Do you pass it on? An examination of the consequences of perceived cyber incivility

Purpose: The emerging literature on computer-mediated communication at the study lacks depth in terms of elucidating the consequences of the effects of incivility on employees. This study aims to compare face-to-face incivility with incivility encountered via e-mail on both task performance and performance evaluation. Design/methodology/approach: In two experimental studies, the authors test whether exposure to incivility via e-mail reduces individual task performance beyond that of face-to-face incivility and weather exposure to that incivility results in lower performance evaluations for third-parties. Findings: The authors show that being exposed to cyber incivility does decrease performance on a subsequent task. The authors also find that exposure to rudeness, both face-to-face and via e-mail, is contagious and results in lower performance evaluation scores for an uninvolved third party. Originality/value: This research comprises an empirically grounded study of incivility in the context of e-mail at study, highlights distinctions between it and face-to-face rudeness and reveals the potential risks that cyber incivility poses for employees

Alemtuzumab use in neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorders: a brief case series.

Alemtuzumab is an anti-CD52 monoclonal antibody recently licensed for use in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. Here, we report our experience of its use in neuromyelitis optica (NMO) spectrum disorders. A retrospective case review of patients treated with alemtuzumab in Cambridge, UK, was conducted to identify those who fulfil the criteria for NMO spectrum disorder. Three cases were identified. Case 1, 9-year-old female, presented with transverse myelitis and bilateral optic neuritis,with one lower medullary and several longitudinally extensive cord lesions. Despite immunosuppression including two courses of alemtuzumab, she continued to relapse, was wheelchair bound and registered blind by age 12, and died at age 18. Case 2, 41-year-old female, presented with bilateral optic neuritis and transverse myelitis with longitudinally extensive cervical cord lesions. Despite three courses of alemtuzumab, she had five relapses with visual impairment and new cord lesions. She later developed tumefactive white matter lesions and died aged 51.Case 3, 31-year-old female, presented with transverse myelitis with longitudinally extensive cervical cord lesions and positive aquaporin-4 antibody. After one course of alemtuzumab, she relapsed with 4 episodes of myelitis with new enhancing lesions and accumulating disability. She became relapse free after rituximab and mycophenolate mofetil. From this case series, we conclude that alemtuzumab failed to prevent disabling relapses and poor outcome in NMO. We hypothesise that rituximab is more effective, as in case 3, because it causes much more prolonged B lymphocyte depletion than alemtuzumab. We therefore caution against the use of alemtuzumab in NMO.Clinical work is performed at the Wellcome Clinical Research Facility. JLJ and AJC are supported by the Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre of the National Institute for Health Research

Implementation of routine outcome measurement in child and adolescent mental health services in the United Kingdom: a critical perspective

The aim of this commentary is to provide an overview of clinical outcome measures that are currently recommended for use in UK Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), focusing on measures that are applicable across a wide range of conditions with established validity and reliability, or innovative in their design. We also provide an overview of the barriers and drivers to the use of Routine Outcome Measurement (ROM) in clinical practice

Transkingdom Networks: A Systems Biology Approach to Identify Causal Members of Host-Microbiota Interactions

Improvements in sequencing technologies and reduced experimental costs have resulted in a vast number of studies generating high-throughput data. Although the number of methods to analyze these "omics" data has also increased, computational complexity and lack of documentation hinder researchers from analyzing their high-throughput data to its true potential. In this chapter we detail our data-driven, transkingdom network (TransNet) analysis protocol to integrate and interrogate multi-omics data. This systems biology approach has allowed us to successfully identify important causal relationships between different taxonomic kingdoms (e.g. mammals and microbes) using diverse types of data

A habituation account of change detection in same/different judgments

We investigated the basis of change detection in a short-term priming task. In two experiments, participants were asked to indicate whether or not a target word was the same as a previously presented cue. Data from an experiment measuring magnetoencephalography failed to find different patterns for “same” and “different” responses, consistent with the claim that both arise from a common neural source, with response magnitude defining the difference between immediate novelty versus familiarity. In a behavioral experiment, we tested and confirmed the predictions of a habituation account of these judgments by comparing conditions in which the target, the cue, or neither was primed by its presentation in the previous trial. As predicted, cue-primed trials had faster response times, and target-primed trials had slower response times relative to the neither-primed baseline. These results were obtained irrespective of response repetition and stimulus–response contingencies. The behavioral and brain activity data support the view that detection of change drives performance in these tasks and that the underlying mechanism is neuronal habituation

Chronic non-specific low back pain - sub-groups or a single mechanism?

Copyright 2008 Wand and O'Connell; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Background: Low back pain is a substantial health problem and has subsequently attracted a considerable amount of research. Clinical trials evaluating the efficacy of a variety of interventions for chronic non-specific low back pain indicate limited effectiveness for most commonly applied interventions and approaches. Discussion: Many clinicians challenge the results of clinical trials as they feel that this lack of effectiveness is at odds with their clinical experience of managing patients with back pain. A common explanation for this discrepancy is the perceived heterogeneity of patients with chronic non-specific low back pain. It is felt that the effects of treatment may be diluted by the application of a single intervention to a complex, heterogeneous group with diverse treatment needs. This argument presupposes that current treatment is effective when applied to the correct patient. An alternative perspective is that the clinical trials are correct and current treatments have limited efficacy. Preoccupation with sub-grouping may stifle engagement with this view and it is important that the sub-grouping paradigm is closely examined. This paper argues that there are numerous problems with the sub-grouping approach and that it may not be an important reason for the disappointing results of clinical trials. We propose instead that current treatment may be ineffective because it has been misdirected. Recent evidence that demonstrates changes within the brain in chronic low back pain sufferers raises the possibility that persistent back pain may be a problem of cortical reorganisation and degeneration. This perspective offers interesting insights into the chronic low back pain experience and suggests alternative models of intervention. Summary: The disappointing results of clinical research are commonly explained by the failure of researchers to adequately attend to sub-grouping of the chronic non-specific low back pain population. Alternatively, current approaches may be ineffective and clinicians and researchers may need to radically rethink the nature of the problem and how it should best be managed

Alcohol affects neuronal substrates of response inhibition but not of perceptual processing of stimuli signalling a stop response

Alcohol impairs inhibitory control, including the ability to terminate an initiated action. While there is increasing knowledge about neural mechanisms involved in response inhibition, the level at which alcohol impairs such mechanisms remains poorly understood. Thirty-nine healthy social drinkers received either 0.4g/kg or 0.8g/kg of alcohol, or placebo, and performed two variants of a Visual Stop-signal task during acquisition of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data. The two task variants differed only in their instructions: in the classic variant (VSST), participants inhibited their response to a “Go-stimulus” when it was followed by a “Stop-stimulus”. In the control variant (VSST_C), participants responded to the “Go-stimulus” even if it was followed by a “Stop-stimulus”. Comparison of successful Stop-trials (Sstop)>Go, and unsuccessful Stop-trials (Ustop)>Sstop between the three beverage groups enabled the identification of alcohol effects on functional neural circuits supporting inhibitory behaviour and error processing. Alcohol impaired inhibitory control as measured by the Stop-signal reaction time, but did not affect other aspects of VSST performance, nor performance on the VSST_C. The low alcohol dose evoked changes in neural activity within prefrontal, temporal, occipital and motor cortices. The high alcohol dose evoked changes in activity in areas affected by the low dose but importantly induced changes in activity within subcortical centres including the globus pallidus and thalamus. Alcohol did not affect neural correlates of perceptual processing of infrequent cues, as revealed by conjunction analyses of VSST and VSST_C tasks. Alcohol ingestion compromises the inhibitory control of action by modulating cortical regions supporting attentional, sensorimotor and action-planning processes. At higher doses the impact of alcohol also extends to affect subcortical nodes of fronto-basal ganglia- thalamo-cortical motor circuits. In contrast, alcohol appears to have little impact on the early visual processing of infrequent perceptual cues. These observations clarify clinically-important effects of alcohol on behaviour

Second malignancies in the context of lenalidomide treatment: an analysis of 2732 myeloma patients enrolled to the Myeloma XI trial.

We have carried out the largest randomised trial to date of newly diagnosed myeloma patients, in which lenalidomide has been used as an induction and maintenance treatment option and here report its impact on second primary malignancy (SPM) incidence and pathology. After review, 104 SPMs were confirmed in 96 of 2732 trial patients. The cumulative incidence of SPM was 0.7% (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.4-1.0%), 2.3% (95% CI 1.6-2.7%) and 3.8% (95% CI 2.9-4.6%) at 1, 2 and 3 years, respectively. Patients receiving maintenance lenalidomide had a significantly higher SPM incidence overall (P=0.011). Age is a risk factor with the highest SPM incidence observed in transplant non-eligible patients aged >74 years receiving lenalidomide maintenance. The 3-year cumulative incidence in this group was 17.3% (95% CI 8.2-26.4%), compared with 6.5% (95% CI 0.2-12.9%) in observation only patients (P=0.049). There was a low overall incidence of haematological SPM (0.5%). The higher SPM incidence in patients receiving lenalidomide maintenance therapy, especially in advanced age, warrants ongoing monitoring although the benefit on survival is likely to outweigh risk

Multidimensional sexual perfectionism and female sexual function: A longitudinal investigation

Research on multidimensional sexual perfectionism differentiates four forms of sexual perfectionism: self-oriented, partner-oriented, partner-prescribed, and socially prescribed. Self-oriented sexual perfectionism reflects perfectionistic standards people apply to themselves as sexual partners; partner-oriented sexual perfectionism reflects perfectionistic standards people apply to their sexual partner; partner-prescribed sexual perfectionism reflects people’s beliefs that their sexual partner imposes perfectionistic standards on them; and socially prescribed sexual perfectionism reflects people’s beliefs that society imposes such standards on them. Previous studies found partner-prescribed and socially prescribed sexual perfectionism to be maladaptive forms of sexual perfectionism associated with a negative sexual self-concept and problematic sexual behaviors, but only examined cross-sectional relationships. The present article presents the first longitudinal study examining whether multidimensional sexual perfectionism predicts changes in sexual self-concept and sexual function over time. A total of 366 women aged 17-69 years completed measures of multidimensional sexual perfectionism, sexual esteem, sexual anxiety, sexual problem self-blame, and female sexual function (cross-sectional data). Three to six months later, 164 of the women completed the same measures again (longitudinal data). Across analyses, partner-prescribed sexual perfectionism emerged as the most maladaptive form of sexual perfectionism. In the cross-sectional data, partner-prescribed sexual perfectionism showed positive relationships with sexual anxiety, sexual problem self-blame, and intercourse pain and negative relationships with sexual esteem, desire, arousal, lubrication, and orgasmic function. In the longitudinal data, partner-prescribed sexual perfectionism predicted increases in sexual anxiety and decreases in sexual esteem, arousal, and lubrication over time. The findings suggest that partner-prescribed sexual perfectionism contributes to women’s negative sexual self-concept and female sexual dysfunction