When do we eat? An evaluation of food items input into an electronic monitoring application

We present a formative study that examines what, when, and how participants in a chronic kidney disease (stage 5) population input food items into an electronic intake monitoring application. Participants scanned food item barcodes or voice recorded food items they consumed during a three week period. The results indicated that a learning curve was associated with barcode scanning; participants with low literacy skills had difficulty describing food items in voice recordings; and participants input food items depending on when they had dialysis treatment. Participants thought this electronic self monitoring application would be helpful for chronically ill populations in their first year of treatmen

The many faces of Creole: Revisiting the links between language, positionality and youth culture in Guadeloupe, 2000-2020

The aim of this study is to demonstrate the extent to which socio-economic context and individual positionality affect how a group of young people aged between 10 and 15 perceive, use and interact with French and Creole language and culture in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, in 2020. In order to achieve this we carried out surveys and interviews with 91 pupils at Collège Nestor de Kermadec which were designed to discover how this group of young people strategize language and culture in their daily lives. While theories such as diglossia or the Creole continuum suggest that French and Creole have fixed roles, often associated with social class in this former colony turned French department, we argue that these theories no longer fully represent how language and culture are perceived, used and engaged with in this space. Using Salikoko Mufwene’s ‘ecology of language’ concept and Pierre Bourdieu’s ‘habitus’ theory to illuminate our findings, we argue that changes to the sociolinguistic environment between 2000 and 2020, such as globalisation and the influx of global media and technologies, and the particular position of individuals within Guadeloupean society, mean that perceptions and uses of, as well as engagement with language and culture are characterised by plurality, hybridity and multiplicity. We found that while some areas of society remain dominated by French language and culture, in some subsystems, social networks and spaces Creole enables speakers to gain social esteem. As such, the subsystems, social networks and spaces that speakers participate in influence how they strategize language and culture. Moreover, these findings allow us to explore other questions surrounding how power relations are reflected, refracted and enacted in Guadeloupe through language and culture, and also investigate how the relationship between language, culture and identity alters in accordance with ecological and personal transformations

Thinking Minds - a cognitive skills intervention: A preliminary study capturing treatment effects with forensic psychiatric patients.

Presented is a preliminary study into the effectiveness of a cognitive skills programme, Thinking Minds, conducted with an adult male forensic psychiatric population (n = 27; 18 treatment, nine waiting list controls). It also addresses the approach to evaluating treatment effectiveness by capturing both group and individual effects. All participants were given a series of measures, to assess domains where treatment effect was thought likely to occur. This included impulsivity, coping, emotional control and self-esteem. It was predicted the treatment group would evidence positive change following the intervention, with no change in waiting list controls. Results indicated partial acceptance of the group effect prediction, with the waiting list control demonstrating no group change across time and the treatment group demonstrating improvement in rational and detached coping and in the social component of self-esteem. The individual change results demonstrated a mixed picture. It confirmed improvement in adaptive coping and social self-esteem for the treatment group but widened positive effects to cover aggression control. It also indicated evidence of deterioration on outcome measures. Deterioration was noted across all measures for the control group, suggesting that a degree of deterioration may be a naturally occurring process on self-report measures, regardless of intervention. This is an issue that future evaluations need to reflect on and accommodate. Results are discussed with regards to how the findings can begin to influence our approach to treatment evaluation

FilmFling '19: Pecker & Finn Drude

Sunday 10th March - Tullie House Cinema: To start the final evening of this year’s event - the truly original country art rockers Pecker will be dipping into their eclectic songbook for a live set. Pecker have been busy of late and will be debuting a bunch of new scribblings, covering a diverse range of subjects, including; songs about planets, a rockabilly riff about a man who thinks he’s Elvis and a punk paean to the inventor of the Karaoke machine. Pecker are: Jim Davis (guitar & vocals), Nick Dodds (guitar & vocals), Katie Gentry (violin, flute & vocals), Jen Graham (organ & vocals), Jon Lambert (drums) and Pete McNichol (bass). The band will be accompanied by live moving images created especially for the Fling by the film-maker Finn Drude

The prevalence of constant supportive observations in a high, medium and low secure service

Aims and Method We explored the prevalence and use of constant supportive observations (CSO) in high, medium and low secure in-patient services in a single NHS mental health trust. From clinical records, we extracted data on the length of time on CSO, the reason for the initiation of CSO and associated adverse incidents for all individuals who were placed on CSO between July 2013 and June 2014. Results A small number of individuals accounted for a disproportionately large amount of CSO hours in each setting. Adverse incident rates were higher on CSO than when not on CSO. There was considerable variation between different settings in terms of CSO use and the reasons for commencing CSO. Clinical Implications The study describes the prevalence and nature of CSO in secure forensic mental health services and the associated organisational costs. The marked variation in CSO use between settings suggests that mental health services continue to face challenges in balancing risk management with minimising restrictive interventions

Professional boundaries of nursing staff in secure mental health services: the impact of interpersonal style and attitude towards coercion

The current study explored the impact of nursing staff members' interpersonal style and attitudes toward coercion on the management of their professional boundaries. Researchers predicted that a combination of a particular interpersonal style, a specific attitude toward coercion, and self-reported engagement in boundary-crossing behavior would be associated with particular styles of boundary management as outlined by Hamilton's Boundary Seesaw Model. Sixty-three nursing staff members in secure inpatient mental health services completed measures of boundary management, boundary crossings, attitude toward coercion, and interpersonal style. Regression analyses showed that a submissive interpersonal style and fewer boundary-crossing behaviors were associated with a pacifier boundary management style. In contrast, a pragmatic attitude toward coercion predicted a negotiator style of boundary management. The regression model for controller boundary management style was not significant. Findings are explored, along with their impact and implications for research and practic

A novel form of spontaneous tool use displayed by several captive greater vasa parrots (Coracopsis vasa)

Parrots are frequently cited for their sophisticated problem-solving abilities, but cases of habitual tool use among psittacines are scarce. We report the first evidence, to our knowledge, of tool use by greater vasa parrots (Coracopsis vasa). Several members of a captive population spontaneously adopted a novel tool-using technique by using pebbles and date pits either (i) to scrape on the inner surface of seashells, subsequently licking the resulting calcium powder from the tool, or (ii) as a wedge to break off smaller pieces of the shell for ingestion. Tool use occurred most frequently just prior to the breeding season, during which time numerous instances of tool transfer were also documented. These observations provide new insights into the tool-using capabilities of parrots and highlight the greater vasa parrot as a species of interest for studies of physical cognition

Innovative problem solving by wild falcons

Innovation (i.e., a new solution to a familiar problem, or applying an existing behavior to a novel problem1,2) plays a fundamental role in species’ ecology and evolution. It can be a useful measure for cross-group comparisons of behavioral and cognitive flexibility and a proxy for general intelligence.3,4,5 Among birds, experimental studies of innovation (and cognition more generally) are largely from captive corvids and parrots,6,7,8,9,10,11,12 though we lack serious models for avian technical intelligence outside these taxa. Striated caracaras (Phalcoboenus australis) are Falconiformes, sister clade to parrots and passerines,13,14,15 and those endemic to the Falkland Islands (Malvinas) show curiosity and neophilia similar to notoriously neophilic kea parrots16,17 and face similar socio-ecological pressures to corvids and parrots.18,19 We tested wild striated caracaras as a new avian model for technical cognition and innovation using a field-applicable 8-task comparative paradigm (adapted from Rössler et al.20 and Auersperg et al.21). The setup allowed us to assess behavior, rate, and flexibility of problem solving over repeated exposure in a natural setting. Like other generalist species with low neophobia,21,22 we predicted caracaras to demonstrate a haptic approach to solving tasks, flexibly switching to new, unsolved problems and improving their performance over time. Striated caracaras performed comparably to tool-using parrots,20 nearly reaching ceiling levels of innovation in few trials, repeatedly and flexibly solving tasks, and rapidly learning. We attribute our findings to the birds’ ecology, including geographic restriction, resource unpredictability, and opportunistic generalism,23,24,25 and encourage future work investigating their cognitive abilities in the wild.Fil: Harrington, Katie J.. Medical University Of Vienna; AustriaFil: Folkertsma, Remco. Medical University Of Vienna; AustriaFil: Auersperg, Alice M. I.. Medical University Of Vienna; AustriaFil: Biondi, Laura Marina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mar del Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras. Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras; ArgentinaFil: Lambert, Megan L.. Medical University Of Vienna; Austri

The Grizzly, April 25, 2002

Pesta Appeals College\u27s Action • O\u27Flaherty Speaks to Ursinus about Human Rights • Diverse and Abundant Research Continues • Sex for Sale: What Drives the Porn Industry? • Final Exam Schedule • Jon Volkmer Named Montgomery County Poet Laureate • Greek Week Change Bad: An Opinion • Commencement and Baccalaureate Speakers Announced • Hockey Intramurals • Family or no Family: That is the Question for Many Career Womenhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1515/thumbnail.jp

Function and flexibility of object exploration in kea and New Caledonian crows

Data collection with the New Caledonian crows was funded by an International Seedcorn Award from the University of York to M.L.L. This study was supported by a Rutherford Discovery Fellowship (A.H.T.). Our data are deposited at: http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.dq04j [48].A range of non-human animals frequently manipulate and explore objects in their environment, which may enable them to learn about physical properties and potentially form more abstract concepts of properties such as weight and rigidity. Whether animals can apply the information learned during their exploration to solve novel problems, however, and whether they actually change their exploratory behavior to seek functional information about objects have not been fully explored. We allowed kea (Nestor notabilis) and New Caledonian crows (Corvus moneduloides) to explore sets of novel objects both before and after encountering a task in which some of the objects could function as tools. Following this, subjects were given test trials in which they could choose among the objects they had explored to solve a tool-use task. Several individuals from both species performed above chance on these test trials, and only did so after exploring the objects, compared with a control experiment with no prior exploration phase. These results suggest that selection of functional tools may be guided by information acquired during exploration. Neither kea nor crows changed the duration or quality of their exploration after learning that the objects had a functional relevance, suggesting that birds do not adjust their behavior to explicitly seek this information.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe