement. Yet the depiction of human nature in these short prose texts oscillates between the loving and the grotesque, a dichotomy which has unsettled literary criticism on Hebel for some decades. This article draws on the early theological work of Jurgen Moltmann to suggest that the negative elements of the texts are essential to the particular variant of hope to which Hebel subscribes. Both thinkers were concerned to rehabilitate eschatology in their own time. For both, earthly life has the capacity for considerable self-renewal; but it also has severe limitations, through which only a divine redemptive force can break. Facing up to the ugliest aspects of human existence is a precondition for the engaged, eschatological hope which underpins Moltmann's theology and which, arguably, is also reflected in Hebel's writing. Der Artikel befasst sich mit der Rolle der Hoffnung als Thema und als Schreibmodus in Hebels Kalendergeschichten. Diese sind oft auf die Zukunft ausgerichtet, und das naturliche Wachstum sowie die menschliche Selbstentwick-lung suggerieren Hoffnung. Daruber hinaus regen die Kalendertexte den Leser nicht selten zur aktiven intellektuellen Beteiligung an, die zur Tatkraft und zur Weiterbildung fuhren kann. Allerdings schwankt die Darstellung der Menschheit in diesen kurzen Prosastucken zwischen dem Liebevollen und dem Grotesken. Schon seit Langem sieht sich die Forschung zu Hebel von dieser Dichotomie beunruhigt. Anhand der fruhen theologischen Schriften Jurgen Moltmanns wird in diesem Artikel argumentiert, dass die negativen Elemente der Texte fur die besondere Art Hoffnung grundlegend sind, der sich Hebel anschliest. Wie Moltmann im 20. Jahrhundert war Hebel auch bestrebt, die Eschatologie in den zeitgenossischen theologischen Diskurs wieder einzugliedern. Fur beide ist das irdische Leben durchaus zur Selbsterneuerung fahig, doch stost es auf starke Grenzen, die zu durchbrechen nur eine gottliche Erlosungskraft imstande ist. Den hasslichsten Aspekten der menschlichen Existenz ins Auge zu sehen ist gleichsam eine Vorbedingung fur die engagierte, eschatologische Hoffnung, die Moltmanns Theologie zugrunde liegt und die Hebels Kalendergeschichten wohl auch vorwegnehmen.

This article situates China's local policy experimentation in the broader context of policy experiments in decentralized political systems, through a case study which represents a local state response to China's transition to a market economy. With growing regional and urban–rural inequalities evident after the initial reform period (1978–1994), local party leaders of inland provinces devised strategies for addressing these inequalities and encouraging public–private sector mobility among party officials. County and township-level leaders pursued local policy experiments in which they selected and sent officials to find private-sector work in China's booming coastal cities. Initiated in the 1990s and peaking in the 2000s, these policy experiments and inter-provincial transfers demonstrate the discretion that local officials possess to conduct programmatic/policy experiments in a unitary political system and show how officials resort to extra-institutional strategies in order to bridge perceived knowledge gaps. The ultimate demise of these programmes illuminates the challenges to extra-institutional policy innovations in transitioning states.

The relationship between father and son is a highly nuanced and persistent theme in Goethe's late novel Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, but has received relatively little critical attention. Drawing on various aspects of the text, from the relationship between Wilhelm and his own son Felix, to the theme of migration from the ‘fatherland’, this essay contends that the relationship of the younger generation to the older traces a pattern of departure and return. The development in the son of an identity distinct and independent from that of the father is a preoccupation of the earlier chapters of the Wanderjahre in particular; but this process of individuation tends to be accompanied in the novel by continued, even increased, identification with the father, which may be conscious or unconscious. All the various stages of this fluctuating relationship are telescoped into a few rich, enigmatic images in the novel's closing scene, in which the threat of separation and the desire for proximity are held in suspension. Die Vater-Sohn-Beziehung in Goethes spatem Roman Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre bildet ein vielseitiges Thema, ist aber in der Sekundarliteratur relativ selten behandelt worden. Anhand verschiedener Beispiele aus dem Text, vor allem die Beziehung zwischen Wilhelm und seinem eigenen Sohn, Felix, aber auch das Thema der Migration aus dem Vaterland, wird im Folgenden gezeigt, dass die Beziehung der jungeren Generation zum alten von einer doppelten Bewegung gepragt ist: vom Weggang, aber auch von der Ruckkehr. Die fruhen Kapitel insbesondere beschaftigen sich mit der Entwicklung der personlichen Identitat des Sohnes, die sich von derjenigen des Vaters deutlich unterscheiden soll. Allerdings wird diese Individualisierung haufig von der fortgesetzten, sogar gesteigerten Identifizierung mit dem Vater begleitet, ob bewusst oder unbewusst. In der Schlussszene werden dann die vielen verschiedenen Phasen dieser schwankenden Beziehung in ein paar sinnreiche Bilder ineinandergeschoben, so dass sich die bedrohende Trennung und der Wunsch nach ewiger Innigkeit gegenuber stehen.

2,3-Benzobicyclo[4.2.0]octa-2,4,7-triene (11) was prepared by Shapiro reaction from 2,3-benzobicyclo[4.2.0]octa-2,7-dien-4-one (10). Triene 11 was found to be thermally and photochemically reactive. Benzocyclooctatetraene (i.e., COT 12) was the unique product formed when solutions of 11 were heated at 150 °C for 5.5 h. The direct irradiation of triene 11 gave benzosemibullvalene (i.e., SB 14, 23%, Φ = 0.069), COT 12 (39%, Φ = 0.11), and naphthalene (8%, Φ = 0.025). Sensitized irradiations of 11 gave SB 14, (54%, Φ = 0.082), COT 12 (2%, Φ = 0.003), and naphthalene (4%, Φ = 0.009). Studies with deuterium-labelled triene (11a) indicated that the formation of SB 14 from the direct irradiation of triene 11 derives from the operation of two reaction pathways, the major one (83%) of which appears to be a Zimmerman di-π-methane rearrangement; the minor pathway involves a 1,2-shift of the C1—C6 bond to C1—C5. By contrast, SB 14 formed from sensitized irradiation appears to be provided uniquely by a Zimmerman di-π-...