Brain bioelectrical activity changes in patients with poststroke depression and apathy

Objective: to study the specific features of brain bioelectrical activity in patents with poststroke apathy and depressive disorders.Patients and methods. The investigation enrolled 175 patients (84 men and 91 women) with new-onset cerebral stroke at different sites. A total of 107 (61%) patients of them were observed to have depressive disorders (n=41 (38%)) and apathy (n=66 (62%)) within a year after disease onset. A control group included 68 (39%) patients without poststroke affective disorders. The mean age of the study group patients was 66±10 years and that of the control patients was 68±11 years. The severity and magnitude of neurological deficit were evaluated using the U.S. National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS). The patients underwent electroencephalography (EEG), brain computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging. The investigators used diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-IV) criteria to diagnose depression and the Hamilton depression rating scale (HAM-D) and the mini-mental status examination (MMSE) to evaluate the mental status. The basic rhythmic power indices in the affected and unaffected hemispheres were calculated, as well as anteroposterior alpha rhythm distribution coefficient and interhemispheric asymmetry coefficient. Results and discussion. The computer EEG analysis was shown to identify the hallmark characteristics of brain bioelectric activity in patients with different types of affective disorders in the acute, early and late recovery periods of stroke. The patients with affective disorders were found to have brain bioelectrical activity changes predominantly in the rapid frequency sub-band on EEG, suggesting midbrain structural dysfunction. In the patients with poststroke depression, depressive disorder scale scores were related to the power of bioelectric activity in the slow and alpha frequency bands manly in the acute stroke period whereas those were correlated with the EEG beta band power in the delayed period

Multi-level computational methods for interdisciplinary research in the HathiTrust Digital Library

We show how faceted search using a combination of traditional classification systems and mixed-membership topic models can go beyond keyword search to inform resource discovery, hypothesis formulation, and argument extraction for interdisciplinary research. Our test domain is the history and philosophy of scientific work on animal mind and cognition. The methods can be generalized to other research areas and ultimately support a system for semi-automatic identification of argument structures. We provide a case study for the application of the methods to the problem of identifying and extracting arguments about anthropomorphism during a critical period in the development of comparative psychology. We show how a combination of classification systems and mixed-membership models trained over large digital libraries can inform resource discovery in this domain. Through a novel approach of “drill-down” topic modeling—simultaneously reducing both the size of the corpus and the unit of analysis—we are able to reduce a large collection of fulltext volumes to a much smaller set of pages within six focal volumes containing arguments of interest to historians and philosophers of comparative psychology. The volumes identified in this way did not appear among the first ten results of the keyword search in the HathiTrust digital library and the pages bear the kind of “close reading” needed to generate original interpretations that is the heart of scholarly work in the humanities. Zooming back out, we provide a way to place the books onto a map of science originally constructed from very different data and for different purposes. The multilevel approach advances understanding of the intellectual and societal contexts in which writings are interpreted

Socio-demographic portrait of transsexual patients in Russia

Transsexualism is a distress caused by a discrepancy between a person’s gender identity and sex assigned at birth. Theme of  transsexualism has a strong resonance in society today. This phenomenon is significant both for the law system and for the health  care system of the state. There is no statistics information on transgender people in Russian Federation. The author’s goal was to  draw a socio-demographic portrait of patients with an established diagnosis of transsexualism. The following conclusions were  made: the number of MtF and FtM patients searching for medical care is equal; age of the transition is 26.6 years; age of selfidentification in the opposite gender is 10.2 years; most MtF take HRT on their own initative; transsexual persons are distinguished  by a high level of education, large variety of professional activities, a low percentage of registered marriages, and comparable to the  general population onset of sexual life

Assessing personality traits in a large scale software development company: exploratory industrial case study

Software development methodologies become increasingly more people and team-oriented. However, many software projects fail due to conflicts of team members. Formation of an effective software development team may be particularly challenging given the differences inherent across an individual’s personality. This paper explores personality traits of agile software development teams by using a context-specific interactive assessment. Concerning the assessment, we have conducted a questionnaire with 110 participants from a large-scale software development company. We have visualized personality traits with team radar charts showing the personality traits of 18 project teams and analyzed the results by validation interviews. Our preliminary results indicate that higher introversion is observed most commonly in isolated teams that has less contact with customers. Moreover, high levels of agreeableness and conscientiousness personality traits are observed in most of the agile software development teams

The Team Personality–Team Performance Relationship Revisited: The Impact of Criterion Choice, Pattern of Workflow, and Method of Aggregation

Using meta-analytic evidence, this study tested trait- and task-based theoretical approaches to team personality management, using both team behaviors and team outcomes as criteria. Trait theories state that maximization of the team trait is harmful for Extroversion (complementary team fit) but beneficial for Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Emotional Stability (supplementary fit). Task-based theories state that tasks with few work exchanges are best reflected by mean trait scores, whereas tasks with frequent work exchanges are best represented by other types of scores (e.g., minimum score). Correlations between different aggregations of team personality and team performance were coded, as well as the study criterion choice and the pattern of workflow (as moderators). Partial support for both trait and task theories were found. Team Conscientiousness and Agreeableness provided supplementary fit primarily with team behaviors, but there was mixed evidence that Extroversion provided complementary fit. Furthermore, minimum and variance measures of the team trait related to team performance in tasks with frequent work exchanges, but not in tasks with few work exchanges. Results suggest several limitations with existing measurement methods, which are discussed