The Sky is Falling… Or is it?

There are two sides to the issue of societal acceptance of advanced/urban air mobility when it comes to mental health. One is that of the pilots’ mental health, and a topic for another day. The other is that of society’s mental health, the topic of this paper. More specifically, this research seeks to uncover what causes society the most angst when it comes to these operations. Literature review shows that stress increases with noise levels of aircraft flying overhead, as well as vehicle safety. Furthermore, for passengers, the stress caused by fear of flying may be compounded when a pilot is not onboard, as will be the case with these autonomous vehicles. Thus, is it the noise, the safety, or other concerns? The researchers have attempted a qualitative review by surveying a random section of the population in the United States to uncover what causes people stress with advanced/urban air mobility. The findings show that vehicle safety is the main concern, cited by almost ninety percent of respondents

The mechanisms and processes of connection: developing a causal chain model capturing impacts of receiving recorded mental health recovery narratives.

BACKGROUND: Mental health recovery narratives are a core component of recovery-oriented interventions such as peer support and anti-stigma campaigns. A substantial number of recorded recovery narratives are now publicly available online in different modalities and in published books. Whilst the benefits of telling one's story have been investigated, much less is known about how recorded narratives of differing modalities impact on recipients. A previous qualitative study identified connection to the narrator and/or to events in the narrative to be a core mechanism of change. The factors that influence how individuals connect with a recorded narrative are unknown. The aim of the current study was to characterise the immediate effects of receiving recovery narratives presented in a range of modalities (text, video and audio), by establishing the mechanisms of connection and the processes by which connection leads to outcomes. METHOD: A study involving 40 mental health service users in England was conducted. Participants were presented with up to 10 randomly-selected recovery narratives and were interviewed on the immediate impact of each narrative. Thematic analysis was used to identify the mechanisms of connection and how connection leads to outcome. RESULTS: Receiving a recovery narrative led participants to reflect upon their own experiences or those of others, which then led to connection through three mechanisms: comparing oneself with the narrative and narrator; learning about other's experiences; and experiencing empathy. These mechanisms led to outcomes through three processes: the identification of change (through attending to narrative structure); the interpretation of change (through attending to narrative content); and the internalisation of interpretations. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first study to identify mechanisms and processes of connection with recorded recovery narratives. The empirically-based causal chain model developed in this study describes the immediate effects on recipients. This model can inform selection of narratives for use in interventions, and be used to support peer support workers in recounting their own recovery narratives in ways which are maximally beneficial to others

The relationship between clinical and recovery dimensions of outcome in mental health

Background: Little is known about the empirical relationship between clinical and personal recovery. Aims: To examine whether there are separate constructs of clinical recovery and personal recovery dimensions of outcome, how they change over time and how they can be assessed. Method: Standardised outcome measures were administered at baseline and one-year follow-up to participants in the REFOCUS Trial (ISRCTN02507940). An exploratory factor analysis was conducted and a confirmatory factor analysis assessed change across time. Results: We identified three factors: patient-rated personal recovery, patient-rated clinical recovery and staff-rated clinical recovery. Only the personal recovery factor improved after one year. HHI, CANSAS-P and HoNOS were the best measures for research and practice. Conclusions: The identification of three rather than two factors was unexpected. Our findings support the value of concurrently assessing staff and patient perceptions of outcome. Only the personal recovery factor changed over time, this desynchrony between clinical and recovery outcomes providing empirical evidence that clinical recovery and personal recovery are not the same. We did not find evidence of a trade-off between clinical recovery and personal recovery outcomes. Optimal assessment based on our data would involve assessment of hope, social disability and patient-rated unmet need

Representative Landscapes in the Forested Area of Canada

Canada is a large nation with forested ecosystems that occupy over 60% of the national land base, and knowledge of the patterns of Canada’s land cover is important to proper environmental management of this vast resource. To this end, a circa 2000 Landsat-derived land cover map of the forested ecosystems of Canada has created a new window into understanding the composition and configuration of land cover patterns in forested Canada. Strategies for summarizing such large expanses of land cover are increasingly important, as land managers work to study and preserve distinctive areas, as well as to identify representative examples of current land-cover and land-use assemblages. Meanwhile, the development of extremely efficient clustering algorithms has become increasingly important in the world of computer science, in which billions of pieces of information on the internet are continually sifted for meaning for a vast variety of applications. One recently developed clustering algorithm quickly groups large numbers of items of any type in a given data set while simultaneously selecting a representative—or “exemplar”—from each cluster. In this context, the availability of both advanced data processing methods and a nationally available set of landscape metrics presents an opportunity to identify sets of representative landscapes to better understand landscape pattern, variation, and distribution across the forested area of Canada. In this research, we first identify and provide context for a small, interpretable set of exemplar landscapes that objectively represent land cover in each of Canada’s ten forested ecozones. Then, we demonstrate how this approach can be used to identify flagship and satellite long-term study areas inside and outside protected areas in the province of Ontario. These applications aid our understanding of Canada’s forest while augmenting its management toolbox, and may signal a broad range of applications for this versatile approach

What makes a face photo a 'good likeness'

Photographs of people are commonly said to be ‘good likenesses’ or ‘poor likenesses’, and this is a concept that we readily understand. Despite this, there has been no systematic investigation of what makes an image a good likeness, or of which cognitive processes are involved in making such a judgement. In three experiments, we investigate likeness judgements for different types of images: natural images of film stars (Experiment 1), images of film stars from specific films (Experiment 2), and iconic images and face averages (Experiment 3). In all three experiments, participants rated images for likeness and completed speeded name verification tasks. We consistently show that participants are faster to identify images which they have previously rated as a good likeness compared to a poor likeness. We also consistently show that the more familiar we are with someone, the higher likeness rating we give to all images of them. A key finding is that our perception of likeness is idiosyncratic (Experiments 1 and 2), and can be tied to our specific experience of each individual (Experiment 2). We argue that likeness judgements require a comparison between the stimulus and our own representation of the person, and that this representation differs according to our prior experience with that individual. This has theoretical implications for our understanding of how we represent familiar people, and practical implications for how we go about selecting images for identity purposes such as photo-ID

ISRA 2013 Assessment of numerical data from ISO3382

ABSTRACT Expanding ISO3382 in 1997 to include measures beyond reverberation time was a significant milestone in the development of auditorium acoustics. The measures basically fall into two categories, those linked to rates of decay and energy measures. Several papers have been published providing advice on measurement and analysis to obtain reliable results. Several ways exist to analyse the results to understand better the behaviour of sound in a space. In spite of absorption being concentrated on only one of the six principal surfaces, the state of diffusion can be quite high in an auditorium, at least in an auditorium without a proscenium opening. The Normalised Standard Deviation of Reverberation Time (RT) looks like a useful measure of the state of diffusion. In a diffuse space, the Early decay time (EDT) equals the RT and energy measures follow prediction according to revised theory. But our hearing system appears not to be particularly sensitive to the state of diffusion. Ways to interpret EDT and deviations from revised theory will be discussed. Lateral Fraction on the other hand tends to be closely related to geometry. Currently ISO 3382 presumes using an omni-directional source. This is to ignore instrument directivity, which is a major issue that distinguishes the subjective difference between a shoebox and terraced concert hall

Machinist

Également publ. en anglais sous le titre: MachinistBibliogr.: p. 16