Within the last few years the relationship between religiousness and psychosocial adjustment has become a subject of increasing interest. However, previous research did not explicitly differentiate between dispositional religious commitment and situation-specific religious coping. The current cross-sectional study investigated the relative power of religious commitment, positive and negative religious coping, and religious commitment x religious coping interactions in the prediction of anxiety. The sample consisted of 167 German breast cancer patients who were assessed during an inpatient rehabilitation programme. Results indicated that positive and negative religious coping were more strongly related to anxiety than dispositional religious commitment. Furthermore, hierarchical regression analysis revealed a religious commitment x negative religious coping interaction. According to this interaction, there seems to be some synergistic effect of high levels of religious commitment and high levels of negative religious coping. In contrast, positive religious coping did not function as a moderator and appeared to be closely related to religious commitment. This may be due to the specific religious-cultural background in Germany.

This study investigated the quality and quantity of healing of a bone defect following intramedullary reaming undertaken by two fundamentally different systems; conventional, using non-irrigated, multiple passes; or suction/irrigation, using one pass. The result of a measured re-implantation of the product of reaming was examined in one additional group. We used 24 Swiss mountain sheep with a mean tibial medullary canal diameter between 8 mm and 9 mm. An 8 mm 'napkin ring' defect was created at the mid-diaphysis. The wound was either surgically closed or occluded. The medullary cavity was then reamed to 11 mm. The Reamer/Irrigator/Aspirator (RIA) System was used for the reaming procedure in groups A (RIA and autofilling) and B (RIA, collected reamings filled up), whereas reaming in group C (Synream and autofilling) was performed with the Synream System. The defect was allowed to auto-fill with reamings in groups A and C, but in group B, the defect was surgically filled with collected reamings. The tibia was then stabilised with a solid locking Unreamed Humerus Nail (UHN), 9.5 mm in diameter. The animals were killed after six weeks. After the implants were removed, measurements were taken to assess the stiffness, strength and callus formation at the site of the defect. There was no significant difference between healing after conventional reaming or suction/irrigation reaming. A significant improvement in the quality of the callus was demonstrated by surgically placing captured reamings into the defect using a graft harvesting system attached to the aspirator device. This was confirmed by biomechanical testing of stiffness and strength. This study suggests it could be beneficial to fill cortical defects with reaming particles in clinical practice, if feasible.

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The corrosion behavior of carbon containing martensitic stainless steels depends strongly on the applied heat treatment which determines the distribution of carbon and chromium in the microstructure. This work's focus is on the effect of solution annealing on microstructure, hardness and the resulting corrosion resistance of the martensitic stainless steel X46Cr13. Solution annealing was performed at selected temperatures based on thermodynamic calculations of the chromium and carbon contents in solid solution and the chemical composition of the remaining carbides as function of temperature. The corrosion resistance was investigated with electrochemical potentiodynamic reactivation (EPR) and the KorroPad (KP) technique. The results indicate a large influence of the solution treatment temperature, duration and cooling rate on passivation behavior and pitting corrosion resistance. Higher solution annealing temperatures increase the amount of chromium and carbon dissolved in solid solution resulting in easier passivation and higher hardness. If diffusion is enabled by slow air-cooling, chromium depletion was detected causing high susceptibility to pitting corrosion.