Effectiveness is the gold standard of clinical research

Psychological treatments have been shown to be at least as effective (and sometime even more effective) than psychotropic medications for many psychiatric disorders, in particular anxiety disorders, depressive disorders, and personality disorders (American Psychological Association, 2013; Cuijpers, 2017). Effective psychological treatments are also cost-effective: their implementation in public mental health services is convenient in financial terms, with decades of studies consistently demonstrating a reduction in public spending for psychological health (Abbass, Kisely, Rasic, Town & Johansson, 2015). Therefore, it could be critical that psychological treatments whose efficacy is supported by strong empirical evidence can be delivered as a primary choice in public mental health services. We hope and believe that the time when a psychologist or a psychiatrist (especially if paid by the public mental health system) could provide any treatment he or she thought fit, even in the absence of any scientific evidence of its efficacy, is coming to an end. However, a recommendation should be made to be very careful in not equating the empirical support of a given treatment with the sole presence of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that show its efficacy. This would be a mistake from both an empirical and a theoretical perspective, as it runs the risk of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. In other words, endorsing a perspective according to which a specific treatment should be promoted or rejected on the sole basis of findings from RCT studies runs the risk of putting clinical science back almost twenty years from the current more advanced understanding of the efficacy, effectiveness, and usefulness of psychotherapy (Dazzi, 2006; Dazzi, Lingiardi, & Colli, 2006; Leichsenring et al., 2016; Silberschatz, 2017)

The neural bases of event monitoring across domains: a simultaneous ERP-fMRI study.

The ability to check and evaluate the environment over time with the aim to detect the occurrence of target stimuli is supported by sustained/tonic as well as transient/phasic control processes, which overall might be referred to as event monitoring. The neural underpinning of sustained control processes involves a fronto-parietal network. However, it has not been well-defined yet whether this cortical circuit acts irrespective of the specific material to be monitored and whether this mediates sustained as well as transient monitoring processes. In the current study, the functional activity of brain during an event monitoring task was investigated and compared between two cognitive domains, whose processing is mediated by differently lateralized areas. Namely, participants were asked to monitor sequences of either faces (supported by right-hemisphere regions) or tools (left-hemisphere). In order to disentangle sustained from transient components of monitoring, a simultaneous EEG-fMRI technique was adopted within a block design. When contrasting monitoring versus control blocks, the conventional fMRI analysis revealed the sustained involvement of bilateral fronto-parietal regions, in both task domains. Event-related potentials (ERPs) showed a more positive amplitude over frontal sites in monitoring compared to control blocks, providing evidence of a transient monitoring component. The joint ERP-fMRI analysis showed that, in the case of face monitoring, these transient processes rely on right-lateralized areas, including the inferior parietal lobule and the middle frontal gyrus. In the case of tools, no fronto-parietal areas correlated with the transient ERP activity, suggesting that in this domain phasic monitoring processes were masked by tonic ones. Overall, the present findings highlight the role of bilateral fronto-parietal regions in sustained monitoring, independently of the specific task requirements, and suggest that right-lateralized areas subtend transient monitoring processes, at least in some task contexts

Semantic Similarity in a Taxonomy by Refining the Relatedness of Concept Intended Senses

In this paper, we present an evolution of a novel approach for evaluating semantic similarity in a taxonomy, based on the well-known notion of information content. Such an approach takes into account not only the generic sense of a concept but also its intended sense in a given context. In this work semantic similarity is evaluated according to a refined relatedness measure between the generic sense and the intended sense of a concept, leading to higher correlation values with human judgment with respect to the original proposal

minimal extracorporeal circulation and minimally invasive valve operations should they be the right combination in the future

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Mechanical Complications of Myocardial Infarction

Complications of acute myocardial infarction are different and life threatening. Prompt diagnosis and therapy are essential. In this, chapter we will analyse mechanical complications, such as ventricular free wall rupture, ventricular septal defect, papillary muscle rupture, ischaemic mitral regurgitation, left ventricle aneurysm, and cardiogenic shock

An Enriched Information-Theoretic Definition of Semantic Similarity in a Taxonomy

This paper addresses the notion of semantic similarity between concepts organized according to a taxonomy, based on the well-known information content approach. This approach has been widely experimented in the literature over the years and, in general, outperforms other proposals which do not originate from it. However, it shows some limitations related to the notion of generic sense of a concept. In this paper we illustrate the problem arising by using the traditional approach, and a novel information-theoretic definition of semantic similarity in a taxonomy is proposed which also takes into account the intended sense of a concept in a given context. This proposal has been applied to some among the most representative state-of-the-art similarity measures based on the information content approach, and the experiment shows that it achieves very high correlation values with human judgment

Vibration control in plates by uniformly distributed PZT actuators interconnected via electric networks

In this paper a novel device aimed at controlling the mechanical vibrations of plates by means of a set of electrically-interconnected piezoelectric actuators is described. The actuators are embedded uniformly in the plate wherein they connect every node of an electric network to ground, thus playing the two-fold role of capacitive element in the electric network and of couple suppliers. A mathematical model is introduced to describe the propagation of electro-mechanical waves in the device; its validity is restricted to the case of wave-forms with wave-length greater than the dimension of the piezoelectric actuators used. A self-resonance criterion is established which assures the possibility of electro-mechanical energy exchange. Finally the problem of vibration control in simply supported and clamped plates is addressed; the optimal net-impedance is determined. The results indicate that the proposed device can improve the performances of piezoelectric actuationComment: 22 page