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I feel bad and look worse than you: Social comparisons moderate the effect of mood on face health judgement
Get PDFMood can bias the judgements people make about themselves and how people compare themselves to others. However, it is not yet clear whether mood also affects appearance-based self-evaluations and social comparisons. Given the importance of perceived health status for well-being, we investigated the effect of mood on self-image and social comparisons of healthiness during two versions of a face health judgement task. Thirty participants judged how they felt compared to healthy and unhealthy looking versions of their own (self version) and a stranger’s face (stranger version), after a positive, negative and neutral mood induction. The effect of mood was dependent on self/stranger task order. Although mood did not affect face health judgement for participants who initially judged themselves against their own face, it did affect face health judgement for participants who initially judged themselves in comparison to a stranger’s face. After the positive and negative mood inductions, these participants judged themselves as equivalent to healthier/unhealthier looking versions of their own and stranger’s faces, respectively. Thus, social comparisons of facial healthiness could provide a perceptual measure of state well-being
“Break a Leg – It’s all in the mind”: Police officers’ attitudes towards colleagues with mental health issues
No full textMuch has been written about police officer attitudes and interactions with members of the public experiencing mental health issues. However, little has been written or researched regarding police officers attitudes to colleagues with mental health issues. Within policing there is a culture that makes it difficult to discuss psychological injury and mental health with colleagues and managers. To do so is often seen as career destroying. The inherent cynicism associated with policing, lack of empathy, and macho culture further impedes discussion and ultimately access to support services. Austerity has reduced police training. Inadequate training results in officers not understanding mental health issues. There is an argument that personnel policies and systems victimizes officers and fails to understand their needs
Fear appeals prior to a high-stakes examination can have a positive or negative impact on engagement depending on how the message is appraised
Get PDFPrevious studies have shown that teachers may use messages that focus on the importance of avoiding failure (fear appeals) prior to high-stakes examinations as a motivational tactic. The aim of this study was to examine whether fear appeals, and their appraisal as challenging or threatening, impacted on student engagement. Data were collected from 1373 students, clustered in 46 classes, and 81 teachers responsible for instruction in those classes, prior to a high-stakes mathematics secondary school exit examination. Data were analyzed in a multilevel structural equation model. The appraisal of fear appeals as challenging leads to greater student engagement and as threatening to lower student engagement. The impact of fear appeals on engagement was mediated by challenge and threat appraisals. The effectiveness of fear appeals as a motivational strategy depends on how they are interpreted by students. © 2015 Elsevier Inc
Regenerative function of immune system: Modulation of muscle stem cells
No full textAgeing is characterised by progressive deterioration of physiological systems and the loss of skeletal muscle mass is one of the most recognisable, leading to muscle weakness and mobility impairments. This review highlights interactions between the immune system and skeletal muscle stem cells (widely termed satellite cells or myoblasts) to influence satellite cell behaviour during muscle regeneration after injury, and outlines deficits associated with ageing. Resident neutrophils and macrophages in skeletal muscle become activated when muscle fibres are damaged via stimuli (e.g. contusions, strains, avulsions, hyperextensions, ruptures) and release high concentrations of cytokines, chemokines and growth factors into the microenvironment. These localised responses serve to attract additional immune cells which can reach in excess of 1 × 105 immune cell/mm3 of skeletal muscle in order to orchestrate the repair process. T-cells have a delayed response, reaching peak activation roughly 4 days after the initial damage. The cytokines and growth factors released by activated T-cells play a key role in muscle satellite cell proliferation and migration, although the precise mechanisms of these interactions remain unclear. T-cells in older people display limited ability to activate satellite cell proliferation and migration which is likely to contribute to insufficient muscle repair and, consequently, muscle wasting and weakness. If the factors released by T-cells to activate satellite cells can be identified, it may be possible to develop therapeutic agents to enhance muscle regeneration and reduce the impact of muscle wasting during ageing and disease
Breaking the color-reddening degeneracy in type Ia supernovae
No full textA new method to study the intrinsic color and luminosity of type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) is presented. A metric space built using principal component analysis (PCA) on spectral series SNe Ia between -12.5 and +17.5 days from B maximum is used as a set of predictors. This metric space is built to be insensitive to reddening. Hence, it does not predict the part of color excess due to dust-extinction. At the same time, the rich variability of SN Ia spectra is a good predictor of a large fraction of the intrinsic color variability. Such metric space is a good predictor of the epoch when the maximum in the B-V color curve is reached. Multivariate Partial Least Square (PLS) regression predicts the intrinsic B band light-curve and the intrinsic B-V color curve up to a month after maximum. This allows to study the relation between the light curves of SNe Ia and their spectra. The total-to-selective extinction ratio RV in the host-galaxy of SNe Ia is found, on average, to be consistent with typical Milky-Way values. This analysis shows the importance of collecting spectra to study SNe Ia, even with large sample publicly available. Future automated surveys as LSST will provide a large number of light curves. The analysis shows that observing accompaning spectra for a significative number of SNe will be important even in the case of "normal" SNe Ia
Does the confidence of first-year undergraduate students change over time according to achievement goal profile?
No full text© 2014 Society for Research into Higher Education. This study examined the changes in students' academic behavioural confidence over the course of their first year of academic study and whether changes differ by their achievement goal profile. Self-report data were collected from 434 participants in three waves: at the beginning of the first semester of their first year of undergraduate study, at the beginning of the second semester, and again at beginning of the second year of undergraduate study. At the outset of their studies the authors identified three clusters of achievement goal profiles which differentiated between students' confidence in attaining grades, independent study and discussing course material. By the beginning of the second year any dips in confidence had disappeared which the authors construe in a positive light. The clusters of achievement goals shown at the outset of the first year of academic study does not seem to show any differentiated lasting disadvantage or advantage to students' confidence
A Smart Health Monitoring Technology
No full textWith the implementation of the Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), comes the opportunity to gain valuable insights into an individual’s daily habits, patterns and routines. A vital part of the AMI is the smart meter. It enables the monitoring of a consumer’s electricity usage with a high degree of accuracy. Each device reports and records a consumer’s energy usage readings at regular intervals. This facilitates the identification of emerging abnormal behaviours and trends, which can provide operative monitoring for people living alone with various health conditions. Through profiling, the detection of sudden changes in behaviour is made possible, based on the daily activities a patient is expected to undertake during a 24-hour period. As such, this paper presents the development of a system which detects accurately the granular differences in energy usage which are the result of a change in an individual’s health state. Such a process provides accurate monitoring for people living with self-limiting conditions and enables an early intervention practice (EIP) when a patient’s condition is deteriorating. The results in this paper focus on one particular behavioural trend, the detection of sleep disturbances; which is related to various illnesses, such as depression and Alzheimer’s. The results demonstrate that it is possible to detect sleep pattern changes to an accuracy of 95.96% with 0.943 for sensitivity, 0.975 for specificity and an overall error of 0.040 when using the VPC Neural Network classifier. This type of behavioral detection can be used to provide a partial assessment of a patient’s wellbeing
Stable isotope ecology of Cape dune mole-rats (Bathyergus suillus) from Elandsfontein, South Africa: implications for C4 vegetation and hominin paleobiology in the Cape Floral Region
Get PDFThe archaeological and paleontological records from the west coast of South Africa have potential to provide insights into ecosystem dynamics in the region during the mid Pleistocene. Although the fossil record suggests an ecosystem quite different than that of the region today, we understand little about the ecological factors that contributed to this disparity. The site of Elandsfontein (EFT) dates to between 1.0 and 0.6 million years ago (Ma), preserves in situ lithic and faunal materials found in direct association with each other, and provides the rare opportunity to examine the relationship between hominin behavioural variability and landscape heterogeneity in a winter rainfall ecosystem. In this study, we examine the stable carbon isotopic composition of a large sample (n = 81) of Cape dune mole-rats (Bathyergus suillus) and contemporaneous large mammals (> 6 kg; n = 194) from EFT. We find that δ13C values of B. suillus are significantly different to those of contemporaneous large mammals from EFT indicating a significant presence of plants utilizing the C4 photosynthetic pathway during the mid-Pleistocene, in contrast to present C3 dominated ecosystems along the west coast of South Africa. Additionally, we find that artifact density at EFT localities is positively correlated with δ13C values in B. suillus enamel suggesting that evidence of more intense hominin occupation may be associated with the presence of more C4 vegetation. Lastly, we hypothesize that this unique distribution of vegetation 1) provided abundant resources for both hominin and non-hominin taxa and 2) may have concentrated hominin and animal behavior in certain places on the ancient landscape
Expertise in medicine: using the expert performance approach to improve simulation training
No full textContext
We critically review how medical education can benefit from systematic use of the expert performance approach as a framework for measuring and enhancing clinical practice. We discuss how the expert performance approach can be used to better understand the mechanisms underpinning superior performance among health care providers and how the framework can be applied to create simulated learning environments that present increased opportunities to engage in deliberate practice.
Expert Performance Approach
The expert performance approach is a systematic, evidence-based framework for measuring and analysing superior performance. It has been applied in a variety of domains, but has so far been relatively neglected in medicine and health care. Here we outline the framework and demonstrate how it can be effectively applied to medical education.
Deliberate Practice
Deliberate practice is defined as a structured and reflective activity, which is designed to develop a critical aspect of performance. Deliberate practice provides an opportunity for error detection and correction, repetition, access to feedback and requires maximal effort, complete concentration and full attention. We provide guidance on how to structure simulated learning environments to encourage the accumulation of deliberate practice.
Conclusions
We highlight the role of simulation-based training in conjunction with deliberate practice activities such as reflection, rehearsal, trial-and-error learning and feedback in improving the quality of patient care. We argue that the development of expertise in health care is directly related to the systematic identification and improvement of quantifiable performance metrics. In order to optimise the training of expert health care providers, advances in simulation technology need to be coupled with effective instructional systems design, with the latter being strongly guided by empirical research from the learning and cognitive sciences
Hearing impairment and cognitive energy: The Framework for Understanding Effortful Listening (FUEL)
No full textThe Fifth Eriksholm Workshop on “Hearing Impairment and Cognitive Energy” was convened to develop a consensus amongst interdisciplinary experts about what is known on the topic, gaps in knowledge, the use of terminology, priorities for future research and implications for practice. The general term cognitive energy was chosen to facilitate the broadest possible discussion of the topic. It goes back to Titchener (1908) who described the effects of attention on perception; he used the term psychic energy for the notion that limited mental resources can be flexibly allocated among perceptual and mental activities. The workshop focused on three main areas: 1) theories, models, concepts, definitions, and frameworks; 2) methods and measures; and 3) knowledge translation. We defined effort as the deliberate allocation of mental resources to overcome obstacles in goal pursuit when carrying out a task, with listening effort applying more specifically when tasks involve listening. We adapted Kahneman’s seminal (1973) Capacity Model of Attention to listening and proposed a heuristically useful Framework for Understanding Effortful Listening (FUEL). Our FUEL incorporates the well-known relationship between cognitive demand and the supply of cognitive capacity that is the foundation of cognitive theories of attention. Our FUEL also incorporates a motivation dimension based on complementary theories of motivational intensity, adaptive gain control and optimal performance, fatigue, and pleasure. Using a 3D illustration, we highlight how listening effort depends not only on hearing difficulties and task demands, but also on the listener’s motivation to expend mental effort in the challenging situations of everyday life
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