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Psychologists’ use of and views on group psychological debriefing:A preliminary study
Get PDFThis study aimed to establish how practitioner psychologists use debriefing for trauma-exposed staff. Findings suggest that practices employed were guided by trauma-informed principles and in line with the recently published ‘Association of Clinical Psychologists UK’ guidance. Moreover, participants believed the practice to be effective. Healthcare professionals are routinely exposed to potentially traumatic events. Psychological Group Debriefing is an early post-trauma intervention that was designed for occupational groups to help them process these events. The National Institute for Clinical Health Excellence recommended against the use of debriefing to prevent Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder for primary victims of trauma. However, there has been a lack of further empirical investigation regarding its utility for occupational staff. The aims of this study were to establish what psychologists working with healthcare staff consider to be best practice and whether this aligns with the recently published ‘Association of Clinical Psychologists UK’ guidance. Additionally, their beliefs on the effectiveness of the intervention were investigated. A cross-sectional mixed methods design was employed. Fifty-three ‘Health and Care Professions Council’-registered psychologists took part in an online survey about their use of and views on the practice. Qualitative data were analyzed using conventional content analysis. Quantitative data were integrated to complement the content analysis. Three main themes were identified: (1) how best to support staff, relating to procedures that are aimed at supporting natural recovery as well as the general importance of offering support (2) unsafe practices, which are marked by not adhering to trauma-informed principles, and (3) ‘I’m mindful there is no strong evidence base yet’, relating to the recognition of the lack of a strong evidence base that stands in contrast to the overwhelmingly positive clinical experience. Findings suggest that psychologists’ accounts are consistent and in line with the ACP guidance, suggesting consensus among experts
Deep predictive coding with bi-directional propagation for classification and reconstruction
Get PDFPredictive Coding (PC) has emerged as a prominent theory underlying information processing in the brain. The general concept for learning in PC is that each layer learns to predict the activities of neurons in the previous layer, which enables local computation of error as well as in-parallel learning across layers. Deep Bi-directional Predictive Coding (DBPC) is proposed here as a new learning algorithm that enables neural networks to simultaneously perform classification and reconstruction tasks using the same learned weights. Building on existing PC approaches, DBPC supports both feedforward and feedback propagation of information. Each layer in the network trained using DBPC learns to predict the activities of neurons in the previous and next layers, enabling the network to simultaneously perform classification and reconstruction tasks using feedforward and feedback propagation, respectively. DBPC also relies on locally available information for learning, thus enabling in-parallel learning across all layers in the network. DBPC enables the training of both fully connected networks and convolutional neural networks. The classification accuracies of DBPC on the MNIST, Fashion-MNIST, and CIFAR-10 datasets (99.58%, 92.42%, and 74.29%, respectively) exceed those of well-established PC-based benchmark approaches (including FIPC3 and iPC) and are competitive with state-of-the-art Error-Backpropagation-based methods (including ResNet and DenseNet) on MNIST, Fashion-MNIST, and EuroSAT datasets. Importantly, DBPC achieves these results using significantly smaller networks for MNIST, Fashion-MNIST, and CIFAR-10 datasets (0.425, 1.004, and 1.109 million parameters), and every representation estimated in DBPC can be used for the reconstruction of inputs. The significant benefit of DBPC is its ability to achieve this performance using locally available information and in-parallel learning mechanisms, which results in an efficient training protocol. Overall, we demonstrate that DBPC is a much more efficient approach for training networks that can perform both classification and reconstruction simultaneously
Tobacco Taxation in Spain:A tax laggard with a brighter possible future
Get PDFIntroduction In recent years tobacco taxation in Spain has regressed, with its Tobacconomics tax scorecard falling from 3.9 points (out of 5) in 2014, to only 2.625 in 2020. The objective of this research is to provide a detailed analysis of the causes behind this deterioration and identify possible ways forward for reversing this trend. Aims and Methods A retrospective 2014-2022 analysis of manufactured cigarettes (FM) and roll-your-own tobacco (RYO) markets including tax structure/rates, affordability, retail price gaps across products, and price differentials with bordering countries. A market-level simulation model for 2028 studied the impact of various tax policy scenarios on smoking prevalence, premature deaths averted, smoking intensity, product substitution, government revenue, sales, and industry profit. Results A lack of tax increases in a context of inflation and income growth during the past 8 years means FM and RYO have become 13% more affordable, with a constant differential of €2 between 20 FM and RYO sticks, and the price gap between Spain and neighboring France increased. Modeling of two realistic reform scenarios that reduce/eliminate the price gap between FM and RYO suggest substantial increases in government revenues and up to 700 000 fewer smokers and 210 000 fewer premature deaths. Conclusions Current European Union (EU) legislation on tobacco taxes leaves ample room for much-needed tobacco tax reform. For the sake of both public health and the economy, Spain should increase its Minimum Excise Tax. This would not only save lives, but also bring much-needed revenue for the government. Implications The stance of Spain on tobacco taxes has deteriorated recently. This study argues that the failure of successive governments to raise minimum taxes in an inflationary context has made tobacco products more affordable, and quantifies the improvements in smoking prevalence and excise revenue that would accrue if the authorities act urgently increasing rates within realistic limits. Spain is representative of European countries where government inaction has rendered minimum tobacco taxes obsolete. Given the postponement of the revision of the EU Tobacco Tax Directive, this study highlights the need to act unilaterally within the existing legal framework.</p
Ultraviolet radiation induces caspase cleavage and nuclear translocation of heme oxygenase 1 (HO-1) to activate autophagy in skin keratinocytes
Get PDFThe skin is vulnerable to ultraviolet (UV) exposure, and as a repair mechanism, autophagy activation is essential to eliminate UV-damaged skin cells to maintain tissue homeostasis. As a UV-induced protein, heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1; 32 kDa) is implicated in protecting cells from oxidative stress and plays an important role in disease prevention. However, the mechanism of photoprotection in skin cells has yet to be fully understood. In the current study, we uncovered that UV radiation induces proteolytic cleavage of HO-1 into a 26 kDa product that accumulates in the cell nucleus. Biochemical analyses show that caspase-1 (CASP1) directly binds to HO-1 and cleaves full-length HO-1 at the C terminus. It is further unveiled that the 26 kDa HO-1 product is a stronger activator of autophagy than full-length HO-1, as demonstrated by the activation of autophagy-related genes. Moreover, the 26 kDa HO-1 cleavage product promotes translocation of the transcription factor basic helix–loop–helix ARNT-like protein 1 (Bmal1) into the cell nucleus. This translocation appears to be required for the induction of autophagy, as knocking down Bmal1 fails to activate autophagy induced by the 26 kDa HO-1 cleavage product. We conclude that a proteolytic cascade involving CASP1/HO-1/Bmal1 acts to modulate autophagy in UV-irradiated human skin keratinocytes, presumably as a mechanism to mediate UV photoprotection. Our study identified proteolysis as a regulatory event by generating a previously unknown 26 kDa form of HO-1 to play a distinct role in the activation of autophagy in UV-exposed epidermal cells.</p
Deconstructability prediction for building using machine learning and ensemble feature selection techniques
Get PDFConstruction industries remain one of the most significant users of materials and generators of waste in the UK and globally. Notwithstanding, the principle of circular economy is becoming prominent as an effective means for powering greater resource efficiency. It has the prospect of unlocking significant economic value, particularly at the building end of useful life through reuse. A noteworthy end-of-life practice which aligns with this idea is deconstruction, which is the careful disassembly of the building into components and sub-components for reuse. However, deconstruction is not meant for all buildings, and this is because a typical building is constructed as a permanent product waiting to be disposed of after use. Laying on this foundation, assessing the building for deconstruction is necessary, and it is mainly done via several manual inspections, which may be expensive and time-consuming. A deconstructability predictive model using a machine learning-based model and ensemble feature selection techniques was developed to tackle this problem. This paper elaborates on the model creation and illustrates its application through a real-world deconstruction project
Investigating the effectiveness of Online Cognitive Trainings at improving mental health and wellbeing in the workplace in ‘at risk’ population
No full textUsing behavioural economics to understand and address radiology non-attendance in Singapore: A mixed-methods study
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