Detecting and correcting partial errors: Evidence for efficient control without conscious access

Appropriate reactions to erroneous actions are essential to keeping behavior adaptive. Erring, however, is not an all-or-none process: electromyographic (EMG) recordings of the responding muscles have revealed that covert incorrect response activations (termed "partial errors") occur on a proportion of overtly correct trials. The occurrence of such "partial errors" shows that incorrect response activations could be corrected online, before turning into overt errors. In the present study, we showed that, unlike overt errors, such "partial errors" are poorly consciously detected by participants, who could report only one third of their partial errors. Two parameters of the partial errors were found to predict detection: the surface of the incorrect EMG burst (larger for detected) and the correction time (between the incorrect and correct EMG onsets; longer for detected). These two parameters provided independent information. The correct(ive) responses associated with detected partial errors were larger than the "pure-correct" ones, and this increase was likely a consequence, rather than a cause, of the detection. The respective impacts of the two parameters predicting detection (incorrect surface and correction time), along with the underlying physiological processes subtending partial-error detection, are discussed

Early supportive medication use and end-of-life care among Medicare beneficiaries with advanced breast cancer

PURPOSE: A randomized controlled trial of cancer patients has linked early supportive care with improved hospice use and less aggressive end-of-life care. In practice, the early use of supportive interventions and potential impact on end-of-life care are poorly understood. We sought to describe early use of medications to treat common breast cancer symptoms (pain, insomnia, anxiety, and depression) and to assess the relationship between early use of these treatments and end-of-life care. METHODS: Secondary analysis of 2006–2012 SEER-Medicare data. Women included had stage IV breast cancer and died within the observation period. We used modified Poisson regression to assess the relationship between supportive medication use in the 90 days post-diagnosis and several end-of-life care measures (hospice use, in-hospital death, chemotherapy receipt within 14 days of death, ICU admission or >1 hospitalization or emergency department/ED visit 30 days before death). RESULTS: Among the 947 women included, 68% of women used at least one supportive medication in the 90 days following their diagnosis: 60.3% used opioid pain medications, and 28.3% received non-opioid psychotropic medications. Early use of any supportive medications was not associated with end-of-life care. Similarly, we found no differences in end-of-life care between opioid pain medication users and non-users. However, we found that non-opioid psychotropic medication users were less likely to receive chemotherapy in the last 14 days of life (aRR: 0.33, 95% CI: 0.12–0.88). CONCLUSIONS: Non-opioid psychotropic use was associated with some aspects of end-of-life care. Future research should consider alternative measures of palliative and supportive care use using administrative data sources

Covert judgements are sufficient to trigger subsequent task-switching costs

Peer reviewedPostprin

Laser engineered graphene paper for mass spectrometry imaging

A pulsed laser engineering approach is developed to prepare novel functional graphene paper with graphitic nanospheres homogeneously decorated on the surface and the superior performance of engineered paper is revealed in matrix-free mass spectrometry (MS) detection and imaging. We demonstrate that the stability of graphene paper under intense irradiation can be dramatically increased through a designed laser engineering process by forming densely packed graphitic nanospheres on the paper surface. Moreover, the surface hydrophobicity is enhanced and electric conductivity is improved. The engineered graphene paper can image the invisible micro-patterns of trace amount molecules and increases the detection limit towards diverse molecules by over two orders of magnitude compared to the pristine graphene paper and commercial products in MS analysis

Priority criteria in peer review of scientific articles

Number of researchers, journals and articles has significantly increased in the last few years and peer review is still the most reliable instrument to sort out innovative, valuable, scientifically sound information from the pool of submitted results. Editors and publishers join their efforts to improve peer review process and to be able to do so properly, they need "field information" from contributors. Editorial board of the Journal of the Serbian Chemical Society performed its own survey to find out what reviewers recognize as priority criteria in manuscript evaluation and whether the professional background (title, number of years in research or experience in reviewing) influences these criteria. Most reviewers declared that they consider peer review as an essential component of the scientific professionalism. Scientific contribution and originality were the most important criteria in the evaluation of papers. Most reviewers preferred to see conclusions completely supported by experimental data, without additional speculations. Although there were no large differences between early stage and experienced researchers, early stage researchers and less experienced reviewers used grade 5 (indicating the highest priority) much more often in their evaluation of priority criteria than experienced researchers and/or reviewers, suggesting possible evolution of tolerance with experience