Psychological adjustment of men with prostate cancer: A review of the literature

OBJECTIVE: Prostate cancer (PCA) is the most common malignancy and a major cause of death in men but, importantly, a substantial proportion will live for several years following diagnosis. However, they face the prospect of experiencing symptoms, side-effects of treatment and diminished quality of life. The patient's psychological adjustment is particularly complex, given the potential trajectory of the disease, from the point of diagnosis, with its immediate impact, to the phase of palliative care, with its attendant issue of facing mortality. Since a comprehensive review of the literature on psychological adjustment of men with PCA has not yet been done, we have documented relevant research, integrated findings and drawn conclusions, where possible, in order to map out clinical and research implications. METHOD: We searched 5 databases for the period 1994 - July 2006, during which most of the work in the field has been done. RESULTS: We found few studies of substance among the 60 we examined to draw conclusions about psychological adjustment to prostate cancer and its treatment. This is in marked contrast to the picture in breast cancer. While some patterns have emerged, many gaps remain to be filled. DISCUSSION: Aspects of methodology need attention, particularly longitudinal, prospective designs, incorporation of control groups and the use of valid and reliable measures. There is scope for qualitative studies as a complement to quantitative research

ENSEMBLES: a new multi-model ensemble for seasonal-to-annual predictions: Skill and progress beyond DEMETER in forecasting tropical Pacific SSTs

A new 46-year hindcast dataset for seasonal-to-annual ensemble predictions has been created using a multi-model ensemble of 5 state-of-the-art coupled atmosphere-ocean circulation models. The multi-model outperforms any of the single-models in forecasting tropical Pacific SSTs because of reduced RMS errors and enhanced ensemble dispersion at all lead-times. Systematic errors are considerably reduced over the previous generation (DEMETER). Probabilistic skill scores show higher skill for the new multi-model ensemble than for DEMETER in the 4–6 month forecast range. However, substantially improved models would be required to achieve strongly statistical significant skill increases. The combination of ENSEMBLES and DEMETER into a grand multi-model ensemble does not improve the forecast skill further. Annual-range hindcasts show anomaly correlation skill of ∼0.5 up to 14 months ahead. A wide range of output from the multi-model simulations is becoming publicly available and the international community is invited to explore the full scientific potential of these data

Psychosocial adjustment in newly diagnosed prostate cancer

Objective: To examine the psychological and social adjustment of men with early or advanced stage prostate cancer and to compare them with a matched group of cancer-free community volunteers. Methods: A longitudinal observational study in which 367 men recently diagnosed with early (n =211) or advanced stage (n = 156), prostate cancer were compared to 169 cancer-free men from the community, of similar age and residential area, using self-report measures of psychosocial adjustment. Results: On the mental health subscales of the Short-Form 36-item Health Survey, men with advanced disease had lower vitality and social functioning than the other two groups, and lower mental health scores than the comparison group. Both patient groups had lower role-emotional scores than the comparison group. With regard to the Brief Symptom Inventory, the advanced disease group had higher somatization scores, and lower interpersonal sensitivity and paranoid ideation scores than the early stage group and the community comparison group. In terms of psychiatric morbidity, there were higher rates of anxiety disorders but not depressive disorders in both patient groups although overall diagnosis rates were low. No differences were found in terms of couple or family functioning. Conclusions: There is impairment in psychosocial function in men with prostate cancer, particularly those with advanced disease, but no increase in the rate of formal psychiatric disorder or adverse effects on the couples and families. This suggests directions for psychosocial interventions with these patient group

Understanding the exergame user experience : users' motivation, attitude and behaviour in a location-aware pervasive exergame for adolescent children

The benefits of physical activity for adolescent children are well understood. Despite this, within much of the Western World, children fail to achieve the recommended guidelines for physical activity participation, spending too much time on sedentary activities. Thanks to recent progressions in ubiquitous technologies, exergames - exercise video games - have emerged as a potential solution to the problem. By facilitating physical activity, and encouraging behavioural change within an enjoyable and motivating context, exergames have the potential to remove some of the barriers preventing many adolescents from sufficient physical activity participation. There are, however, few studies of exergame systems that have looked at the impact of the system over time. Additionally, many systems are not evaluated within ecologically valid contexts. The result of this is a lack of real understanding on the efficacy of exergame systems and their feasibility as a valid solution. This thesis investigates the design, development, and evaluation of a locationaware exergame for adolescent children: iFitQuest. Through analysis of two prolonged use school-based evaluations, this research provides evidence on the ability of exergames to facilitate physical activity and reduce sedentary behaviour, when targeted at adolescent children within a school context. The results of two evaluations suggest that iFitQuest was enjoyable, motivating, and physically demanding, with the ability to promote physical activity of all intensities in players with a range of attitudes towards physical activity, their own physical activity abilities, and physical activity participation backgrounds. The primary contribution of this thesis is the indepth evaluation of the exergame user experience. Looking beyond the general success of the system, the experience of individual players was analysed through the lens of Bandura's theory of self-efficacy. Through a mixed-methods case study analysis, self-efficacy was established as an accurate method to explain and understand in-game behaviour, in particular with respect to goal setting and game selection habits. By influencing and moderating the players' motivation, attitude and in-game behaviour, self-efficacy was established as a useful tool for future exergame practitioners. Guidelines on the application of self-efficacy are provided, with respect to both analysis and design. Additionally, through a naturalistic and prolonged evaluation, a number of logistical and contextual lessons for the evaluation of exergames were established. In particular, the use of a user-centred design approach for the development of similar systems is validated through a series of design guidelines, which account for the importance and influence of the evaluation context

Verbal behavior of the nurse in multidisciplinary team conferences

Nurses are in a position to provide information that is vital to the planning of patient care, but may not make verbal contributions during team conferences for a variety of reasons. This investigator sought to determine if other disciplines were more dominant during team meetings, if nurses refrained from making verbal contributions, if they preferred to be deferential to some or all of the team members, and if nurses expressed a high need for affiliation with some or all of the team members. Subjects were members of a 10-person multidisciplinary team serving a psychiatric unit in a 350-bed acute care hospital. The investigator studied 10 team conferences over a five-week period, employing two observers who rated each subject on the SYMLOG Adjective Rating Form. Some subjects also completed the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule. The investigator interviewed each of the three nurse subjects individually. Other disciplines were shown to be more dominant than nurses during team conferences. Nurses acknowledged having refrained from making verbal contributions at times. Three submissive subjects were identified, one of whom was a nurse. Submissive subjects all expressed low preferences for deference, in contrast to their observed behaviors. Measures of affiliation provided inconclusive results. Implications for nursing practice and further research were discussed

Control biológico: ciencia y conciencia

Este último trabajo del simposio trata de enfocar la pregunta ¿Cómo se puede asegurar el éxito del control biológico en Centroamérica? El trabajo es más un ensayo especulativo y conceptual que una presentación de datos concretos o hipótesis comprobadas, y el propósito de esta discusión es plantear metas y direcciones que puedan estimular el desarrollo del control biológico en instituciones de investigación y educación centroamericanas. Ya que mi ocupación es de profesor e investigador universitario, los puntos de vista que presento tienen indudablemente un sesgo académico. Además, existirá un sesgo guatemalteco en los argumentos que planteo, ya que mi experiencia centroamericana fuera de Guatemala es limitada. Sin embargo, espero que estos sesgos sirvan para estimular comentarios y argumentos desde otros puntos de vista

The influence of Antarctica on the momentum budget of the southern extratropics

The antarctic plateau acts as a strong heat sink for the global climate, cooling the atmosphere and radiating energy to space. A cold dense atmospheric boundary layer is formed. Strong surface winds are formed as the boundary layer drains off the plateau. These drainage winds and the eddy fluxes necessary to maintain them are analysed in a general circulation model (GCM). The drainage flow is well represented in the GCM. The associated mean meridional circulation is analysed in isentropic coordinates. The momentum budget over Antarctica reveals a balance between the Eliassen-Palm flux convergence and the Coriolis torque exerted by the mean meridional mass flux. Both vertical and horizontal components of the Eliassen-Palm flux contribute, the vertical component being the greater

Understanding Documentation Use Through Log Analysis: An Exploratory Case Study of Four Cloud Services

Almost no modern software system is written from scratch, and developers are required to effectively learn to use third-party libraries or software services. Thus, many practitioners and researchers have looked for ways to create effective documentation that supports developers' learning. However, few efforts have focused on how people actually use the documentation. In this paper, we report on an exploratory, multi-phase, mixed methods empirical study of documentation page-view logs from four cloud-based industrial services. By analyzing page-view logs for over 100,000 users, we find diverse patterns of documentation page visits. Moreover, we show statistically that which documentation pages people visit often correlates with user characteristics such as past experience with the specific product, on the one hand, and with future adoption of the API on the other hand. We discuss the implications of these results on documentation design and propose documentation page-view log analysis as a feasible technique for design audits of documentation, from ones written for software developers to ones designed to support end users (e.g., Adobe Photoshop)