Community relationship enhancement through citizen review board implementation

Suggests that implementation of a civilian/citizen review board increases good relationships with citizens

Developing "personality" taxonomies: Metatheoretical and methodological rationales underlying selection approaches, methods of data generation and reduction principles

Taxonomic "personality" models are widely used in research and applied fields. This article applies the Transdisciplinary Philosophy-of-Science Paradigm for Research on Individuals (TPS-Paradigm) to scrutinise the three methodological steps that are required for developing comprehensive “personality” taxonomies: 1) the approaches used to select the phenomena and events to be studied, 2) the methods used to generate data about the selected phenomena and events and 3) the reduction principles used to extract the “most important” individual-specific variations for constructing “personality” taxonomies. Analyses of some currently popular taxonomies reveal frequent mismatches between the researchers’ explicit and implicit metatheories about “personality” and the abilities of previous methodologies to capture the particular kinds of phenomena toward which they are targeted. Serious deficiencies that preclude scientific quantifications are identified in standardised questionnaires, psychology’s established standard method of investigation. These mismatches and deficiencies derive from the lack of an explicit formulation and critical reflection on the philosophical and metatheoretical assumptions being made by scientists and from the established practice of radically matching the methodological tools to researchers’ preconceived ideas and to pre-existing statistical theories rather than to the particular phenomena and individuals under study. These findings raise serious doubts about the ability of previous taxonomies to appropriately and comprehensively reflect the phenomena towards which they are targeted and the structures of individual-specificity occurring in them. The article elaborates and illustrates with empirical examples methodological principles that allow researchers to appropriately meet the metatheoretical requirements and that are suitable for comprehensively exploring individuals’ “personality”

European consensus statement on diagnosis and treatment of adult ADHD: The European Network Adult ADHD.

BACKGROUND: Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is among the most common psychiatric disorders of childhood that persists into adulthood in the majority of cases. The evidence on persistence poses several difficulties for adult psychiatry considering the lack of expertise for diagnostic assessment, limited treatment options and patient facilities across Europe. METHODS: The European Network Adult ADHD, founded in 2003, aims to increase awareness of this disorder and improve knowledge and patient care for adults with ADHD across Europe. This Consensus Statement is one of the actions taken by the European Network Adult ADHD in order to support the clinician with research evidence and clinical experience from 18 European countries in which ADHD in adults is recognised and treated. RESULTS: Besides information on the genetics and neurobiology of ADHD, three major questions are addressed in this statement: (1) What is the clinical picture of ADHD in adults? (2) How can ADHD in adults be properly diagnosed? (3) How should ADHD in adults be effectively treated? CONCLUSIONS: ADHD often presents as an impairing lifelong condition in adults, yet it is currently underdiagnosed and treated in many European countries, leading to ineffective treatment and higher costs of illness. Expertise in diagnostic assessment and treatment of ADHD in adults must increase in psychiatry. Instruments for screening and diagnosis of ADHD in adults are available and appropriate treatments exist, although more research is needed in this age group

Personality psychology: Lexical approaches, assessment methods, and trait concepts reveal only half of the story—Why it is time for a paradigm shift

This article develops a comprehensive philosophy-of-science for personality psychology that goes far beyond the scope of the lexical approaches, assessment methods, and trait concepts that currently prevail. One of the field’s most important guiding scientific assumptions, the lexical hypothesis, is analysed from meta-theoretical viewpoints to reveal that it explicitly describes two sets of phenomena that must be clearly differentiated: 1) lexical repertoires and the representations that they encode and 2) the kinds of phenomena that are represented. Thus far, personality psychologists largely explored only the former, but have seriously neglected studying the latter. Meta-theoretical analyses of these different kinds of phenomena and their distinct natures, commonalities, differences, and interrelations reveal that personality psychology’s focus on lexical approaches, assessment methods, and trait concepts entails a) erroneous meta-theoretical assumptions about what the phenomena being studied actually are, and thus how they can be analysed and interpreted, b) that contemporary personality psychology is largely based on everyday psychological knowledge, and c) a fundamental circularity in the scientific explanations used in trait psychology. These findings seriously challenge the widespread assumptions about the causal and universal status of the phenomena described by prominent personality models. The current state of knowledge about the lexical hypothesis is reviewed, and implications for personality psychology are discussed. Ten desiderata for future research are outlined to overcome the current paradigmatic fixations that are substantially hampering intellectual innovation and progress in the field

Molecular characterization and clinical relevance of metabolic expression subtypes in human cancers.

Metabolic reprogramming provides critical information for clinical oncology. Using molecular data of 9,125 patient samples from The Cancer Genome Atlas, we identified tumor subtypes in 33 cancer types based on mRNA expression patterns of seven major metabolic processes and assessed their clinical relevance. Our metabolic expression subtypes correlated extensively with clinical outcome: subtypes with upregulated carbohydrate, nucleotide, and vitamin/cofactor metabolism most consistently correlated with worse prognosis, whereas subtypes with upregulated lipid metabolism showed the opposite. Metabolic subtypes correlated with diverse somatic drivers but exhibited effects convergent on cancer hallmark pathways and were modulated by highly recurrent master regulators across cancer types. As a proof-of-concept example, we demonstrated that knockdown of SNAI1 or RUNX1—master regulators of carbohydrate metabolic subtypes-modulates metabolic activity and drug sensitivity. Our study provides a system-level view of metabolic heterogeneity within and across cancer types and identifies pathway cross-talk, suggesting related prognostic, therapeutic, and predictive utility

First low-frequency Einstein@Home all-sky search for continuous gravitational waves in Advanced LIGO data

We report results of a deep all-sky search for periodic gravitational waves from isolated neutron stars in data from the first Advanced LIGO observing run. This search investigates the low frequency range of Advanced LIGO data, between 20 and 100 Hz, much of which was not explored in initial LIGO. The search was made possible by the computing power provided by the volunteers of the Einstein@Home project. We find no significant signal candidate and set the most stringent upper limits to date on the amplitude of gravitational wave signals from the target population, corresponding to a sensitivity depth of 48.7 [1/root Hz]. At the frequency of best strain sensitivity, near 100 Hz, we set 90% confidence upper limits of 1.8 x 10(-25). At the low end of our frequency range, 20 Hz, we achieve upper limits of 3.9 x 10(-24). At 55 Hz we can exclude sources with ellipticities greater than 10(-5) within 100 pc of Earth with fiducial value of the principal moment of inertia of 10(38) kg m(2)

An introductory overview on personality and healthy aging: setting a foundation for the current volume

Worldwide efforts to promote healthy aging have increased in recent years, given the longer life expectancies. The current volume was organized in order to discuss how personality science may be employed in these efforts. In this introduction, we discuss the previous efforts to link personality constructs to the promotion of healthy aging. In so doing, we set the stage for the remaining chapters that target specific topics along this front. The importance of promoting healthy aging has never been clearer. Individuals are living longer lives than ever before, which places greater importance on identifying factors that promote health maintenance and improve quality of life. Though the final endpoint may be the same for all, individuals differ greatly in the extent to which they enact healthy lifestyle behaviors across the lifespan, and in their likelihood for experiencing negative health risks. In recent decades, efforts to identify why some individuals experience more or less positive aging trajectories have pointed to the value of considering personality science. Though the notion that individuals’ personality dispositions are valuable for predicting health outcomes is not new (for a review of the classic work on trait anger and hostility, see Siegman, 1994), what has changed in recent years is (a) our definitions, taxonomies, and understanding of personality dispositions, (b) the knowledge base regarding why and for whom personality characteristics lead to healthier aging outcomes, and (c) the methodological and analytic approaches taken for studies in this field. The current volume reflects an effort to present new findings, developments, and techniques in order to continue progress for research on personality traits and healthy aging. The focus is less on absolute coverage of any one domain of research or methodological expertise, and instead is intended to provide a smattering of new ideas and theoretical insights from some of the researchers at the forefront of the field. It is difficult to situate the included chapters within broad domains, given that each chapter touches upon both advances in measurement and advances in theory. First, authors will discuss their ongoing efforts to move beyond the personality taxonomies and self-report methods that may have unduly handicapped the precision with which we can predict healthy aging outcomes. Building from this background, researchers from both within and outside psychology present new methods and analytic techniques to add to the researchers’ toolbox. Second, across entries, the authors will consider explanatory frameworks that expand upon existing models in order to further our understanding of when, for whom, and why personality constructs predict aging trajectories. Prior to these chapters, though, we first provide a brief overview of the existing knowledge and frameworks on personality and healthy aging and, in so doing, alert the reader to areas of need that will be addressed in the current volume