8,582 research outputs found
Brief Mindfulness Meditation Improves Mental State Attribution and Empathizing
Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Prevention of root caries in Hong Kong elders: one-year result
published_or_final_versio
Brief Mindfulness Meditation Improves Mental State Attribution and Empathizing
The ability to infer and understand the mental states of others (i.e., Theory of Mind) is a cornerstone of human interaction. While considerable efforts have focused on explicating when, why and for whom this fundamental psychological ability can go awry, considerably less is known about factors that may enhance theory of mind. Accordingly, the current study explored the possibility that mindfulness-based meditation may improve people's mindreading skills. Following a 5-minute mindfulness induction, participants with no prior meditation experience completed tests that assessed mindreading and empathic understanding. The results revealed that brief mindfulness meditation enhanced both mental state attribution and empathic concern, compared to participants in the control group. These findings suggest that mindfulness may be a powerful technique for facilitating core aspects of social-cognitive functioning.published_or_final_versio
Quorum sensing determines the choice of antiphage defense strategy in <i>Vibrio anguillarum</i>
Selection for phage resistance is a key driver of bacterial diversity and evolution, and phage-host interactions may therefore have strong influence on the genetic and functional dynamics of bacterial communities. In this study, we found that an important, but so far largely overlooked, determinant of the outcome of phage-bacterial encounters in the fish pathogen Vibrio anguillarum is bacterial cell-cell communication, known as quorum sensing. Specifically, V. anguillarum PF430-3 cells locked in the low-cell-density state (ΔvanT mutant) express high levels of the phage receptor OmpK, resulting in a high susceptibility to phage KVP40, but achieve protection from infection by enhanced biofilm formation. By contrast, cells locked in the high-cell-density state (ΔvanΟ mutant) are almost completely unsusceptible due to quorum-sensing-mediated downregulation of OmpK expression. The phenotypes of the two quorum-sensing mutant strains are accurately reflected in the behavior of wild-type V. anguillarum, which (i) displays increased OmpK expression in aggregated cells compared to free-living variants in the same culture, (ii) displays a clear inverse correlation between ompK mRNA levels and the concentration of N-acylhomoserine lactone quorum-sensing signals in the culture medium, and (iii) survives mainly by one of these two defense mechanisms, rather than by genetic mutation to phage resistance. Taken together, our results demonstrate that V. anguillarum employs quorum-sensing information to choose between two complementary antiphage defense strategies. Further, the prevalence of nonmutational defense mechanisms in strain PF430-3 suggests highly flexible adaptations to KVP40 phage infection pressure, possibly allowing the long-term coexistence of phage and host
Emerging from Smoke and Mirrors
Digital Health promises to transform healthcare in this decade. We have gone from “low tech” telephones, fax machines, dictation lines, desk-top electronic medical records, and data storage centers to video visits, texting, emails, smart phones and other mobile devices, and to higher forms including artificial intelligence, cloud data storage, and blockchain. However, letting go of legacy applications and then implementing the best available technology for clinical use has been challenging. This chapter will review the factors that contribute to the difficulty of moving from old to new tools. Specific examples will be video, electronic medical records and remote patient monitoring. The process of evaluating a new technological application will be described and a standardized framework proposed. We will finish with a discussion around local and scaled steps that can facilitate, support and sustain a patient-centered application of the best technology in healthcare. A call to action for the reader will be presented
Photon-number-solving Decoy State Quantum Key Distribution
In this paper, a photon-number-resolving decoy state quantum key distribution
scheme is presented based on recent experimental advancements. A new upper
bound on the fraction of counts caused by multiphoton pulses is given. This
upper bound is independent of intensity of the decoy source, so that both the
signal pulses and the decoy pulses can be used to generate the raw key after
verified the security of the communication. This upper bound is also the lower
bound on the fraction of counts caused by multiphoton pulses as long as faint
coherent sources and high lossy channels are used. We show that Eve's coherent
multiphoton pulse (CMP) attack is more efficient than symmetric individual (SI)
attack when quantum bit error rate is small, so that CMP attack should be
considered to ensure the security of the final key. finally, optimal intensity
of laser source is presented which provides 23.9 km increase in the
transmission distance. 03.67.DdComment: This is a detailed and extended version of quant-ph/0504221. In this
paper, a detailed discussion of photon-number-resolving QKD scheme is
presented. Moreover, the detailed discussion of coherent multiphoton pulse
attack (CMP) is presented. 2 figures and some discussions are added. A
detailed cauculation of the "new" upper bound 'is presente
Brief Mindfulness Meditation Improves Mental State Attribution and Empathizing
Peer reviewedPublisher PD
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