Effective Interventions for Treating Superficial Self Mutilators

Self-cutting is the most common form of self-mutilation in adolescents but there is insufficient knowledge as to which treatment methods to reduce self-mutilation are most effective. This exploration into the causes of self-cutting and the treatment interventions, such as Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), compares adolescents who had DBT treatment with those who have used other treatment methods. Research findings indicate that the average age of adolescents in treatment was 15 years old and had been in treatment at least one time prior. Adolescents in DBT treatment showed signs in reducing/stopping self-cutting behavior along with improving communication skills with caregivers. Implications of this study show the need for further research to help educate professionals about the effective treatment for treating adolescent self-cutters

How \u3ci\u3eNFIB v. Sebelius\u3c/i\u3e Affects the Constitutional Gestalt

The thesis of this essay is that the most important legal effects of the Supreme Court\u27s decision in NFIB v. Sebelius are likely to be indirect. Sebelius marks a possible shift in what we can call the “constitutional gestalt” regarding the meaning and implications of the so-called “New Deal Settlement.” Before Sebelius, the consensus understanding was that New Deal and Warren Court cases had established a constitutional regime of plenary and virtually unlimited national legislative power under the Commerce Clause (which might be subject to narrow and limited carve outs protective of the core of state sovereignty). After Sebelius, the constitutional gestalt is unsettled. In Sebelius, five justices of the Supreme Court endorsed a view of the commerce clause that is inconsistent with the constitutional gestalt associated with the New Deal Settlement. A fissure has opened in constitutional politics, creating space for an alternative constitutional gestalt. The core idea of the alternative view is that the New Deal Settlement did not create plenary and virtually unlimited legislative power; instead, proponents of the New Federalism argue that New Deal and Warren Court cases establish only the constitutionality of particular federal programs and specific zones of federal power. The most important indirect effect of Sebelius is that it enables constitutional contestation over the content of the constitutional gestalt and the meaning of the New Deal Settlement. This is a revised draft and replaces the draft of October 16, 2012, which is now on file with the author

Research on experiential psychotherapies

Reviews research on experiential or humanistic psychotherapies, including meta-analysis of outcome research and studies of particular change processes. Outcome meta-analysis shows large client pre-post change, as well as large controlled effects relative to untreated controls and statistical equivalence to nonexperiential psychotherapies, including CBT

Phenomenology and Dimensional Approaches to Psychiatric Research and Classification

Contemporary psychiatry finds itself in the midst of a crisis of classification. The developments begun in the 1980s—with the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders —successfully increased inter-rater reliability. However, these developments have done little to increase the predictive validity of our categories of disorder. A diagnosis based on DSM categories and criteria often fails to accurately anticipate course of illness or treatment response. In addition, there is little evidence that the DSM categories link up with genetic findings, and even less evidence that they..

Gestalt Theory in Visual Screen Design — A New Look at an old subject

Although often presented as a single basis for educational visual screen design, Gestalt theory is not a single small set of visual principles uniformly applied by all designers. In fact, it appears that instructional visual design literature often deals with only a small set of Gestalt laws. In this project Gestalt literature was consulted to distil the most relevant Gestalt laws for educational visual screen design. Eleven laws were identified. They deal with balance/symmetry, continuation, closure, figure-ground, focal point, isomorphic correspondence, prŠgnanz, proximity, similarity, simplicity, and unity/harmony. To test the usefulness of these laws in visual screen design they were applied to the redesign of an instructional multimedia application, 'WoundCare', designed to teach nursing students wound management. The basic text-based screens in the original WoundCare application were replaced with graphical user interface screens, that were designed according to these principles. The new screen designs were then evaluated by asking students and others to compare the designs. The viewers were also asked to rate directly the value of using the eleven Gestalt design principles in the redesign, both for improving the product's appearance and improving its value for learning. The evaluation results were overwhelmingly positive. Both the new design and the value of applying the eleven Gestalt laws to improve learning were strongly supported by the students' opinions. However, some differences in the value of applying particular Gestalt laws to the interface design were identified and this forms a useful direction for future research

The parallel programming of landing position in saccadic eye movement sequences

Saccadic eye movements occur in sequences, gathering new information about the visual environment to support successful task completion. Here we examine the control of these saccadic sequences and specifically the extent to which the spatial aspects of the saccadic responses are programmed in parallel. We asked participants to saccade to a series of visual targets and, while they shifted their gaze around the display, we displaced select targets. We found that saccade landing position was deviated towards the previous location of the target suggesting that partial parallel programming of target location information was occurring. The saccade landing position was also affected by the new target location which demonstrates that the saccade landing position was also partially updated following the shift. This pattern was present even for targets that were the subject of the next fixation. Having a greater preview about the sequence path influenced saccade accuracy with saccades being less affected by relocations when there is less preview information. The results demonstrate that landing positions from a saccade sequence are programmed in parallel and combined with more immediate visual signals

Towards a more balanced understanding of motor control systems

Roberts's book provides a reasonably thorough guide to the physiology and biomechanics of balance, unfortunately the discussion of the neural and cognitive aspects of motor control is less satisfactory. We propose that Roberts's statement of the problem of balance control should be extended to include control of non-equilibrium states, and we discuss sensorimotor calibration and integration in the context of maturation of the organism.Peer reviewe

USMLE Scores Do Not Predict the Clinical Performance of Emergency Medicine Residents

Background: Scores on “high-stakes” multiple choice exams such as the United States Medical Licensing Examination® (USMLE) are important screening and applicant ranking criteria used by residencies.Objective: We tested the hypothesis that USMLE scores do not predict overall clinical performance of emergency medicine (EM) residents.Methods: All graduates from our University-based EM residency between the years 2008 and 2015 were included. Residents who had incomplete USMLE records were terminated, transferred out of the program, or did not graduate within this timeframe were excluded from the analysis. Clinical performance was defined as a gestalt of the residency program’s leadership and was classified into three sets: top, average, and lowest clinical performer. Dissimilarities of the initial blind rankings were adjudicated during a consensus conference.Results: During the eight years of the study period, there were a total of 115 graduating residents: 73 men (63%) and 42 women. Nearly all of them (109; 95%) had allopathic medical degrees; the remainder had osteopathic degrees. There was not a statistically significant correlation between our ranking of clinical performance and the Step 2 Clinical Knowledge score. There was a non-significant correlation between clinical performance and the Step 1 score.Conclusion: Neither USMLE Step 1 nor Step 2 Clinical Knowledge were good predictors of the actual clinical performance of residents during their training. We feel that their scores are overemphasized in the resident selec­tion process

Workshop on dimensional analysis for design, development, and research executives

The proceedings of a conference of research and development executives are presented. The purpose of the meeting was to develop an understanding of the conditions which are appropriate for the use of certain general management tools and those conditions which render these tools inappropriate. The verbatim statements of the participants are included to show the direction taken initially by the conference. Formal presentations of management techniques for research and development are developed