Middle manager and change: study into the influence of the competencies analyse, decisiveness and communication skills on the willingness to change of the middle manager

in deze scriptie wordt verslag gedaan van een onderzoek naar de mate waarin de competenties analyseren, besluitvaardig zijn en communicatief vaardig zijn bij de middenmanager van invloed zijn op zijn veranderbereidheid

Gender, mental health and resilience in armed conflict: listening to life stories of internally displaced women in Colombia

For over 60 years, Colombia has endured violent civil conflict forcibly displacing more than 8 million people. Recent efforts have begun to explore mental health consequences of these contexts, with an emphasis on national surveys. To date few Colombian studies explore mental health and well-being from a lived experience perspective. Those that do, overlook processes that enable survival. In response to this gap, we conducted a life history study of seven internally displaced Colombian women in the Cundinamarca department, analysing 18 interview sessions and 36 hours of transcripts. A thematic network analysis, informed by Latin-American perspectives on gender and critical resilience frameworks, explored women’s coping strategies in response to conflict-driven hardships related to mental well-being. Analysis illuminated that: (1) the gendered impacts of the armed conflict on women’s emotional well-being work through exacerbating historical gendered violence and inequality, intensifying existing emotional health challenges, and (2) coping strategies reflect women’s ability to mobilise cognitive, bodied, social, material and symbolic power and resources. Our findings highlight that the sociopolitical contexts of women’s lives are inseparable from their efforts to achieve mental well-being, and the value of deep narrative and historical work to capturing the complexity of women’s experiences within conflict settings. We suggest the importance of social interventions to support the mental health of women in conflict settings, in order to centre the social and political contexts faced by such marginalised groups within efforts to improve mental health

FitTetra 2.0-improved genotype calling for tetraploids with multiple population and parental data support

BackgroundGenetic studies in tetraploids are lagging behind in comparison with studies of diploids as the complex genetics of tetraploids require much more elaborated computational methodologies. Recent advancements in development of molecular techniques and computational tools facilitate new methods for automated, high-throughput genotype calling in tetraploid species. We report on the upgrade of the widely-used fitTetra software aiming to improve its accuracy, which to date is hampered by technical artefacts in the data.ResultsOur upgrade of the fitTetra package is designed for a more accurate modelling of complex collections of samples. The package fits a mixture model where some parameters of the model are estimated separately for each sub-collection. When a full-sib family is analyzed, we use parental genotypes to predict the expected segregation in terms of allele dosages in the offspring. More accurate modelling and use of parental data increases the accuracy of dosage calling. We tested the package on data obtained with an Affymetrix Axiom 60k array and compared its performance with the original version and the recently published ClusterCall tool, showing that at least 20% more SNPs could be called with our updated.ConclusionOur updated software package shows clearly improved performance in genotype calling accuracy. Estimation of mixing proportions of the underlying dosage distributions is separated for full-sib families (where mixture proportions can be estimated from the parental dosages and inheritance model) and unstructured populations (where they are based on the assumption of Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium). Additionally, as the distributions of signal ratios of the dosage classes can be assumed to be the same for all populations, including parental data for some subpopulations helps to improve fitting other populations as well. The R package fitTetra 2.0 is freely available under the GNU Public License as Additional file with this article.</p

Insights into the Influence of Priors in Posterior Mapping of Discrete Morphological Characters: A Case Study in Annonaceae

Background - Posterior mapping is an increasingly popular hierarchical Bayesian based method used to infer character histories and reconstruct ancestral states at nodes of molecular phylogenies, notably of morphological characters. As for all Bayesian analyses specification of prior values is an integrative and important part of the analysis. He we provide an example of how alternative prior choices can seriously influence results and mislead interpretations. Methods/Principal Findings - For two contrasting discrete morphological characters, namely a slow and a fast evolving character found in the plant family Annonaceae, we specified a total of eight different prior distributions per character. We investigated how these prior settings affected important summary statistics. Our analyses showed that the different prior distributions had marked effects on the results in terms of average number of character state changes. These differences arise because priors play a crucial role in determining which areas of parameter space the values of the simulation will be drawn from, independent of the data at hand. However, priors seemed to fit the data better if they would result in a more even sampling of parameter space (normal posterior distribution), in which case alternative standard deviation values had little effect on the results. The most probable character history for each character was affected differently by the prior. For the slower evolving character, the same character history always had the highest posterior probability independent of the priors used. In contrast, the faster evolving character showed different most probable character histories depending on the prior. These differences could be related to the level of homoplasy exhibited by each character. Conclusions - Although our analyses were restricted to two morphological characters within a single family, our results underline the importance of carefully choosing prior values for posterior mapping. Prior specification will be of crucial importance when interpreting the results in a meaningful way. It is hard to suggest a statistically sound method for prior specification without more detailed studies. Meanwhile, we propose that the data could be used to estimate the prior value of the gamma distribution placed on the transformation rate in posterior mappin

When nudgees become nudgers: exploring the use of self-nudging to promote fruit intake

The current study explored (1) the immediate and prolonged effects of self-nudges promoting fruit intake in the home environment, (2) whether the effect of self-nudges on fruit intake persists after self-nudges are no longer used (i.e. a temporal spillover effect) and (3) whether self-nudges can install healthy eating habits that, in turn, explain the temporal spillover effect. Participants (N = 331) were randomly assigned to either a control or self-nudge condition in which they had to choose a self-nudge promoting fruit consumption for 8 weeks. Thereafter, participants were asked to remove the self-nudge for 1 week to assess a possible temporal spillover effect. Results showed a positive effect of the self-nudges on fruit consumption right after implementation that continued during the 8 weeks in which the self-nudge was implemented, which was accompanied by an increase in fruit intake habit strength. However, a mixed picture emerged regarding the temporal spillover effect and no support was found for a mediation effect of habit strength. Although this study is only a first exploration of self-nudging to increase healthy food consumption, results indicate that self-nudging may be a promising extension of traditional nudging that can influence behaviour beyond out-of-home settings.Prevention, Population and Disease management (PrePoD

Power Law Scaling for a System of Interacting Units with Complex Internal Structure

We study the dynamics of a system composed of interacting units each with a complex internal structure comprising many subunits. We consider the case in which each subunit grows in a multiplicative manner. We propose a model for such systems in which the interaction among the units is treated in a mean field approximation and the interaction among subunits is nonlinear. To test the model, we identify a large data base spanning 20 years, and find that the model correctly predicts a variety of empirical results.Comment: 4 pages with 4 postscript figures (uses Revtex 3.1, Latex2e, multicol.sty, epsf.sty and rotate.sty). Submitted to PR

Traumatismos dentarios en dentición permanente en el servicio de urgencias estomatológicas de Melena del Sur.

Introducción: los traumatismos dentarios pueden ocurrir a cualquier edad, conduciendo en ocasiones a la pérdida irremediable de los dientes y a perturbaciones emocionales de profundo arraigo en quienes las padecen.Objetivo: describir aspectos clínicos y epidemiológicos de los traumatismos dentarios en dentición permanente en el servicio de urgencias de la Clínica Estomatológica de Melena del sur.Métodos: se realizó un estudio observacional descriptivo prospectivo transversal en el período de enero a diciembre del año 2013. El universo de estudio estuvo integrado por el total de pacientes afectados por traumatismos dentarios. Se recogió la información mediante el interrogatorio y el examen bucal. Los datos obtenidos fueron llevados a una planilla recolectora de la información y los resultados se presentaron en forma tabular. Se utilizó como medida resumen el porciento y como prueba estadística la dócima de ji cuadrado de Pearson, se prefijó un nivel de confiabilidad del 95 % y se utilizó el paquete estadístico EPIDAT versión 3.0.Resultados: el grupo de 9-11 fue el más representativo. Se obtuvo una razón de masculinidad de 3:1, la violencia reportó solo el 2.7 %, el 44.5 % tenía solo un diente afectado.Conclusiones: el grupo de 9-11 y el sexo masculino fueron los más afectados. El principal factor  etiológico las caídas. El mayor número de pacientes tuvo un solo diente afectado. La fractura no complicada resultó la lesión traumática más frecuente en todos  los grupos de edades

Traumatismos dentarios en dentición permanente en el servicio de urgencias estomatológicas de Melena del Sur.

Introducción: los traumatismos dentarios pueden ocurrir a cualquier edad, conduciendo en ocasiones a la pérdida irremediable de los dientes y a perturbaciones emocionales de profundo arraigo en quienes las padecen.Objetivo: describir aspectos clínicos y epidemiológicos de los traumatismos dentarios en dentición permanente en el servicio de urgencias de la Clínica Estomatológica de Melena del sur.Métodos: se realizó un estudio observacional descriptivo prospectivo transversal en el período de enero a diciembre del año 2013. El universo de estudio estuvo integrado por el total de pacientes afectados por traumatismos dentarios. Se recogió la información mediante el interrogatorio y el examen bucal. Los datos obtenidos fueron llevados a una planilla recolectora de la información y los resultados se presentaron en forma tabular. Se utilizó como medida resumen el porciento y como prueba estadística la dócima de ji cuadrado de Pearson, se prefijó un nivel de confiabilidad del 95 % y se utilizó el paquete estadístico EPIDAT versión 3.0.Resultados: el grupo de 9-11 fue el más representativo. Se obtuvo una razón de masculinidad de 3:1, la violencia reportó solo el 2.7 %, el 44.5 % tenía solo un diente afectado.Conclusiones: el grupo de 9-11 y el sexo masculino fueron los más afectados. El principal factor  etiológico las caídas. El mayor número de pacientes tuvo un solo diente afectado. La fractura no complicada resultó la lesión traumática más frecuente en todos  los grupos de edades

Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis and Mid-Upper Arm Muscle Circumference Can Be Used to Detect Low Muscle Mass in Clinical Practice

Identification of low muscle mass becomes increasingly relevant due to its prognostic value in cancer patients. In clinical practice, mid-upper arm muscle circumference (MAMC) and bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) are often used to assess muscle mass. For muscle-mass assessment, computed tomography (CT) is considered as reference standard. We investigated concordance between CT, BIA, and MAMC, diagnostic accuracy of MAMC, and BIA to detect low muscle mass and their relation with the clinical outcome malnutrition provided with the Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment Short Form (PG-SGA SF). This cross-sectional study included adult patients with advanced esophageal and gastrointestinal cancer. BIA, MAMC, and PG-SGA-SF were performed. Routine CT-scans were used to quantify psoas muscle index (PMI) and skeletal muscle area. Good concordance was found between CT(PMI) and both BIA(FFMI (fat free mass index)) (ICC 0.73), and BIA(ASMI (appendicular skeletal muscle index)) (ICC 0.69) but not with MAMC (ICC 0.37). BIA(FFMI) (94%), BIA(ASMI) (86%), and MAMC (86%) showed high specificity but low sensitivity. PG-SGA-SF modestly correlated with all muscle-mass measures (ranging from −0.17 to −0.43). Of all patients with low muscle mass, 62% were also classified with a PG-SGA-SF score of ≥4 points. Although CT remains the first choice, since both BIA and MAMC are easy to perform by dieticians, they have the potential to be used to detect low muscle mass in clinical practice