The GoodNight study—online CBT for insomnia for the indicated prevention of depression: study protocol for a randomised controlled trial

BACKGROUND Cognitive Behaviour Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) delivered through the Internet is effective as a treatment in reducing insomnia in individuals seeking help for insomnia. CBT-I also lowers levels of depression in this group. However, it is not known if targeting insomnia using CBT-I will lower depressive symptoms, and thus reduce the risk of major depressive episode onset, in those specifically at risk for depression. Therefore, this study aims to examine whether Internet delivery of fully automated self-help CBT-I designed to reduce insomnia will prevent depression. METHOD/DESIGN A sample of 1,600 community-dwelling adults (aged 18-64), who screen positive for both subclinical levels of depressive symptoms and insomnia, will be recruited via various media and randomised to either a 9-week online insomnia treatment programme, Sleep Healthy Using The internet (SHUTi), or an online attention-matched control group (HealthWatch). The primary outcome variable will be depression symptom levels at the 6-month post-intervention on the Patient Heath Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9). A secondary outcome will be onset of major depressive episodes assessed at the 6-month post-intervention using 'current' and 'time from intervention' criteria from the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview. DISCUSSION This trial is the first randomised controlled trial of an Internet-based insomnia intervention as an indicated preventative programme for depression. If effective, online provision of a depression prevention programme will facilitate dissemination. TRIAL REGISTRATION Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ANZCTR), Registration number: ACTRN12611000121965.This study is supported by a grant from the National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia (GNT1005867)

Peer observation of teaching: A decoupled process

This article details the findings of research into the academic teaching staff experience of peer observation of their teaching practice. Peer observation is commonly used as a tool to enhance a teacher’s continuing professional development. Research participants acknowledged its ability to help develop their teaching practice, but they also reported that it could operate superficially as a tick box exercise, that its outcomes were frequently decoupled from formal staff development processes, and that its purpose and usefulness therefore seemed unclear. This article argues that the presence of decoupling reinforces the need to account for structural factors that can interact with peer observation of teaching to ensure it is a meaningful exercise for all teaching staff. It concludes that the published academic literature is perhaps guilty of overplaying the role of personal choice and individual tutor characteristics when addressing the complex issue that is staff disengagement with peer observation of teaching

Statistics of counter-streaming solar wind suprathermal electrons at solar minimum : STEREO observations

Previous work has shown that solar wind suprathermal electrons can display a number of features in terms of their anisotropy. Of importance is the occurrence of counter-streaming electron patterns, i.e., with "beams" both parallel and anti-parallel to the local magnetic field, which is believed to shed light on the heliospheric magnetic field topology. In the present study, we use STEREO data to obtain the statistical properties of counter-streaming suprathermal electrons (CSEs) in the vicinity of corotating interaction regions (CIRs) during the period March–December 2007. Because this period corresponds to a minimum of solar activity, the results are unrelated to the sampling of large-scale coronal mass ejections, which can lead to CSE owing to their closed magnetic field topology. The present study statistically confirms that CSEs are primarily the result of suprathermal electron leakage from the compressed CIR into the upstream regions with the combined occurrence of halo depletion at 90° pitch angle. The occurrence rate of CSE is found to be about 15–20% on average during the period analyzed (depending on the criteria used), but superposed epoch analysis demonstrates that CSEs are preferentially observed both before and after the passage of the stream interface (with peak occurrence rate >35% in the trailing high speed stream), as well as both inside and outside CIRs. The results quantitatively show that CSEs are common in the solar wind during solar minimum, but yet they suggest that such distributions would be much more common if pitch angle scattering were absent. We further argue that (1) the formation of shocks contributes to the occurrence of enhanced counter-streaming sunward-directed fluxes, but does not appear to be a necessary condition, and (2) that the presence of small-scale transients with closed-field topologies likely also contributes to the occurrence of counter-streaming patterns, but only in the slow solar wind prior to CIRs

CO\u3csub\u3e2\u3c/sub\u3e and fire influence tropical ecosystem stability in response to climate change

Interactions between climate, fire and CO2 are believed to play a crucial role in controlling the distributions of tropical woodlands and savannas, but our understanding of these processes is limited by the paucity of data from undisturbed tropical ecosystems. Here we use a 28,000-year integrated record of vegetation, climate and fire from West Africa to examine the role of these interactions on tropical ecosystem stability. We find that increased aridity between 28–15 kyr B.P. led to the widespread expansion of tropical grasslands, but that frequent fires and low CO2 played a crucial role in stabilizing these ecosystems, even as humidity changed. This resulted in an unstable ecosystem state, which transitioned abruptly from grassland to woodlands as gradual changes in CO2 and fire shifted the balance in favor of woody plants. Since then, high atmospheric CO2 has stabilized tropical forests by promoting woody plant growth, despite increased aridity. Our results indicate that the interactions between climate, CO2 and fire can make tropical ecosystems more resilient to change, but that these systems are dynamically unstable and potentially susceptible to abrupt shifts between woodland and grassland dominated states in the future

Semantic mutation testing

This is the Pre-print version of the Article. The official published version can be obtained from the link below - Copyright @ 2011 ElsevierMutation testing is a powerful and flexible test technique. Traditional mutation testing makes a small change to the syntax of a description (usually a program) in order to create a mutant. A test suite is considered to be good if it distinguishes between the original description and all of the (functionally non-equivalent) mutants. These mutants can be seen as representing potential small slips and thus mutation testing aims to produce a test suite that is good at finding such slips. It has also been argued that a test suite that finds such small changes is likely to find larger changes. This paper describes a new approach to mutation testing, called semantic mutation testing. Rather than mutate the description, semantic mutation testing mutates the semantics of the language in which the description is written. The mutations of the semantics of the language represent possible misunderstandings of the description language and thus capture a different class of faults. Since the likely misunderstandings are highly context dependent, this context should be used to determine which semantic mutants should be produced. The approach is illustrated through examples with statecharts and C code. The paper also describes a semantic mutation testing tool for C and the results of experiments that investigated the nature of some semantic mutation operators for C

Reducing suicidal thoughts in the Australian general population through web-based self-help: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND: Suicidal thoughts are common in the general population, causing significant disability. However, a substantial number of people struggling with suicidality do not access appropriate services. Online self-help may help overcome barriers to help-seeking. This study aims to examine the effectiveness of an online self-help program targeted at reducing suicidal thoughts compared with an attention-matched control condition in the Australian adult population. This trial is based on a Dutch self-help program, which was found to be effective in reducing suicidal thoughts. METHODS/DESIGN: A total of 570 community-dwelling adults (18 to 65 years old) with suicidal thoughts will be recruited via various media and randomly assigned to the 6-week online program aimed at reducing suicidal thoughts or a 6-week attention-matched control program. Primary outcome measure is the severity of suicidal thoughts. Secondary outcome measures include suicide plans, capacity to cope with suicidal thoughts, reasons for living, symptoms of depression, hopelessness, anxiety/worry, rumination, panic, perceived burdensomeness and thwarted belongingness, acquired capability, alcohol consumption, insomnia, and various cost-effectiveness measures. DISCUSSION: Although the original Dutch trial found web-based self-help to be effective in reducing suicidal thoughts, randomized controlled trials (RCT) of online programs for suicidal thoughts are rare. The present study extends previous research by running the first English language RCT of this sort. As a result of the original study, the current RCT includes refinements to the design, including greater levels of participant anonymity and longer follow-up periods. Limitations of this trial include the potential for high drop-out and the inability to ascertain whether any suicides occur during the study.This study is supported by a grant from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Australia (GNT1046317) and forms part of research conducted by the NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence in Suicide Prevention (CRESP) (GNT1042580). AC is supported by NHMRC Early Career Fellowship 1013199. PB is supported by NHMRC Early Career Fellowship 1035262. HC is supported by NHMRC Fellowship 1056964

Developing an expanded vector control toolbox for malaria elimination

Vector control using long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs) and indoor residual spraying (IRS) accounts for most of the malaria burden reductions achieved recently in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). LLINs and IRS are highly effective, but are insufficient to eliminate malaria transmission in many settings because of operational constraints, growing resistance to available insecticides and mosquitoes that behaviourally avoid contact with these interventions. However, a number of substantive opportunities now exist for rapidly developing and implementing more diverse, effective and sustainable malaria vector control strategies for LMICs. For example, mosquito control in high-income countries is predominantly achieved with a combination of mosquito-proofed housing and environmental management, supplemented with large-scale insecticide applications to larval habitats and outdoor spaces that kill off vector populations en masse, but all these interventions remain underused in LMICs. Programmatic development and evaluation of decentralised, locally managed systems for delivering these proactive mosquito population abatement practices in LMICs could therefore enable broader scale-up. Furthermore, a diverse range of emerging or repurposed technologies are becoming available for targeting mosquitoes when they enter houses, feed outdoors, attack livestock, feed on sugar or aggregate into mating swarms. Global policy must now be realigned to mobilise the political and financial support necessary to exploit these opportunities over the decade ahead, so that national malaria control and elimination programmes can access a much broader, more effective set of vector control interventions

Virtual Machine Support for Many-Core Architectures: Decoupling Abstract from Concrete Concurrency Models

The upcoming many-core architectures require software developers to exploit concurrency to utilize available computational power. Today's high-level language virtual machines (VMs), which are a cornerstone of software development, do not provide sufficient abstraction for concurrency concepts. We analyze concrete and abstract concurrency models and identify the challenges they impose for VMs. To provide sufficient concurrency support in VMs, we propose to integrate concurrency operations into VM instruction sets. Since there will always be VMs optimized for special purposes, our goal is to develop a methodology to design instruction sets with concurrency support. Therefore, we also propose a list of trade-offs that have to be investigated to advise the design of such instruction sets. As a first experiment, we implemented one instruction set extension for shared memory and one for non-shared memory concurrency. From our experimental results, we derived a list of requirements for a full-grown experimental environment for further research