Physical Activity and Onset of Acute Ischemic Stroke: The Stroke Onset Study

Regular physical activity is known to decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease, but the risk of ischemic stroke immediately following moderate or vigorous physical activity remains unclear. The authors evaluated the risk of acute ischemic stroke immediately following physical activity and examined whether the risk was modified by regular physical activity. In a multicenter case-crossover study, the authors interviewed 390 ischemic stroke patients (209 men, 181 women) at 3 North American hospitals between January 2001 and November 2006. Physical activity during the hour before stroke symptoms arose was compared with usual frequency of physical activity over the prior year. Of the 390 subjects, 21 (5%) reported having engaged in moderate or vigorous physical activity during the hour before ischemic stroke onset, and 6 subjects had lifted an object weighing at least 50 pounds (≥23 kg) during that hour. The rate ratio for ischemic stroke was 2.3 (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.5, 3.7; P < 0.001) for moderate or vigorous physical activity in the previous hour and 2.6 (95% CI: 1.1, 5.9; P = 0.02) for lifting 50 pounds or more. People who reported engaging in moderate or vigorous physical activity at least 3 times per week experienced a 2-fold increased risk (95% CI: 1.2, 3.3) with each bout of physical activity, as compared with a 6.8-fold risk (95% CI: 2.5, 18.8) among more sedentary subjects (P for homogeneity = 0.03)

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Using Technology to Improve the Objectivity of Criminal Responsibility Evaluations

Criminal responsibility (or insanity) evaluations require forensic clinicians to reconstruct a defendant\u27s decision-making abilities, behavioral control, and emotional state at the time of the criminal act. Forensic evaluators are ultimately tasked to evaluate whether an individual had the capacity to understand right from wrong, and in some jurisdictions, determine whether the defendant lacked substantial capacity to conform his behavior to the requirements of the law as a result of a threshold condition (e.g., mental illness). Insanity evaluations are inherently complex, because they require the clinician to determine someone\u27s mental state at some point in the past (weeks, months, or even years). Recent research on insanity evaluations underscores significant problems with the reliability and validity of these evaluations. However, technological advances including social media (e.g., Facebook and Twitter), mandating that law enforcement videotape interrogations, and the use of body and dashboard cameras can aid clinicians in improving the precision and quality of insanity evaluations. This article discusses practical guidelines and ethics-related concerns regarding the use of technology to improve the objectivity of criminal responsibility evaluations

Using technology to improve the objectivity of criminal responsibility evaluations

Criminal responsibility (or insanity) evaluations require forensic clinicians to reconstruct a defendant’s decision-making abilities, behavioral control, and emotional state at the time of the criminal act. Forensic evaluators are ultimately tasked to evaluate whether an individual had the capacity to understand right from wrong, and in some jurisdictions, determine whether the defendant lacked substantial capacity to conform his behavior to the requirements of the law as a result of a threshold condition (e.g., mental illness). Insanity evaluations are inherently complex, because they require the clinician to determine someone’s mental state at some point in the past (weeks, months, or even years). Recent research on insanity evaluations underscores significant problems with the reliability and validity of these evaluations. However, technological advances including social media (e.g., Facebook and Twitter), mandating that law enforcement videotape interrogations, and the use of body and dashboard cameras can aid clinicians in improving the precision and quality of insanity evaluations. This article discusses practical guidelines and ethics-related concerns regarding the use of technology to improve the objectivity of criminal responsibility evaluations

The Associations Between the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2-Restructured Form and Self-Reported Physical and Sexual Abuse and Posttraumatic Symptoms in a Sample of Incarcerated Women

This study examined the impact of posttraumatic symptoms and self-reported abuse on the MMPI-2-RF among female inmates (N = 212). Posttraumatic symptoms were related to demoralization and internalizing dysfunction. MMPI-2-RF scales related to behavioral and externalizing problems, conduct problems, anxiety, anger, fear, guilt, unusual beliefs, somatic complaints, ineffectiveness, stress, family problems, and social isolation were associated with posttraumatic symptoms and abuse. Findings indicate that the MMPI-2-RF has utility for examining the impact of abuse and posttraumatic symptoms in incarcerated women. Using a standardized instrument to examine the effects of trauma provides useful information for treatment management and planning

The Effectiveness of a Mental Health Court in Reducing Recidivism in Individuals With Severe Mentall Illness and Comorbid Substance Use Disorder

The current study examined the efficacy of a specialized mental health court in reducing recidivism for severely mentally ill defendants with comorbid substance use disorders. There is a wealth of research supporting the efficacy of mental health courts in reducing recidivism for those with severe mental illness; however, the benefit of these courts for individuals with severe mental illness and comorbid substance use disorders has received limited empirical attention. Participants were 514 defendants enrolled in either a traditional adversarial court or a specialized mental health court. Recidivism was assessed across different outcome variables, including frequency of reoffending, severity of new offenses, and length of time to reoffend. When compared to participants in the traditional adversarial court, enrollment in mental health court was associated with a greater length of time to rearrest and fewer participants were rearrested in the mental health court than the traditional court. Group differences between those with and without comorbid substance use disorders who were enrolled in the mental health court were not found across recidivism outcome metrics. Results of the current study are particularly promising given that defendants with substance use disorders are at a greater risk for reoffending

An Examination of Triarchic Psychopathy Constructs in Female Offenders

This study sought to expand scientific knowledge on psychopathic personality traits in female offenders by evaluating the relationship between MMPI–2–RF triarchic scales and self-reported external variables in a sample of 205 female offenders. Results indicated that boldness was inversely related to internalizing dysfunction, including suicidal behavior, psychosis, youth conduct problems, problems stemming from alcohol use, and a history of outpatient mental health treatment. Meanness was positively related to internalizing dysfunction as well as youth conduct problems, anger, prison disciplinary reports, and psychosis. Disinhibition was associated with a history of abuse in childhood, suicidal behavior, internalizing dysfunction, problems associated with alcohol and drug use, family history of mental illness, prison disciplinary reports for violence, number of previous criminal charges, and anger. Consistent with views of psychopathy as a configural condition, interactive effects of boldness with disinhibition and meanness were observed for multiple key external variables (e.g., conduct problems, substance use, nonsuicidal self-injurious behavior). This study provides further evidence for the triarchic conceptualization of psychopathy in female offenders and lends additional support for the validity of MMPI–2–RF triarchic psychopathy scales

Burdensomeness, Belongingness, and Capability: Assessing the Interpersonal-Psychological Theory of Suicide With MMPI-2-RF Scales

Given the emerging body of literature demonstrating the validity of the interpersonal–psychological theory of suicide (IPTS), and the importance of increasing our understanding of the development of risk factors associated with suicidal behavior, it seems worthwhile both to expand IPTS research via Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory–2–Restructured Form (MMPI-2-RF) correlates and to expand the availability of methods by which to assess the constructs of the IPTS. The present study attempted to do so in a large adult outpatient mental health sample by (a) inspecting associations between the IPTS constructs and the substantive scales of the MMPI-2-RF and (b) exploring the utility of MMPI-2-RF scale–based algorithms of the IPTS constructs. Correlates between the IPTS constructs and the MMPI-2-RF scales scores largely followed a pattern consistent with theory-based predictions, and we provide preliminary evidence that the IPTS constructs can be reasonably approximated using theoretically based MMPI-2-RF substantive scales. Implications of these findings are discussed