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You Cannot Have Your Cake and Eat It, too: How Induced Goal Conflicts Affect Complex Problem Solving
No full textManaging multiple and conflicting goals is a demand typical to both everyday life and complex coordination tasks. Two experiments (N = 111) investigated how goal conflicts affect motivation and cognition in a complex problem- solving paradigm. In Experiment 1, participants dealt with a game-like computer simulation involving a predefined goal relation: Parallel goals were independent, mutually facilitating, or interfering with one another. As expected, goal conflicts entailed lowered motivation and wellbeing. Participants’ understanding of causal effects within the simulation was im- paired, too. Behavioral measures of subjects’ interventions support the idea of adaptive, self-regulatory processes: reduced action with growing awareness of the goal conflict and balanced goal pursuit. Experiment 2 endorses the hypotheses of motivation loss and reduced acquisition of system-related knowledge in an extended problem-solving paradigm of four conflicting goals. Impairing effects of goal interference on motivation and wellbeing were found, although less distinct and robust as in Experiment 1. Participants undertook fewer interventions in case of a goal conflict and acquired less knowledge about the system. Formal complexity due to the interconnectedness among goals is discussed as a limiting influence on inferring the problem structure
Teaching Body Image to EFL Teenagers
No full textAn extract of an Upper-Intermediate EFL coursebook for teenage learners I designed in partial requirement for MA Applied Linguistics & English Language Teaching.\ud
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The material is centred about the topic of 'Body Image' and includes a focus on learner training; infinitives & gerunds; skimming and scanning reading tasks; intensive listening practice; giving opinions/speculating; rhyming words
Seeing Numbers
No full textIn 1890 William James listed several “elementary mental categories” that he postulated as having a natural origin. Among them, alongside the ideas of time and space, he also listed the idea of number. A symptomatic feature of Informatics as well as Cognitive Science today is the tendency not to talk so much about ideas as about their representations, either in the computer or in the brain. Taking up somewhat different perspective I will discuss the way natural numbers, viewed as counts of real or imagined objects, may be experienced phenomenally. I put forth even some speculative ideas about mental number processing by numerical savants
Pattern of antimicrobial agents use in hospital deliveries: A prospective comparative study
No full textObjective: Drug utilization pattern identifies the problems that arise from the drug usage in health care delivery system and highlights the current approaches to the rational use of drugs. The present study evaluates the utilization pattern of antimicrobial agents in hospital deliveries of different setups. Methodology: Two hundred hospital deliveries from a government hospital GroupI (G-I) and 100 cases each from two private hospitals Group II & Group III (G II & G III) were studied. Groups, drugs, numbers of antimicrobials used, duration with indication for their use were the criteria taken into consideration for comparison. Results: Beta-lactams, nitroimidazoles and fluoroquinolones were commonly prescribed groups of antimicrobials. The duration of prophylaxis was 6.73±1.79, 5.77±1.10 &5.14±1.53 days in three groups respectively which was significantly different (p<0.01). Caesarian section, episiotomy were the commonest prophylactic indications. Conclusion: The present study calls for an urgent review on rational use of antimicrobial for prophylaxis
Bed blockers: A study on the elderly patients in a teaching hospital in India
No full textA cross-sectional study of in-patients over the age of 60 years was conducted at district McGann Hospital, Shimoga on patients who were classified as bed blockers. Level of dependency and cognitive function of these patients were assessed using Barthel scale and Abbreviated mental test (AMT) respectively. Median age of the study population was 67 years; majority of them were men. Most of them were admitted in the medical ward and the median time to be labeled as bed blocker was 32 days. These bed blockers were a weak group of patients with an average 3.1 pathology per case. Majority of them suffered from neurological disorders and cardiovascular disease. High level of dependence was noted with a mean Barthel score of 29.68 (Range 0 -100). Low levels of cognitive function was also noted among these patients with a mean AMT of 4.76 (Range 0 -10).These findings demonstrate that the bed blockers in McGann hospital suffer not only from genuine health problems but also have a high dependency level in activities of daily living which hamper their discharge to the community. Community based rehabilitation using an intersectoral approach may help at least the less dependent to return home
Over the counter ophthalmic drug misuse, are we aware?
No full textAim: To investigate the misuse of ‘over the counter’ ophthalmic medications in our city. Method: Responses of a structured questionnaire covering various aspects of over the counter drug use was obtained from pharmacy workers in and around our city. Results: Eighty nine pharmacy workers took part in this cross–sectional study. An average number of seven patients per day with ophthalmic complaints were seen by the pharmacy workers. Dispensing over the counter was practiced by 89.9% of the pharmacists. The most common complaint of the patients visiting the pharmacy, was redness and itching (86.5%). Antibiotics (96.6%) were the most common eye drops dispensed over the counter, followed by steroids (55.1%), decongestants (54.1%), antibiotic-steroid combination eye drops (29.2%) and lubricants (16.8%). Awareness regarding complications of steroid use was seen in 40.6% of pharmacists. 6.7% pharmacists had seen patients with complications following use of over the counter medications. In our study, majority of the eye drops dispensed were prescription drugs. Conclusion: Availability of prescription eye drops over the counter is an immense public threat. Educating the pharmacist and the population can decrease ocular morbidity. Research into methods to effectively deal with over-the-counter drug misuse is required and law can be enforced based on the findings
A New Theory of Consciousness: The Missing Link - Organization
No full textWhat is consciousness and what is the missing link between the sensory input and the cortical centre in the brain for consciousness? In the literature there are more than a million pages written about consciousness. The perspectives range from the field of metaphysics to those of quantum mechanics. However, no one today has produced a theory which is universally accepted. Consciousness is “something” which the majority of humans know that they posses, they use it when they want to understand their environment. However, no individual human knows whether other humans also posses consciousness. unless some tests such as she is looking at me, he is talking etc., are performed. We are caught in an intellectual sort of recursive carousel – we need consciousness to understand consciousness. To understand consciousness we have to understand the mechanism of its function, which is to effectively organize sensory inputs from our environment. Consciousness is the outcome of the process of organizing these sensory inputs. This implies that organization is an act which precedes consciousness. Since every activity in nature is to organize/disorganize, what is the element which compels this action? I am proposing that just like energy is the physical element that causes action, there is another physical element I have called it NASCIUM which has the capacity to cause organization. This is the missing link. Understanding the nature of organization, i.e. nascium, will enhance our capability to understand consciousness
Proposal for a shared evolutionary nature of language and consciousness
No full textIt is pretty obvious that language and human consciousness entertain tight relations. We \ud
could not really be conscious of ourselves without the possibility to say “I” or “me”. And language \ud
is a key contributor in our capability to identify ourselves as conscious entities existing in the \ud
environment. But the relations linking language and consciousness are complex and difficult to \ud
analyze. Evolutionary origins of language are unknown as no fossil traces have been left by our \ud
ancestors. Sciences of consciousness however begin to make available some possible evolutionary \ud
scenarios about the nature of human consciousness. \ud
We want here to propose a link between language and consciousness by using such an \ud
evolutionary scenario and also introduce the usage of a systemic approach to meaning generation. \ud
In the first part of the presentation we will use an existing scenario about the evolutionary nature of \ud
self-consciousness where the development of language has a role (1). We will highlight this role in \ud
order to identify language and self-consciousness as inter-dependant in their nature through a \ud
possible common evolutionary origin. Self-consciousness and language could then be considered as \ud
tightly inter-dependant through a common build up of human nature during evolution. \ud
The scenario presents an evolutionary nature of self-consciousness as resulting of the \ud
capability for pre-human primates to identify with their conspecifics (1, 2). The conspecifics are \ud
represented as existing in the environment, and such identification brought our pre-human ancestors \ud
to consider themselves as also existing in the environment. The scenario takes this event as being a \ud
first step for a conscious self-representation within pre-human primates, which progressively \ud
evolved toward our today human consciousness (3). \ud
But such identification with conspecifics was not for free at times of survival of the fittest. \ud
Identifying with conspecifics meant for our pre-human ancestor to also identify with their sufferings \ud
or encountered dangers. These came in addition to the dangers or sufferings naturally encountered \ud
and created a significant anxiety increase (1). \ud
The resulting level of anxiety had to be limited. One possibility for that was to develop \ud
psychological or physical tools that could have reduced the risks of occurrences and developments \ud
of such dangers and sufferings. Among these tools is the performance of language which can \ud
induces significant evolutionary advantages. We will propose a first scheme about how these \ud
evolutionary advantages could have reduced the dangers and sufferings encountered by our pre-\ud
human ancestors. We will also show how the development of language produced by itself a positive \ud
feedback on the development of inter-subjectivity in the evolutionary scenario, and so participated \ud
directly to the development of human consciousness. \ud
Other evolutionary advantages have existed like the development of imitation and synergy \ud
through experience (4). Language played a role there also, and has to be taken into account. The \ud
second part of the presentation will propose the usage of an existing systemic approach to meaning \ud
generation in terms of constraints satisfaction (5, 6). Constraints for pre-human primates, ranging \ud
from a basic “stay alive” to highly elaborated “limit anxiety”, were source of multiple meaning \ud
generations in which language has played (and still plays) a key role. Several continuations will be \ud
proposed linked to the here above thread on a co-evolutions of language and human consciousness, \ud
as based on the evolutionary scenario
DOTS Compliance by Tuberculosis Patients in District Raipur (Chhattisgarh)
No full textBackground: Compliance to therapy is one of the important factors that affect the outcome. Non-compliance to self administered multi drug tuberculosis treatment regimens is an important cause of failure of initial therapy and relapse as well as acquired drug resistance, requiring more prolonged and expensive therapy. Objective: To know the compliance of DOTS therapy in TB patients in District Raipur and to find out the reasons of non-compliance of DOTS therapy among the patients. Study Design: Cross sectional observational community based study. Study Setting: Microscopic Centers in District Raipur. Participants: 695 patients of Tuberculosis. Result: Study revealed that 65.93% patients had complied with the DOTS therapy and 33.38% were non compliant. Conclusion: Most of the reasons of non-Compliance can be averted by proper counseling of target group. Hence to achieve the goal of RNTCP, proper counseling of target group must be given top priority
Automatic Wrapper Adaptation by Tree Edit Distance Matching
No full textInformation distributed through the Web keeps growing faster day by day,\ud
and for this reason, several techniques for extracting Web data have been suggested\ud
during last years. Often, extraction tasks are performed through so called wrappers,\ud
procedures extracting information from Web pages, e.g. implementing logic-based\ud
techniques. Many fields of application today require a strong degree of robustness\ud
of wrappers, in order not to compromise assets of information or reliability of data\ud
extracted.\ud
Unfortunately, wrappers may fail in the task of extracting data from a Web page, if\ud
its structure changes, sometimes even slightly, thus requiring the exploiting of new\ud
techniques to be automatically held so as to adapt the wrapper to the new structure\ud
of the page, in case of failure. In this work we present a novel approach of automatic wrapper adaptation based on the measurement of similarity of trees through\ud
improved tree edit distance matching techniques