A study examining Behavioural Activation (BA)

Purpose – Behavioural Activation (BA) is a short-term and risk-free programme designed to provide minimal guidance to individuals allowing them to challenge their behaviours, facilitating self-governance. Research has primarily focused on the investigation of BA with individuals experiencing depressive symptoms usually in a face-to-face environment. This method has shown to be productive for this group but there is limited research surrounding those experiencing low mood; reduced well-being or those who are unable to attend face-to-face sessions. As such, the focus of this paper was to firstly conduct a review encompassing research around BA in relation to psychological distress i.e., depression and anxiety followed by a reflective methodological piece exploring the methodological choices and actions. This is then followed by an empirical paper examining a single session online BA (SSBA) programme using a randomised controlled trial (RCT) which is finally followed by a reflexive statement. Methods – A systematic literature review was conducted using the Preferred Register of Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) guidelines alongside the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) to examine studies that had explored BA with psychological distress. From this review eighteen RCTs met the inclusion criteria. An empirical study was conducted using an RCT to examine the effectiveness of a SSBA programme online in reducing low mood and increasing well-being. Twenty participants were recruited with ten participants randomly allocated in each condition i.e., either the SSBA programme or the mindfulness control group. Many of the participants were academics and completed a pre- and post-assessment which was assessed using a Moods and Feelings questionnaire (MFQ – Angold & Costello (1987) and the Quality-of-Life questionnaire (QoL – Endicott et al, 1993) (Appendix 1). Results – Within the systematic review the eighteen RCTs indicated an improvement in psychological distress symptoms with the majority reducing the depressive symptoms significantly more than the control or comparative group. In addition to this, online and face-to-face BA study results indicated no significant differences suggesting the application of BA can be just as effective online as it is face-to-face. Even though the empirical paper findings suggest that group statistical analyses did not reveal statistically significant results, independently, 50% of the participants in the SSBA condition presented with low mood and an increase in well-being. Conclusions – Despite the studies in the review indicating promising results it may have been useful to consider how the findings would have been if the research was conducted over a longer period and with different populations i.e., gender and age groups. This was also indicative in the empirical paper as many of the participants were academics and the results may have differed if different populations were also involved. Therefore, there is a need to establish more rigour to establish the effectiveness of an SSBA programme in increasing wellbeing. Future studies should include larger sample sizes, longer follow-up periods and stronger methodological designs

Особенности человеческого сознания

Анализируется проблема познания через призму вопроса о смысле жизни человека. Сознание как орудие познания имеет некоторые особенности, сущность которых проявляется в ходе когнитивного отношения человека к миру. Если есть начало познания, то, что может выступать критерием его завершения? Поиск возможного ответа на этот важный вопрос и составляет содержание данной статьи

Managing Information to Support the Decision Making Process

Decision-making is a crucial activity during the planning, design and operation of artefacts. To make a decision several alternatives must be evaluated and compared, which are tasks that require information, knowledge and expertise. A system that organises and manages the knowledge associated with every alternative and links ideas, arguments and issues can greatly improve and facilitate the decision making process. This paper presents how an Issue Based Information System (IBIS) implemented in Compendium (http://compendium.open.ac.uk) has been extended with new functionalities such as access to a toolkit of Multi-Criteria Decision Methods (MCDM), the ability to propagate values throughout the decision records and to perform sensitivity analysis of the recommended decisions with respect to a parameter. These additional functionalities enable the applicability of the system in the support of decisions that require not only argumentation, but also numerical evaluation of the properties of the alternatives such as those proposed during the design, planning and operation of engineering artefacts. </jats:p

Makerspaces in Higher Education : the UR-Maker experience at the University of La Rioja

Nowadays, in addition to the expected technical knowledge, labor markets demand engineers with personal, interpersonal and system building skills, according to the CDIO (Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate) syllabus. But the current higher education systems are mostly teaching theoretical concepts rather than practical or applied cases. Makerspaces could become a bridge between universities and industry, particularly in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) careers. Makerspaces, also known as hackerspaces, hack labs, and fab labs, are open-access spaces where tools, machines and knowledge are shared with the purpose of implementing an idea. This communication evaluates the current status of the makerspaces at the world's top 10 universities in engineering and three of the most well-known Spanish ones, as well as the new campus makerspace created at the University of La Rioja. All the information was collected from universities' websites. Most of these reviewed universities have created outstanding makerspaces generally for the entire academic community. The Spanish 'Maker UPV' has been exceptionally successful promoting activities and projects in spite of the lack of resources reported. Lastly, the implementation of a new makerspace at the University of La Rioja (UR-Maker) is described with information about its organization, funding sources and activities already performed. This experience can represent an attractive guide for the academic community as other universities can explore the creation of new makerspaces on their own campus.Peer reviewe

Towards semantic knowledge mapping: an extension of compendium with semantic knowledge representation

Compendium is a knowledge mapping application equipped with graphical representations of ideas and arguments. Extension of the processes in Compendium with Semantic Web technologies can be beneficial for the intelligent searching of concepts or ideas, and supporting decision making process. This paper presents the extended Compendium which exploits the Semantic Web for knowledge representation and user interaction. The result evaluated by the experts and users showed that the extension eases and streamlines the decision making process

Femtochemistry under scrutiny: Clocking state-resolved channels in the photodissociation of CH3I in the A -band

The following article appeared inThe Journal of Chemical Physics 152.1 (2020): 014304 and may be found at https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5134473Clocking of electronically and vibrationally state-resolved channels of the fast photodissociation of CH3I in the A-band is re-examined in a combined experimental and theoretical study. Experimentally, a femtosecond pump-probe scheme is employed in the modality of resonant probing by resonance enhanced multiphoton ionization (REMPI) of the methyl fragment in different vibrational states and detection through fragment velocity map ion (VMI) imaging as a function of the time delay. We revisit excitation to the center of the A-band at 268 nm and report new results for excitation to the blue of the band center at 243 nm. Theoretically, two approaches have been employed to shed light into the observations: first, a reduced dimensionality 4D nonadiabatic wavepacket calculation using the potential energy surfaces by Xie et al. [J. Phys. Chem. A 104, 1009 (2000)]; and second, a full dimension 9D trajectory surface-hopping calculation on the same potential energy surfaces, including the quantization of vibrational states of the methyl product. In addition, high level ab initio electronic structure calculations have been carried out to describe the CH3 3pz Rydberg state involved in the (2 + 1) REMPI probing process, as a function of the carbon-iodine (C–I) distance. A general qualitative agreement is obtained between experiment and theory, but the effect of methyl vibrational excitation in the umbrella mode on the clocking times is not well reproduced. The theoretical results reveal that no significant effect on the state-resolved appearance times is exerted by the nonadiabatic crossing through the conical intersection present in the first absorption band. The vibrationally state resolved clocking times observed experimentally can be rationalized when the (2 + 1) REMPI probing process is considered. None of the other probing methods applied thus far, i.e., multiphoton ionization photoelectron spectroscopy, soft X-ray innershell photoelectron spectroscopy, VUV single-photon ionization, and XUV core-to-valence transient absorption spectroscopy, have been able to provide quantum state-resolved (vibrational) clocking times. More experiments would be needed to disentangle the fine details in the clocking times and dissociation dynamics arising from the detection of specific quantum-states of the molecular fragmentsM.L.M.-S. acknowledges financial support through a predoctoral contract from Universidad Complutense de Madrid. M.E.C. is grateful to the Spanish MINECO for a contract through Programa de Técnicos de Apoyo a Infraestructuras. This work was financially supported by the Spanish MINECO and MICIU (Grant Nos. CTQ2016-75880-P, FIS2016-77889-R, and PGC2018-096444- B-I00). This research was carried out within the Unidad Asociada Química Física Molecular between the Departamento de Química Física of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and CSIC. The facilities provided by the Center for Ultrasfast Lasers of Universidad Complutense de Madrid are acknowledge

Does apoptosis occur in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis? TUNEL experience from human Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) tissues

The role that apoptosis plays in the pathogenesis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is still unclear. From our autopsy samples, we have undertaken an effort to verify if apoptosis in ALS really occurs or if can at least be detected. The study was performed using TUNEL method for screening the apoptotic changes in the autopsy samples from 8 ALS cases compared with 16 control cases. No features of apoptosis (DNA cleavages) were noted in any of the investigated regions of the central nervous system in ALS cases as well as in controls. These preliminary results seem to support the reports, which deny the role of apoptosis in human ALS. The following investigations using additional methods will be performed for detection the apoptotic signals in ALS

Conical intersection and coherent vibrational dynamics in alkyl iodides captured by attosecond transient absorption spectroscopy

The photodissociation dynamics of alkyl iodides along the C–I bond are captured by attosecond extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) transient absorption spectroscopy employing resonant ∼20 fs UV pump pulses. The methodology of previous experiments on CH3I [Chang et al., J. Chem. Phys. 154, 234301 (2021)] is extended to the investigation of a C–I bond-breaking reaction in the dissociative A-band of C2H5I, i-C3H7I, and t-C4H9I. Probing iodine 4d core-to-valence transitions in the XUV enables one to map wave packet bifurcation at a conical intersection in the A-band as well as coherent vibrations in the ground state of the parent molecules. Analysis of spectroscopic bifurcation signatures yields conical intersection crossing times of 15 ± 4 fs for CH3I, 14 ± 5 fs for C2H5I, and 24 ± 4 fs for i-C3H7I and t-C4H9I, respectively. Observations of coherent vibrations, resulting from a projection of A-band structural dynamics onto the ground state by resonant impulsive stimulated Ramanscattering, indirectly reveal multimode C–I stretch and CCI bend vibrations in the A-bands of C2H5I, i-C3H7I, and t-C4H9