Chronic pain is a problem among patients with spinal cord injuries, but the psychosocial factors associated with spinal cord injury (SCI) pain are not well understood. To understand SCI pain further, 54 patients (19 with quadriplegia and 35 with paraplegia) completed the Beck Depression Inventory, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, Profile of Mood States, Acceptance of Disability Scale and SCI Interference Scale. Forty-two patients stated they had SCI pain and completed the Multidimensional Pain Inventory and the Pain Experience Scale. Results revealed that anger and negative cognitions were associated with greater pain severity. Patients who reported pain in response to a general prompt experienced more severe pain than patients who reported pain only when directly questioned about the presence of pain, but these different reporting groups did not differ on emotional variables. Those who were less accepting of their disability reported greater pain severity. Additionally, patients who perceived a significant other expressing punishing responses (e.g., expressing anger at the patients or ignoring the patients) to their pain behaviors reported more severe pain. Level of lesion, completeness of injury, surgical fusion and/or instrumentation and veteran status were not associated with pain severity. Finally, pain was associated with emotional distress over and above the distress associated with the SCI itself. Overall, psychosocial factors, not physiological factors, were most closely associated with the experience of pain. Multidimensional aspects of pain are used to explain these findings and suggest that treatment should be directed at the emotional and cognitive sequelae of chronic SCI pain.

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Theoretical spectra of the N2 Q branch at 295 K, from quasi-classical scattering calculations of the S-matrix elements, are compared to high-resolution inverse Raman spectra at 1,5, and 10 atm. At 1 atm the spectrum consists of essentially isolated lines, whereas above 1 atm the spectrum collapses into one collisionally narrowed line as contributions from off-diagonal elements in the S matrix become important. The theoretical spectra are in excellent agreement with experimental spectra measured with a resolution of 0.003 cm"1 2and with an absolute frequency calibration of 0.001 cm"1. In particular, the theory accurately predicts the collisional contribution to the line widths of isolated lines at low pressure, as well as collisional narrowing at pressures up to 10 atm. A new scaling law with three parameters is introduced that agrees much better with the experimental data than either a power law or a simple exponential-gap model. The scaling law also predicts the temperature dependence of the diagonal elements of the S matrix calculated from quasi-classical scattering theory and is in agreement with preliminary experimental data.

The development of hydrogen sensors is of paramount importance for timely leak detection and remains a crucial unmet need. Palladium‐based materials, well known as hydrogen sensors, still suffer from poisoning and deactivation. Here, a hybrid hydrogen sensor consisting of a Pd nanocluster (NC) film, a metal–organic framework (MOF), and a polymer, are proposed. The polymer coating, as a protection layer, endows the sensor with excellent H2 selectivity and CO‐poisoning resistance. The MOF serves as an interface layer between the Pd NC film and the polymer layer, which alters the nature of the interaction with hydrogen and leads to significant sensing performance improvements, owing to the interfacial electronic coupling between Pd NCs and the MOF. The strategy overcomes the shortcomings of retarded response speed and degraded sensitivity induced by the polymer coating of a Pd NC film–polymer hybrid system. This is the first exhibition of a hydrogen‐sensing enhancement mechanism achieved by engineering the electronic coupling between Pd and a MOF. The work establishes a deep understanding of the hydrogen‐sensing enhancement mechanism at the nanoscale and provides a feasible strategy to engineer next‐generation gas‐sensing nanodevices with superior sensing figures of merit via hybrid material systems.