Suicide Ideation in Older Adults Recovering from Acute Conditions in a Clinical Recovery Facility

The aim of the current study was to assess suicide ideation in a sample of older adults recovering from acute conditions in a clinical recovery facility of the Portuguese Red Cross. Four indicators of suicide ideation were used. Clinical, contextual, and psychological variables—namely, previous suicide attempts, death of a family member suicide, loneliness, and interpersonal needs—were also tested to determine whether they were related to suicide ideation. Findings show suicide ideation is frequent at admission and related to patients’ previous suicide attempts. Death of a family member by suicide and patients’ functional dependency are related to some indicators of suicide ideation, and loneliness and interpersonal needs are important psychological variables relating to suicide ideation. Interpersonal needs were related to suicide ideation even after controlling for previous suicide attempts. Implications of the results for clinical practice are discussed. [Journal of Gerontological Nursing, 43(9), 31-37.

Exposure to suicide in the family: Suicide risk and psychache in individualswho have lost a family member by suicide

Objective: The aim of the present study was to compare a sample of Portuguese individuals exposed to suicide in their families with a control group, for lifetime suicidality. This study also evaluated the incremental value of psychache (i.e., extreme psychological pain) in determining suicide risk beyond the contribution associated with having lost a family member by suicide. Method: A total of 225 community adults participated. Two groups were defined: a group exposed to suicide (n=53), and a control group (n = 172). Results: Results demonstrated that groups did significantly differ on the total score of the Suicide Behaviors Questionnaire-Revised (SBQ-R), on the four individual SBQ-R items, and on psychache. Results from a hierarchical multiple regression analysis demonstrated that having lost a family member by suicide and the construct of psychache each provided a significant unique contribution to explaining variance in suicide risk. The interaction between group membership and psychache also provided a further enhancement to the statistical prediction of suicide risk. Conclusion: Findings are discussed with regard to their implications for clinical intervention and postvention

FIGO consensus guidelines on intrapartum fetal monitoring: Intermittent auscultation

Intermittent auscultation is the technique used to listen to the fetal heart rate (FHR) for short periods of time without a display of the resulting pattern. Whether it is used for intrapartum fetal monitoring in low-risk women or for all cases in settings where there are no available alternatives, all healthcare professionals attending labor and delivery need to be skilled at performing intermittent auscultation, interpreting its findings, and taking appropriate action. The main aim of this chapter is to describe the tools and techniques for intermittent auscultation in labor

The infrastructural complex : a return to big design

Thesis (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2007."June 2007."Includes bibliographical references (p. 62-63).A new pattern of territorial settlement is proposed for the 70 mile-long strip straddling the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana (here termed the "South Louisiana-Mississippi River Corridor"). Current urban design paradigms at work in the area are ill-equipped to deal with the complex and competing systems within which the city of New Orleans-and any city sufficiently understood-is situated. It was a historical failure to engage with these big systems in the first place that resulted in the disaster of 2005. Such a truly big meshwork of competing interests as exists in the region can only be managed by a radically big re-definition of the scale and magnitude of the area in which design can intervene, harkening back to the territorial plans of the Russian avant-garde or the Tennessee Valley Authority. In South Louisiana, territorial infrastructure has always been the interface between systems and complexes, and it is only through a rapid redeployment of new infrastructures across a sufficiently big scale that a viable, long-term vision for the region can be realized, and only by applying architectural thinking.(cont.) Along the (relatively) terra firma of the river's natural levee, rapidly-constructed long-distance sediment-transport pipeline become the "spines" for new program in the region, re-situating the significance of earth and water-control infrastructures to the urban form and civic life in the region. These spines absorb the future growth program of the region-whatever it may be. And outside the developed areas along the spines, fields of sugarcane are transformed to fields of cypress trees-tended by the citizen-foresters of the region-ready to be transplanted when mature into the wetlands. Their roots, and the mud coming through the spines of the new human settlements, artificially rebuild the natural buffer between this territory and an even bigger one-the rising, warming ocean.by Robert Timothy Campos.M.Arch

The Shapes of Dirichlet Defects

If the vacuum manifold of a field theory has the appropriate topological structure, the theory admits topological structures analogous to the D-branes of string theory, in which defects of one dimension terminate on other defects of higher dimension. The shapes of such defects are analyzed numerically, with special attention paid to the intersection regions. Walls (co-dimension 1 branes) terminating on other walls, global strings (co-dimension 2 branes) and local strings (including gauge fields) terminating on walls are all considered. Connections to supersymmetric field theories, string theory and condensed matter systems are pointed out.Comment: 24 pages, RevTeX, 21 eps figure

Autonomy of Nations and Indigenous Peoples and the Environmental Release of Genetically Engineered Animals with Gene Drives

This article contends that the environmental release of genetically engineered (GE) animals with heritable traits that are patented will present a challenge to the efforts of nations and indigenous peoples to engage in self‐determination. The environmental release of such animals has been proposed on the grounds that they could function as public health tools or as solutions to the problem of agricultural insect pests. This article brings into focus two political‐economic‐legal problems that would arise with the environmental release of such organisms. To address those challenges, it is proposed that nations considering the environmental release of GE animals must take into account the underlying circumstances and policy failures that motivate arguments for the use of the modified animals. Moreover, countries must recognize that the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights place on them an obligation to ensure that GE animals with patented heritable traits are not released without the substantive consent of the nations or indigenous peoples that could be affected

A computational approach towards conflict resolution for serious games

Conflict is an unavoidable feature of life, but the development of conflict resolution management skills can facilitate the parties involved in resolving their conflicts in a positive manner. The goal of our research is to develop a serious game in which children may experiment with conflict resolution strategies and learn how to work towards positive conflict outcomes. While serious games related to conflict exist at present, our work represents the first attempt to teach conflict resolution skills through a game in a manner informed by sociological and psychological theories of conflict and current best practice for conflict resolution. In this paper, we present a computational approach to conflict generation and resolution. We describe the five phases involved in our conflict modeling process: conflict situation creation, conflict detection, player modeling and conflict strategy prediction, conflict management, and conflict resolution, and discuss the three major elements of our player model: assertiveness, cooperativeness, and relationship. Finally, we overview a simple resource management game we have developed in which we have begun experimenting with our conflict model concepts.peer-reviewe

Influence of pH and ionic strength on the color parameters and antioxidant properties of an ethanolic red grape marc extract

The aim of present study was to investigate the influences of pH and several salts on the antioxidant activity and color of an ethanolic grape marc extract. Furthermore, the phenolic content of the extract was analyzed using HPLC and spectrophotometric methods while the total antioxidant activity was assessed by the reaction with ABTS radical. Gallic acid, procyanidins B1, B2, polydatin, catechin, epicatechin, hyperoside, ferulic, chlorogenic, and salicylic acids were among the main identified polyphenols. Different pH values had slight influence on the antioxidant activity, the highest value being determined for pH 3.7. The redness, chroma, and hue were significantly enhanced at pH 3.7 and 2.6. The chromaticity decreased at pH = 5.5 and pH = 7.4, so the extract should be used with care in products with such media. The presence of salts did not noticeably affect the antioxidant activity, except the higher concentrations of CaCl2, which decreased the antioxidant activity but enhanced the color intensity