Expectancy changes the self-monitoring of voice identity

Self‐voice attribution can become difficult when voice characteristics are ambiguous, but functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) investigations of such ambiguity are sparse. We utilized voice‐morphing (self‐other) to manipulate (un‐)certainty in self‐voice attribution in a button‐press paradigm. This allowed investigating how levels of self‐voice certainty alter brain activation in brain regions monitoring voice identity and unexpected changes in voice playback quality. FMRI results confirmed a self‐voice suppression effect in the right anterior superior temporal gyrus (aSTG) when self‐voice attribution was unambiguous. Although the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) was more active during a self‐generated compared to a passively‐heard voice, the putative role of this region in detecting unexpected self‐voice changes during action was demonstrated only when hearing the voice of another speaker and not when attribution was uncertain. Further research on the link between right aSTG and IFG is required and may establish a threshold monitoring voice identity in action. The current results have implications for a better understanding of the altered experience of self‐voice feedback in auditory verbal hallucinations

Childhood sexual abuse in patients with severe mental Illness: demographic, clinical and functional correlates.

OBJECTIVE: To use data from electronic health records (EHRs) to describe the demographic, clinical and functional correlates of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) in patients with severe mental illness (SMI), and compare their clinical outcomes (admissions and receipt of antipsychotic medications) to those of patients with no recorded history of CSA. METHODS: We applied a string-matching technique to clinical text records of 7,000 patients with SMI (non-organic psychotic disorders or bipolar disorder), identifying 619 (8.8%) patients with a recorded history of CSA. Data was extracted from both free-text and structured fields of patients' EHRs. RESULTS: Comorbid diagnoses of major depressive disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder and personality disorders were more prevalent in patients with CSA. Positive psychotic symptoms, depressed mood, self-harm, substance use and aggression were also more prevalent in this group, as were problems with relationships and living conditions. The odds of inpatient admissions were higher in patients with CSA than in those without (adjusted OR=1.95, 95% CI: 1.64-2.33), and they were more likely to have spent more than 10 days per year as inpatients (adjusted OR=1.32, 95% CI: 1.07-1.62). Patients with CSA were more likely to be prescribed antipsychotic medications (adjusted OR=2.48, 95% CI: 1.69-3.66), and be given over 75% of the maximum recommended daily dose (adjusted OR=1.72, 95% CI: 1.44-2.04). CONCLUSION: Data-driven approaches are a reliable, promising avenue for research on childhood trauma. Clinicians should be trained and skilled at identifying childhood adversity in patients with SMI, and addressing it as part of the care plan

Nurses' workarounds in acute healthcare settings: A scoping review

Background: Workarounds circumvent or temporarily 'fix' perceived workflow hindrances to meet a goal or to achieve it more readily. Behaviours fitting the definition of workarounds often include violations, deviations, problem solving, improvisations, procedural failures and shortcuts. Clinicians implement workarounds in response to the complexity of delivering patient care. One imperative to understand workarounds lies in their influence on patient safety. This paper assesses the peer reviewed empirical evidence available on the use, proliferation, conceptualisation, rationalisation and perceived impact of nurses' use of workarounds in acute care settings. Methods. A literature assessment was undertaken in 2011-2012. Snowballing technique, reference tracking, and a systematic search of twelve academic databases were conducted to identify peer reviewed published studies in acute care settings examining nurses' workarounds. Selection criteria were applied across three phases. 58 studies were included in the final analysis and synthesis. Using an analytic frame, these studies were interrogated for: workarounds implemented in acute care settings by nurses; factors contributing to the development and proliferation of workarounds; the perceived impact of workarounds; and empirical evidence of nurses' conceptualisation and rationalisation of workarounds. Results: The majority of studies examining nurses' workarounds have been published since 2008, predominantly in the United States. Studies conducted across a variety of acute care settings use diverse data collection methods. Nurses' workarounds, primarily perceived negatively, are both individually and collectively enacted. Organisational, work process, patient-related, individual, social and professional factors contribute to the proliferation of workarounds. Group norms, local and organisational culture, 'being competent', and collegiality influence the implementation of workarounds. Conclusion: Workarounds enable, yet potentially compromise, the execution of patient care. In some contexts such improvisations may be deemed necessary to the successful implementation of quality care, in others they are counterproductive. Workarounds have individual and cooperative characteristics. Few studies examine nurses' individual and collective conceptualisation and rationalisation of workarounds or measure their impact. The importance of displaying competency (image management), collegiality and organisational and cultural norms play a role in nurses' use of workarounds. © 2013 Debono et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd

Explicit Formulae Showing the Effects of Texture on Acoustoelastic Coefficients

It is well known that crystallographic texture not only modifies the elastic constants of polycrystalline aggregates at (unstressed) natural states but also affects their acoustoelastic coefficients when the aggregates are stressed. While exact knowledge about the effects of texture on acoustoelastic coefficients has hitherto remained wanting, such effects are usually assumed to be negligible and are ignored in practical applications of acoustoelasticity (cf. [1] for example). Concerning this common practice, Thompson et al. [2] have urged caution: Care must be taken when [this] assumption is made since the influence of texture on acoustoelastic constants is stronger than its influence on elastic moduli or velocities

Thermoelectric spin voltage in graphene

In recent years, new spin-dependent thermal effects have been discovered in ferromagnets, stimulating a growing interest in spin caloritronics, a field that exploits the interaction between spin and heat currents. Amongst the most intriguing phenomena is the spin Seebeck effect, in which a thermal gradient gives rise to spin currents that are detected through the inverse spin Hall effect. Non-magnetic materials such as graphene are also relevant for spin caloritronics, thanks to efficient spin transport, energy-dependent carrier mobility and unique density of states. Here, we propose and demonstrate that a carrier thermal gradient in a graphene lateral spin valve can lead to a large increase of the spin voltage near to the graphene charge neutrality point. Such an increase results from a thermoelectric spin voltage, which is analogous to the voltage in a thermocouple and that can be enhanced by the presence of hot carriers generated by an applied current. These results could prove crucial to drive graphene spintronic devices and, in particular, to sustain pure spin signals with thermal gradients and to tune the remote spin accumulation by varying the spin-injection bias

Behavioral implications of shortlisting procedures

We consider two-stage “shortlisting procedures” in which the menu of alternatives is first pruned by some process or criterion and then a binary relation is maximized. Given a particular first-stage process, our main result supplies a necessary and sufficient condition for choice data to be consistent with a procedure in the designated class. This result applies to any class of procedures with a certain lattice structure, including the cases of “consideration filters,” “satisficing with salience effects,” and “rational shortlist methods.” The theory avoids background assumptions made for mathematical convenience; in this and other respects following Richter’s classical analysis of preference-maximizing choice in the absence of shortlisting

Stability Analysis of Frame Slotted Aloha Protocol

Frame Slotted Aloha (FSA) protocol has been widely applied in Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems as the de facto standard in tag identification. However, very limited work has been done on the stability of FSA despite its fundamental importance both on the theoretical characterisation of FSA performance and its effective operation in practical systems. In order to bridge this gap, we devote this paper to investigating the stability properties of FSA by focusing on two physical layer models of practical importance, the models with single packet reception and multipacket reception capabilities. Technically, we model the FSA system backlog as a Markov chain with its states being backlog size at the beginning of each frame. The objective is to analyze the ergodicity of the Markov chain and demonstrate its properties in different regions, particularly the instability region. By employing drift analysis, we obtain the closed-form conditions for the stability of FSA and show that the stability region is maximised when the frame length equals the backlog size in the single packet reception model and when the ratio of the backlog size to frame length equals in order of magnitude the maximum multipacket reception capacity in the multipacket reception model. Furthermore, to characterise system behavior in the instability region, we mathematically demonstrate the existence of transience of the backlog Markov chain.Comment: 14 pages, submitted to IEEE Transaction on Information Theor