The study of other non-biological factors that may be related to quality of life has been limited practically to social support and the emotional state. This study highlights the importance of these factors independently from the clinical state, as well as the existence of other psychological and behavioural factors that are also related.

Straightforward path to curved graphene molecules: distorted polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons including heptagon moieties are obtained from simple precursors.

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A direct scanning tunneling microscopy ex-situ determination on the nanometer scale of the topography of electrochemically highly activated platinum electrodes is presented. A correlation between catalytic activity and surface microtopography becomes evident. This result gives support to a structural model for the activated electrode surface. In the model, a volume with a pebble-like structure allows electrocatalytic processes to occur practically free of diffusion relaxation contributions under usual voltammetric conditions. Catalytic activity and surface roughness are of the outmost importance in heterogeneous catalysis, including electrocatalysis. The term roughness usually implies the existence of both macropores (macroroughness), which to a great extent are responsible for additional diffusional relaxation,' and micropores (microroughness), which concern the effective catalytic area.2 Despite the close relationship between microroughness and catalytic activity, many real systems involve complex macro-and micropore structures which make the direct determination of microroughness a difficult task. A new approach to overcome this drawback is forseen by using metal surfaces which offer large catalytic activity, negligible micropore diffusional relaxation, and distribution of active sites very close to that of the starting materiaL3 This is the case, among others, with platinum electrodes in acid solutions, which have been subjected to a relatively fast square potential cycling, over a potential range such that a hydrous metal oxide multilayer is formed and immediately afterwards is electroreduced to yield a substantially increased active area. The new surface

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