Exploring Emotion Representation to Support Dialogue in Police Training on Child Interviewing

Police officers when dealing with interviewing children have to cope with a complex set of emotions from a vulnerable witness. Triggers for recognising those emotions and how to build rapport are often the basis of learning exercises. However, current training pulls together the full complexity of emotions during role-playing which can be over-whelming and reduce appropriate learning focus. Interestingly a serious game’s interface can provide valuable training not because it represents full complex, multimedia interactions but because it can restrict emotional complexity and increase focus during the interactions on key factors for emotional recognition. The focus of this paper is to report on a specific aspect that was explored during the development of a serious game that aims to address the current police-training needs of child interviewing techniques, where the recognition of emotions plays an important role in understanding how to build rapport with children. The review of literature reveals that emotion recognition, through facial expressions, can contribute significantly to the perceived quality of communication. For this study an ‘emotions map’ was created and tested by 41 participants to be used in the development of a targeted interface design to support the different levels of emotion recognition. The emotions identified were validated with a 70 % agreement across experts and non-experts highlighting the innate role of emotion recognition. A discussion is made around the role of emotions and game-based systems to support their identification for work-based training. As part of the graphical development of the Child Interview Stimulator (CIS) we examined different levels of emotional recognition that can be used to support the in-game graphical representation of a child’s response during a police interview

Early Infant Morbidity in the City of São Paulo, Brazil

BACKGROUND: Early infant morbidities may produce adverse outcomes in subsequent life. A low Apgar score is a convenient measure of early infant morbidity. We study determinants of early infant morbidity (sex, plurality, mode of delivery, prior losses, gestational age, prenatal care and birth weight, parity and maternal age, race, maternal education and community development) for the 1998-birth cohort, City of São Paulo, Brazil. METHODS: This study identified all deliveries that took place in the City of São Paulo during 1998. Information was extracted from 209,628 birth records. We used multivariate logistic regression to assess the effect of each independent variable on Apgar score less than seven at one minute and Apgar score less than seven at five minutes. RESULTS: Low birth weight, prematurity and community development were found to be strong predictors of morbidity. Maternal education showed strong negative correlation with both Apgar scores. The negative correlations between maternal schooling and Apgar scores were observed after prenatal care, parity and maternal age were included in the model. Unmeasured proximate factors may thus be the true source of disparity between educational groups. Children of very young adolescent mothers had lower Apgar scores at one minute (but not at five minutes) than those born to mothers 15 to 19. Parity one or higher was associated with decreased odds of low Apgar scores. Cesarean section and operative delivery were associated with higher odds of early infant morbidity. CONCLUSION: Education may allow mothers to have better care in the peripartum period. More educated mothers may be more likely to recognize certain morbidities through the pregnancy period and the monitoring of such morbidities yields better infant outcomes. Also, having less than seven prenatal care visits was found to predict early infant morbidity and one way to increase the use of such services is to focus on aspects of care that may lead to easier accessibility and continuity of prenatal care. Physicians should inform mothers about the risks associated with high number of children for a next infant and also about the risks for the infant associated with unnecessary cesarean sections. Special attention should be paid to adolescent mothers, since much of their increased risk is likely to be minimized by counseling

Does urbanization explain differences in interactions between an insect herbivore and its natural enemies and mutualists?

Urbanization can alter the composition of arthropod communities. However, little is known about how urbanization affects ecological interactions. Using experimental colonies of the black bean aphid Aphis fabae Scopoli reared on Vicia faba L, we asked if patterns of predator-prey, host-parasitoid and ant-aphid mutualisms varied along an urbanization gradient across a large town in southern England. We recorded the presence of naturally occurring predators, parasitoid wasps and mutualistic ants together with aphid abundance. We examined how biotic (green areas and plant richness) and abiotic features (impervious surfaces and distance to town center) affected (1) aphid colony size, (2) the likelihood of finding predators, mutualistic ants and aphid mummies (indicating the presence of parasitoids), and (3) how the interplay among these factors affected patterns of parasitoid attack, predator abundance, mutualistic interactions and aphid abundance. The best model to predict aphid abundance was the number of mutualistic ants attending the colonies. Aphid predators responded negatively to both the proportion of impervious surfaces and to the number of mutualistic ants farming the colonies, and positively to aphid population size, whereas parasitized aphids were found in colonies with higher numbers of aphids and ants. The number of mutualistic ants attending was positively associated with aphid colony size and negatively with the number of aphid predators. Our findings suggest that for insect-natural enemy interactions, urbanization may affect some groups, while not influencing others, and that local effects (mutualists, host plant presence) will also be key determinants of how urban ecological communities are formed

Conscious perception of errors and its relation to the anterior insula

To detect erroneous action outcomes is necessary for flexible adjustments and therefore a prerequisite of adaptive, goal-directed behavior. While performance monitoring has been studied intensively over two decades and a vast amount of knowledge on its functional neuroanatomy has been gathered, much less is known about conscious error perception, often referred to as error awareness. Here, we review and discuss the conditions under which error awareness occurs, its neural correlates and underlying functional neuroanatomy. We focus specifically on the anterior insula, which has been shown to be (a) reliably activated during performance monitoring and (b) modulated by error awareness. Anterior insular activity appears to be closely related to autonomic responses associated with consciously perceived errors, although the causality and directions of these relationships still needs to be unraveled. We discuss the role of the anterior insula in generating versus perceiving autonomic responses and as a key player in balancing effortful task-related and resting-state activity. We suggest that errors elicit reactions highly reminiscent of an orienting response and may thus induce the autonomic arousal needed to recruit the required mental and physical resources. We discuss the role of norepinephrine activity in eliciting sufficiently strong central and autonomic nervous responses enabling the necessary adaptation as well as conscious error perception

The disruption of proteostasis in neurodegenerative diseases

Cells count on surveillance systems to monitor and protect the cellular proteome which, besides being highly heterogeneous, is constantly being challenged by intrinsic and environmental factors. In this context, the proteostasis network (PN) is essential to achieve a stable and functional proteome. Disruption of the PN is associated with aging and can lead to and/or potentiate the occurrence of many neurodegenerative diseases (ND). This not only emphasizes the importance of the PN in health span and aging but also how its modulation can be a potential target for intervention and treatment of human diseases.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Frequency of exacerbations in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: an analysis of the SPIROMICS cohort

Background Present treatment strategies to stratify exacerbation risk in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) rely on a history of two or more events in the previous year. We aimed to understand year to year variability in exacerbations and factors associated with consistent exacerbations over time. Methods In this longitudinal, prospective analysis of exacerbations in the Subpopulations and Intermediate Outcome Measures in COPD Study (SPIROMICS) cohort, we analysed patients aged 40–80 years with COPD for whom 3 years of prospective data were available, identified through various means including care at academic and non-academic medical centres, word of mouth, and existing patient registries. Participants were enrolled in the study between Nov 12, 2010, and July 31, 2015. We classified patients according to yearly exacerbation frequency: no exacerbations in any year; one exacerbation in every year during 3 years of follow-up; and those with inconsistent exacerbations (individuals who had both years with exacerbations and years without during the 3 years of follow-up). Participants were characterised by the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) spirometric category (1–4) on the basis of post-bronchodilator FEV1. Stepwise logistic regression was used to compare factors associated with one or more acute exacerbations of COPD every year for 3 years versus no exacerbations in the same timeframe. Additionally, a stepwise zero-inflated negative binomial model was used to assess predictors of exacerbation count during follow-up in all patients with available data. Baseline symptom burden was assessed with the COPD assessment test. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT01969344. Findings 2981 patients were enrolled during the study. 1843 patients had COPD, of which 1105 patients had 3 years of complete, prospective follow-up data. 538 (49%) of 1105 patients had at least one acute exacerbation during the 3 years of follow-up, whereas 567 (51%) had none. 82 (7%) of 1105 patients had at least one acute exacerbation each year, whereas only 23 (2%) had two or more acute exacerbations in each year. An inconsistent pattern (both years with and without acute exacerbations) was common (456 [41%] of the group), particularly among GOLD stages 3 and 4 patients (256 [56%] of 456). In logistic regression, consistent acute exacerbations (≥1 event per year for 3 years) were associated with higher baseline symptom burden, previous exacerbations, greater evidence of small airway abnormality on CT, lower interleukin-15 concentrations, and higher interleukin-8 concentrations, than were no acute exacerbations. Interpretation Although acute exacerbations are common, the exacerbation status of most individuals varies markedly from year to year. Among patients who had any acute exacerbation over 3 years, very few repeatedly had two or more events per year. In addition to symptoms and history of exacerbations in the year before study enrolment, we identified several novel biomarkers associated with consistent exacerbations, including CT-defined small airway abnormality, and interleukin-15 and interleukin-8 concentrations