Community Violence Exposure and Conduct Problems in Children and Adolescents with Conduct Disorder and Healthy Controls

Exposure to community violence through witnessing or being directly victimized has been associated with conduct problems in a range of studies. However, the relationship between community violence exposure (CVE) and conduct problems has never been studied separately in healthy individuals and individuals with conduct disorder (CD). Therefore, it is not clear whether the association between CVE and conduct problems is due to confounding factors, because those with high conduct problems also tend to live in more violent neighborhoods, i.e., an ecological fallacy. Hence, the aim of the present study was: (1) to investigate whether the association between recent CVE and current conduct problems holds true for healthy controls as well as adolescents with a diagnosis of CD; (2) to examine whether the association is stable in both groups when including effects of aggression subtypes (proactive/reactive aggression), age, gender, site and socioeconomic status (SES); and (3) to test whether proactive or reactive aggression mediate the link between CVE and conduct problems. Data from 1178 children and adolescents (62% female; 44% CD) aged between 9 years and 18 years from seven European countries were analyzed. Conduct problems were assessed using the Kiddie-Schedule of Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia diagnostic interview. Information about CVE and aggression subtypes was obtained using self-report questionnaires (Social and Health Assessment and Reactive-Proactive aggression Questionnaire (RPQ), respectively). The association between witnessing community violence and conduct problems was significant in both groups (adolescents with CD and healthy controls). The association was also stable after examining the mediating effects of aggression subtypes while including moderating effects of age, gender and SES and controlling for effects of site in both groups. There were no clear differences between the groups in the strength of the association between witnessing violence and conduct problems. However, we found evidence for a ceiling effect, i.e., individuals with very high levels of conduct problems could not show a further increase if exposed to CVE and vice versa. Results indicate that there was no evidence for an ecological fallacy being the primary cause of the association, i.e., CVE must be considered a valid risk factor in the etiology of CD

Who Said or What Said? Estimating Ideological Bias in Views Among Economists

There exists a long-standing debate about the influence of ideology in economics. Surprisingly, however, there is no concrete empirical evidence to examine this critical issue. Using an online randomized controlled experiment involving economists in 19 countries, we examine the effect of ideological bias on views among economists. Participants were asked to evaluate statements from prominent economists on different topics, while source attribution for each statement was randomized without participants’ knowledge. For each statement, participants either received a mainstream source, an ideologically different less-/non-mainstream source, or no source. We find that changing source attributions from mainstream to less-/non-mainstream, or removing them, significantly reduces economists’ reported agreement with statements. Using a model of Bayesian updating we examine two competing hypotheses as potential explanations for these results: unbiased Bayesian updating versus ideologically-biased Bayesian updating. While we find no evidence in support of unbiased updating, our results are consistent with biased Bayesian updating. More specifically, we find that changing/removing sources (1) has no impact on economists’ reported confidence with their evaluations; (2) similarly affects experts/non-experts in relevant areas; and (3) affects those at the far right of the political spectrum much more significantly than those at the far left. Finally, we find significant heterogeneity in our results by gender, country, PhD completion country, research area, and undergraduate major, with patterns consistent with the existence of ideological bias

Do agile managed information systems projects fail due to a lack of emotional intelligence?

YesAgile development methodologies (ADM) have become a widely implemented project management approach in Information Systems (IS). Yet, along with its growing popularity, the amount of concerns raised in regard to human related challenges caused by applyingADMare rapidly increasing. Nevertheless, the extant scholarly literature has neglected to identify the primary origins and reasons of these challenges. The purpose of this study is therefore to examine if these human related challenges are related to a lack of Emotional Intelligence (EI) by means of a quantitative approach. Froma sample of 194 agile practitioners, EI was found to be significantly correlated to human related challenges in agile teams in terms of anxiety, motivation, mutual trust and communication competence. Hence, these findings offer important new knowledge for IS-scholars, project managers and human resource practitioners, about the vital role of EI for staffing and training of agile managed IS-projects

SeMBlock: A semantic-aware meta-blocking approach for entity resolution

Entity resolution refers to the process of identifying, matching, and integrating records belonging to unique entities in a data set. However, a comprehensive comparison across all pairs of records leads to quadratic matching complexity. Therefore, blocking methods are used to group similar entities into small blocks before the matching. Available blocking methods typically do not consider semantic relationships among records. In this paper, we propose a Semantic-aware Meta-Blocking approach called SeMBlock. SeMBlock considers the semantic similarity of records by applying locality-sensitive hashing (LSH) based on word embedding to achieve fast and reliable blocking in a large-scale data environment. To improve the quality of the blocks created, SeMBlock builds a weighted graph of semantically similar records and prunes the graph edges. We extensively compare SeMBlock with 16 existing blocking methods, using three real-world data sets. The experimental results show that SeMBlock significantly outperforms all 16 methods with respect to two relevant measures, F-measure and pair-quality measure. F-measure and pair-quality measure of SeMBlock are approximately 7% and 27%, respectively, higher than recently released blocking methods

Experiences of Medical Residents and Faculty Members on Adhering to Professional Commitments and Training during Covid Pandemic: A Qualitative Study

 &#x0D; Introduction: During the COVID-19 pandemic era, adhering to professional commitments can be a major challenge. This study aims to document the experiences of medical residents and faculty members on the challenges of adhering to professional commitments during the COVID-19 pandemia and its impacts on clinical education.&#x0D; Methods: This qualitative study (using a descriptive phenomenology and purposive sampling method) was conducted in 2020, comprising 14 participants (faculty members and infectious diseases residents of Qazvin University of Medical Sciences) to share their experiences on the challenges of strict adherence to professional behavior. Data were collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews. The transcribed interviews were analyzed based on the Colaizzi approach.&#x0D;  Result: Ninety extracted primary codes are classified to two main areas: problems in adherence to professional commitments and the impact of COVID-19 pandemia on educational and research activities mandatory for professionalism. In the first area, the three main themes includes reducing effective patient-physician communication, non-maleficence and violating justice, and the second, two main themes includes a rise in non-professional behavior when dealing with patients (cutting down the quantity and quality of training, reducing supervision and decreased clinical engagement with patients) and a rise in non-professional behaviors in the research area.&#x0D; Conclusion: The most important problem negatively affecting professional commitments during corona epidemy is role overload and the deterioration of physician-patient relationship. Due to the influence of role modeling on student professional behavior, it is helpful to include the training of related skills that can reduce the incidence of these problems in the clinical settings.</jats:p

Effect of thermo-mechanical parameters on microstructure and mechanical properties of microalloyed steels

In this work the effects of controlled rolling parameters and adding of Niobium have been studied. In this order two steel grades with and without Niobium are planed and after steelmaking and continuous casting, rolling process are done. Then, laboratory investigations such as microstructure, mechanical properties and grain size analysis were performed Tensile and Charpy impact tests specimens were machined out of the central part of the rolled billets. The microstructure of the specimens was examined for each experimental condition using optical microscopy. The results indicate that increasing the reheating temperature above the dissolution temperature of Nb (C, N) improved the impact energy values. By increasing the cooling rate from 0.5 to 1.5 ºC/s both tensile strength and impact toughness were improved. High elongation percent was also observed on samples reheated at higher temperature and/or cooled with the higher cooling rates. The obtained mechanical properties were related to the characteristics of microstructural components including acicular ferrite, retained austenite, pearlite and ferrite

Hot deformation behavior of Nb-V microalloyed steel

In this research, hot deformation behavior of Nb-V microalloyed steel has been investigated by conducting hot compression tests at temperatures of 900-1100°C and under constant strain rates, ranging from 0.01 to 1s-1. The stress-strain curves showed that dynamic recrystallization is responsible for flow softening at steady temperatures and strain rates. The relations between peak strain and peak stress with Zenner-Hollomon parameter, were developed and investigated via constitutive equations. The single peak and multiple peak flow curves at low and high Zenner regimes were observed and analyzed through later microstructural investigations. The values of apparent activation energy, strain rate sensitivity and stress exponent parameter were appraised to be 332, 0.18 and 5.6 kJ/mol, respectively. Microstructural investigations by optical microscopes were performed on deformed specimens to trace the occurrence of restoration processes

The effect of aripiprazole on nicotine dependency in patients under methadone maintenance therapy

IntroductionThe prevalence of smoking in patients under methadone maintenance therapy is high (85–98%). Most of these patients tend to quit smoking, but only a few of them receive treatment or referred to quit smoking. Recent study on aripiprazole, has been shown to reduce smoking.AimsThe aim of this study was to evaluate aripiprazole on smoking in patients under methadone maintenance therapy.Material and methodThis study was a double-blind intervention study. Patients under Methadone maintenance therapy in 22 Bahman Hospital randomly divided into two intervention and control group. First with the FTQ questionnaire, nicotine dependency assessed in all patients. Then, 6-week aripiprazole administered to intervention group. Data were analyzed by SPSS version 21.ResultsThe age range of patients was 67–25 years. Two groups were matched in demographic characteristics. Finally, mean number of FTQ questionnaire in case group before intervention was 8.9 ± 1.4 and after intervention was 8.4 ± 1.6. This difference was statistically significant (P = 0.0007).ConclusionThe study results show the aripiprazole effect in reducing the desire to smoke in patients under methadone maintenance therapy. The overall level of dependency on nicotine on the basis of test FTQ has decreased. By choosing aripiprazole as adjunctive therapy to quit smoking, by reducing the tendency of patients to smoking, can decrease cardiovascular complications and other problems caused by smoking and we can reduce the mortality rate of these patients.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.</jats:sec

Effect of essential oil of seven medicinal plants on longevity, nongermination, qualitative and quantitative traits of Solanum tuberosum cv. Agria

There is increasing interest in the application of natural plant extracts for the postharvest management of food crops. This study investigates the potential for hydro-distilled natural essential oils to inhibit the germination of potato tubers in storage. Four completely randomized design experiments were undertaken with extracts of seven medicinal plants [(Zataria multiflora L.), peppermint (Mentha piperita L.), fennel (Foeniculum vulgare L.), summer savory (Satureja hortensis L.), cloves (Eugenia caryophylium L.), lavender (Lavandula officinalis L.), and black cumin (Bunium persicum L.)], at four concentrations (0, 150, 300, and 450 μl/L) and three replications. Tubers were treated with essential oil vapor and then stored for 6 months at 8°C in the dark. Peppermint and fennel essential oils, at a concentration of 300 μl/L, completely inhibited tuber germination. In pregermination experiments, the dimensional and mass weight of tubers before germination increased by 18.4% and 21.11%, respectively, in the control treatment compared with the treated tubers with a concentration of 150 μl/L. However, the highest rate for the mentioned parameters in postgermination experiments was observed at a concentration of 300 μl/L fennel treatments. Peppermint and fennel essential oil with a concentration of 300 μl/L completely inhibited germination and tubers had acceptable volume, mass, dry matter, protein, and potassium. Also, the highest concentration of sugar (44.44 mg/g) occurred in tubers treated with fennel (300 μl/L), but the starch levels were lower than in tubers treated with the other essential oils. From these results, peppermint essential oil was identified as the best treatment and it is recommended for use in commercial harvests