457 research outputs found
Intelligent support model for flood victims
Stress is a common psychological stimulus that occurs in a person caused by stressors.Natural disaster is a specific form of stressor that can carry wide area of implications in the population. It is the most common factors which contribute to high level of stress and other psychological
problems of individuals.Therefore, intervention must be introduced to help victims who have stress during natural disasters.In order to provide an effective intervention for victims in an evacuation center, a supporting software agent could be helpful. Focusing on providing support to flood victims, this paper presents a development of an intelligent support model of victims' stress in flood disaster based on the existing computational model.The research methodology deploys four phases; identification of properties,
formalization, simulation, and performance evaluation.The computational support model is tested by using simulation in two different conditions; person without therapy and person following the therapy intervention.Results
suggest that the resilience level is high due to person’s capability of enhancing one’s problem focus coping skills rather than relying on emotional focus coping skills
Cancer chemotherapy failure: a synthetic view
Cancer is a highly prevalent and fatal disease, being one of the main causes of death in Brazil and in the world. In the last decades, a great advance has been reached in fight against cancer, with some translation in curability. However, these advances are still insufficient, and the prognosis of the cancer patient is usually unfavorable. Indeed, there are still many gaps in our knowledge about this complex and heterogeneous disease. Several treatments approaches against cancer are available to clinical practice - and some others are being developed - one of which is chemotherapy, both traditional and targeted therapy (TT), used - above all - as primary treatment for metastatic or secondary treatment in local or locally advanced disease. Several factors can act through many mechanisms to determine the failure of chemotherapy treatment. These factors are distributed across the various biological scales, from the molecular to the socioeconomic level, making the holistic view of treatment a great challenge and impairing the awareness of what can go wrong. The purpose of this paper is to be a comprehensive - but not superficial - picture of the many factors that influence the success of chemotherapy. In this way, the result of this work was this discussion on chemotherapy failure, were it was exposed recent advances, challenges to be overcome and new paths to be explored on this field.O Câncer Ă© uma doença de alta prevalĂŞncia e letalidade, sendo uma das principais causas de morte no Brasil e no mundo. Nas Ăşltimas dĂ©cadas, grandes avanços foram alcançados na luta contra o câncer, com alguma tradução em curabilidade. Contudo, esses avanços ainda nĂŁo sĂŁo suficientes, de modo que o prognĂłstico do paciente com câncer ainda Ă©, geralmente, desfavorável. De fato, há ainda diversas lacunas em nosso conhecimento a respeito dessa complexa e heterogĂŞnea doença. Diversos tratamentos contra o câncer já estĂŁo disponĂveis Ă prática clĂnica - e outros ainda estĂŁo sendo desenvolvidos - uma delas a quimioterapia, tanto a tradicional quando a alvo dirigida, utilizada, sobretudo, como tratamento primário contra doença metastática ou secundário contra doença local ou localmente avançada. Diversos fatores podem atuar, atravĂ©s de vários mecanismos, de modo a determinar a falha do tratamento quimioterápico. Esses fatores estĂŁo distribuĂdos ao longo de diversas escalas biolĂłgicas, do nĂvel molecular ao socioeconĂ´mico, tornando uma visĂŁo holĂstica do tratamento um grande desafio, prejudicando a compreensĂŁo acerca do que pode dar errado. O objetivo deste trabalho Ă© ser uma leitura compreensiva - mas nĂŁo superficial - dos muitos fatores que influenciam o sucesso de quimioterapia. Deste modo, o resultado foi a presente discussĂŁo, na qual foram expostos avanços recentes, desafios a serem superados e novos caminhos a serem explorados na área
Relationship Between Academic Procrastination, Well-Being, and Grades: the Mediational Role of Self-Regulation and Bad Habits
Psychological research, nowadays, on the areas of student´s health and well-being has shown interesting results where the central constructs are self-regulation and procrastination. Self-regulation behavior is a meta-skill that includes cognitive, affective, and motivational aspects of the individuals. Procrastination can be defined as a meta-skill (a self-regulatory failure) that implies active de-regulatory conduct. The evidence points out that self-regulation contributes to the prediction of well-being, health, and academic procrastination. This study aims to establish procrastination´s direct and indirect effects on students´ well-being and academic performance, being self-regulation and bad habits the mediators. A total of 710 college students from 16 to 53 years of age took part (Average of 20.8 and SD 4.3), 224 (31.5%) were men and 486 (68.5%) women. Two mediational analyses were carried out. Results indicate the significance of the proposed model as procrastination does not directly affect the student´s psychological well-being or academic performance. The conclusions point out that procrastination indirectly affects students´ well-being, academic performance, and bad habits, being self-regulation a mediating variable. The possible theoretical, methodological, and psychoeducational intervention implications are discussed
Modelling dynamics of victims' stress during natural disaster
Natural disaster is one of the inescapable phenomenon through which numerous number of individuals are being affected via developing psychological problems. Stress is one of the essential psychological effects of natural disaster; it is a reality of nature where forces from the outside world affect individuals exposed to such phenomenon. In computational psychology domains, computational models were used as tools for understanding human cognitive functions and behavioural patterns. Meanwhile, psychological and cognitive theories as well as empirical studies have provided convergent evidence to identify important factors and psychological attributes
that affect the stress level of victims during natural disaster. Therefore, this study
implements a formal model (computational model) to understand the current state of victims' stress during natural disaster. From related theories, 22 of basic factors have been established and grouped into 7 main categories that include predisposed factors, resources, individual attributes, appraisal, resilience, coping, and stress. Those factors provide the fundamental knowledge of the behaviours of victims after disaster occurrence. A formal model was developed by using a set of differential equations. Later, this model was simulated by applying related scenarios based on three different cases, namely; 1) a good victim with low level of stress, 2) victim with high level of stress, and 3) victim with moderate level of stress) through the use of Matlab as a programming language. This computational model was then verified using two
techniques; 1) logical verification (Temporal Trace Language) and 2) mathematical verification (stability analysis). The experimental results have approximately predicted why victims develop stress differently when facing natural disasters
New Insight into Cerebrovascular Diseases
“Brain circulation is a true road map that consists of large extended navigation territories and a number of unimagined and undiscovered routes.” Dr. Patricia Bozzetto Ambrosi This book combines an update on the review of cerebrovascular diseases in the form of textbook chapters, which has been carefully reviewed by Dr. Patricia Bozzetto Ambrosi, Drs. Rufai Ahmad and Auwal Abdullahi and Dr. Amit Agrawal, high-performance academic editors with extensive experience in neurodisciplines, including neurology, neurosurgery, neuroscience, and neuroradiology, covering the best standards of neurological practice involving basic and clinical aspects of cerebrovascular diseases. Each topic was carefully revised and prepared using smooth, structured vocabulary, plus superb graphics and scientific illustrations. In emphasizing the most common aspects of cerebrovascular diseases: stroke burden, pathophysiology, hemodynamics, diagnosis, management, repair, and healing, the book is comprehensive but concise and should become the standard reference guide for this neurological approach
Computational investigations of cognitive impairment in Huntington's Disease
Book synopsis: Huntington's Disease is one of the well-studied neurodegenerative conditions, a quite devastating and
currently incurable one. It is a brain disorder that causes certain types of neurons to become damaged,
causing various parts of the brain to deteriorate and lose their function. This results in uncontrolled
movements, loss of intellectual capabilities and behavioural disturbances. Since the identification of the
causative mutation, there have been many significant developments in understanding the cellular and
molecular perturbations. This book, "Huntington's Disease - Core Concepts and Current Advances", was
prepared to serve as a source of up-to-date information on a wide range of issues involved in Huntington's
Disease. It will help the clinicians, health care providers, researchers, graduate students and life science
readers to increase their understanding of the clinical correlates, genetic aspects, neuropathological findings,
cellular and molecular events and potential therapeutic interventions involved in HD. The book not only serves
reviewed fundamental information on the disease but also presents original research in several disciplines,
which collectively provide comprehensive description of the key issues in the area
Neuroenhancement Patentability and the Boundaries Conundrum in Psychiatric Disorders
Patent offices worldwide deny patentability to innovations which stand against the ordre public: does enhancement represent a value-laden societal threat? Patent offices also reject applications for therapeutical methods: when is enhancement also a therapeutical method? One specific class of enhancers, i.e. pharmaceutical neuroenhancers, is particularly complex in this respect: certain molecules can potentially function both as treatment for neuropsychiatric disorders and as recreational enhancers for non-patients’ brain. Hence, the present work advances the debate on enhancement patentability in two directions: ratione loci, by scrutinising China’s stances on enhancement’s safety and morality, compared to the most frequently explored Western jurisdictions, namely the EU and the US; and ratione materiae, by illuminating the porous bioethical boundaries between treatment and enhancement in the domain of neuropsychiatry. It challenges patent offices’ de facto regulatory role in defining and policing citizens’ access to neuroenhancing substances through misplaced or pseudo-scientific intellectual-property narratives of innovativeness and morale
Predicting the spatiotemporal diversity of seizure propagation and termination in human focal epilepsy
Recent studies have shown that seizures can spread and terminate across brain
areas via a rich diversity of spatiotemporal patterns. In particular, while the
location of the seizure onset area is usually in-variant across seizures in a
same patient, the source of traveling (2-3 Hz) spike-and-wave discharges (SWDs)
during seizures can either move with the slower propagating ictal wavefront or
remain stationary at the seizure onset area. In addition, although most focal
seizures terminate quasi-synchronously across brain areas, some evolve into
distinct ictal clusters and terminate asynchronously. To provide a unifying
perspective on the observed diversity of spatiotemporal dynamics for seizure
spread and termination, we introduce here the Epileptor neural field model. Two
mechanisms play an essential role. First, while the slow ictal wavefront
propagates as a front in excitable neural media, the faster SWDs propagation
results from coupled-oscillator dynamics. Second, multiple time scales interact
during seizure spread, allowing for low-voltage fast-activity (>10 Hz) to
hamper seizure spread and for SWD propagation to affect the way a seizure
terminates. These dynamics, together with variations in short and long-range
connectivity strength, play a central role on seizure spread, maintenance and
termination. We demonstrate how Epileptor field models incorporating the above
mechanisms predict the previously reported diversity in seizure spread
patterns. Furthermore, we confirm the predictions for synchronous or
asynchronous (clustered) seizure termination in human seizures recorded via
stereotactic EEG. Our new insights into seizure spatiotemporal dynamics may
also contribute to the development of new closed-loop neuromodulation therapies
for focal epilepsy.Comment: 10 pages + 9 pages Supporting Information (SI), 7 figures, 1 SI
table, 7 SI figure
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