Using genetic algorithms to uncover individual differences in how humans represent facial emotion

Emotional facial expressions critically impact social interactions and cognition. However, emotion research to date has generally relied on the assumption that people represent categorical emotions in the same way, using standardized stimulus sets and overlooking important individual differences. To resolve this problem, we developed and tested a task using genetic algorithms to derive assumption-free, participant-generated emotional expressions. One hundred and five participants generated a subjective representation of happy, angry, fearful and sad faces. Population-level consistency was observed for happy faces, but fearful and sad faces showed a high degree of variability. High test-retest reliability was observed across all emotions. A separate group of 108 individuals accurately identified happy and angry faces from the first study, while fearful and sad faces were commonly misidentified. These findings are an important first step towards understanding individual differences in emotion representation, with the potential to reconceptualize the way we study atypical emotion processing in future research

Liaison Old Age Psychiatry Service in a Medical Setting: Description of the Newcastle Clinical Service

Liaison Old Age Psychiatry services (LOAP) have begun to emerge in the UK and further development of the service is supported by the latest health policies. Since qualitative and quantitative studies in this area are lacking, we have undertaken a detailed quantitative prospective review of referrals to the Newcastle LOAP to evaluate the clinical activity of the service. We report high referral rates and turnover for the LOAP service. Reasons for referral are diverse, ranging from requests for level of care and capacity assessments and transfer to other clinical services to management of behaviour, diagnosis, and treatment. We outline the value of a multidisciplinary model of LOAP activity, including the important role of the liaison nursing team, in providing a rapid response, screening, and followup of high number of clinical referrals to the service

Liaison Old Age Psychiatry Service in a Medical Setting: Description of the Newcastle Clinical Service

Liaison Old Age Psychiatry services (LOAP) have begun to emerge in the UK and further development of the service is supported by the latest health policies. Since qualitative and quantitative studies in this area are lacking, we have undertaken a detailed quantitative prospective review of referrals to the Newcastle LOAP to evaluate the clinical activity of the service. We report high referral rates and turnover for the LOAP service. Reasons for referral are diverse, ranging from requests for level of care and capacity assessments and transfer to other clinical services to management of behaviour, diagnosis, and treatment. We outline the value of a multidisciplinary model of LOAP activity, including the important role of the liaison nursing team, in providing a rapid response, screening, and followup of high number of clinical referrals to the service

Implementation of a standardized protocol to manage elderly patients with low energy pelvic fractures: can service improvement be expected?

Purpose: The incidence of low energy pelvic fractures (FPFs) in the elderly is increasing. Comorbidities, decreased bone-quality, problematic fracture fixation and poor compliance represent some of their specific difficulties. In the absence of uniform management, a standard operating procedure (SOP) was introduced to our unit, aiming to improve the quality of services provided to these patients. Methods: A cohort study was contacted to test the impact of (1) using a specific clinical algorithm and (2) using different antiosteoporotic drugs. Multivariate regression analysis was used to determine prognostic factors. Study endpoints were the time-to-healing, length-of-stay, return to pre-injury mobility, union status, mortality and complications. Results: A total of 132 elderly patients (≥65 years) admitted during the period 2012–2014 with FPFs were enrolled. High-energy fractures, acetabular fractures, associated trauma affecting mobility, pathological pelvic lesions and operated FPFs were used as exclusion criteria. The majority of included patients were females (108/132; 81.8%), and the mean age was 85.8 years (range 67–108). Use of antiosteoporotics was associated with a shorter time of healing (p = 0.036). Patients treated according to the algorithm showed a significant protection against malunion (p < 0.001). Also, adherence to the algorithm allowed more patients to return to their pre-injury mobility status (p = 0.039). Conclusions: The use of antiosteoporotic medication in elderly patients with fragility pelvic fractures was associated with faster healing, whilst the adherence to a structured clinical pathway led to less malunions and non-unions and return to pre-injury mobility state