Changing Behavior, Brain Differences, or Both? A Review of Effective ADHD Treatment

Much debate exists over the proper course of treatment for individuals with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Stimulant medications, such as methylphenidate (e.g., Ritalin) and amphetamine (e.g., Adderall), have been shown to be effective in managing ADHD symptoms. More recently, non-stimulant medications, such as atomoxetine (e.g., Strattera), clonidine (e.g., Kapvay), and guanfacine (e.g., Intuniv), have provided a pharmacological alternative with potentially lesser side effects than stimulants. Behavioral therapies, like behavioral parent training, behavioral classroom management, and behavioral peer interventions, have shown long-term benefits for children with ADHD; however, the success of the short-term management of ADHD symptoms is not as substantial when compared with stimulant medications. Continued research suggests that combined treatment with active and intensive behavioral therapy and lower doses of stimulant medication may yield the highest ADHD treatment success rates. More evidence needs to be gathered to determine whether this is the optimal treatment plan

Experiences of intellectually and developmentally disabled people in healthcare : A literature review

There are several guides for nurses and other health care professionals about treating patients with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD): general guides, guides for people working in acute care and in palliative care, among others. However, the number of guides doesn’t necessarily reflect in the way IDD patients are treated. The study aimed to find out what were the experiences of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in health care. The purpose was to offer information and help health care professionals improve experiences of patients with IDD in health care. Using the databases of Google Scholar, EBSCO, and PubMed, a literature review was conducted. Three articles as well as two bachelor’s theses were chosen for reviewing by using the PRISMA system. Answers to the research question were searched from the included articles and collected as results. Results gained from the research suggested that patients with IDD have more negative than positive experiences in health care. Given that there exists a wide variety of guides about IDD patients for health care professionals, it was suggested that they should be used for self-education. Due to the small amount of studies presenting IDD patients’ own opinions rather than that of their guardians’,further research was suggested about patient experiences by using communicational aides

"You want to do your own stuff because there is a team that needs you" - an extensive multiple case study on motivational self-management in a self-directed work team

This thesis explored the topic of self-management of motivation i.e. how employees in the contemporary work environment manage their motivation to work. The research design was an extensive multiple case study based on semi-structured interviews of eight individuals in one self-directed work team. The study asked how these motivational self-management methods are linked to autonomous or controlled motivation, based on the Self-Determination Theory by Deci & Ryan (2000), and with what potential outcomes. The motivational self-management methods and processes of knowledge-workers in team-based organizations had not been studied previously, and overall little empirical research has been done on self-management of motivation in any discipline. Studying these methods and processes is important for society, as being better able to self-manage one’s motivation has the potential to increase one’s wellbeing and productivity, especially if it happens through autonomous motivation (Gagné, Forest et al., 2015). As the job-design in the knowledge-intensive sector has been changing to favor flexibility and autonomy of employees (Hornung, Rousseau et al., 2010), these employees also have the increased responsibility of managing one’s motivation without constant top-down orders. The thematic analysis showed that the participants of this study self-manage their motivation in the following ways: work and environmental control, scheduling by disposition, increasing task enjoyability, creation of meaning, procrastination, enforcing self-discipline, thinking about material rewards, self-rewarding, seeking positive affirmation, visualizing progress, avoiding negative feelings, and acting out of dependency and responsibility. The motivational self-management methods of increasing task enjoyability and creation of meaning are linked to autonomous motivation, while procrastination, enforcing self-discipline, thinking about material rewards, and avoiding negative feelings can be tied to controlled motivation. The study argues that previous studies of self-management of motivation have given an overly static picture of motivational self-management. Thus, the main contributions of this study include the dynamic and flexible nature of motivational self-management in the context of a self-managed team and the role of self-reflection in this process. The practical implications of this study highlight the importance of HR practices emphasizing personnel development and person/organization-fit when recruiting

Lypsylehmien tunnistaminen ja seuranta konenäön avulla

Improving the monitoring of health and well-being of dairy cows through the use of computer vision based systems is a topic of ongoing research. A reliable and low-cost method for identifying cow individuals would enable automatic detection of stress, sickness or injury, and the daily observation of the animals would be made easier. Neural networks have been used successfully in the identification of cow individuals, but methods are needed that do not require incessant annotation work to generate training datasets when there are changes within a group. Methods for person re-identification and tracking have been researched extensively, with the aim of generalizing beyond the training set. These methods have been found suitable also for re-identifying and tracking previously unseen dairy cows in video frames. In this thesis, a metric-learning based re-identification model pre-trained on an existing cow dataset is compared to a similar model that has been trained on new video data recorded at Luke Maaninka research farm in Spring 2021, which contains 24 individually labelled cow individuals. The models are evaluated in tracking context as appearance descriptors in Kalman filter based tracking algorithm. The test data is video footage from a separate enclosure in Maaninka and a group of 24 previously unseen cow individuals. In addition, a simple procedure is proposed for the automatic labeling of cow identities in images based on RFID data collected from cow ear tags and feeding stations, and the known feeding station locations

Active ageing: controlling the (ageing) bodies

This study focuses on the concept of active ageing in the “Active Ageing: A Policy Framework” by World Health Organization. The purpose is to understand the meaning and the origins of the concept with the help of Foucauldian perspective. The analyzing method is content analysis guided by theory. The theoretical framework consists of Michel Foucault´s ideas about governmentality, subject and power and Nikolas Rose´s thoughts about governing. Gilles Deleuze´s control society is also part of the theoretical framework. The subject of active ageing needs to follow a regimen based on activity and health. Governmentality on the society level supports this subjectivity and thus connects them to the network of power; the special nature of the older population is recognized. Even though the concept is named “active ageing” the subjects do represent a wider age scale. These subjects need to prepare for the old age both economically and health-wise. This shows that the whole time of living, not only the old age, is medicalized. When it comes to the origins of the concept of active ageing and the user of power there is a connection to social gerontology and activity theory, and rationalities. The neoliberal rationality has affected on the knowledge that has been produced of the ageing and this is seen in the connection between the activity theory and active ageing. This, and the network structure of the different actors, makes it challenging to find the source of the power when it comes to the concept of active ageing

Care in human-houseplant relationships

This Master’s thesis research explores how care produces relations of human-houseplant relationships. The theoretical framework of the thesis builds on the methodology of feminist new materialisms and multispecies studies. Following the actor network theory and Donna Haraway’s concept of companion species, humans and nonhumans are defined as agents and companion species that form in co-creation and are dependent on each other, because they consist of situated webs of relations. Therefore, regarding the subject of the thesis, both houseplants and humans are agents that are part of each other’s web of companion species. The theoretical framework for care is built on María Puig de la Bellacasa’s three-dimensional care: labour/work, affect/affections and ethics/politics. Care is comprehended to be embedded in the relations of humans and houseplants as multilateral, asymmetric actions of care, which are necessary for the houseplants to subsist. The research data consists of semi-structured thematic interviews of six Finnish houseplant carers. Most of the interviews were conducted at the interviewees’ homes during the first months of the year 2019. Abductive content analysis was employed to analyse the data and examine how the three dimensions of care, doing care, affect and ethics, produced and emerged from the relations of human-houseplant relationships. The analysis indicates that hands-on caring for houseplants enables humans to learn to know and interpret the needs of their houseplants. Each plant and human carer together with the human carer’s rhythm of care and the indoor environment of their home produce the relationship. Human relations and community are also part of the human-houseplant relationships as memories and attachment, and by either supporting or complicating hands-on caring for the plants. The interviewees often wanted to have houseplants that were good looking and easy to care, because they wanted to succeed in caring for the plants and did not want to lose them. Caring for houseplants involves ethical negotiations of good care and obligation to care to which human carer can respond with affective care. Positive and negative affective responses are also part of the care and either encourage or discourage human carer to continue care for their plants. Furthermore, challenges in caring for houseplants could create cuts and reorder the relations of humans and houseplants by both ending existing relations and creating new ones. Hence caring for houseplants involves collaboration, negotiation, competition and challenge. These tensions and collaborations reveal the becoming with of humans and houseplants together with each other and the other nonhumans of their webs of relations