A Test of Obedience or Patience? A Modified Replication of “Nothing by Mere Authority” by Haslam et al. (2014)

After Milgram’s infamous experiments and their subsequent ethical critiques, social psychologists have been challenged to search for ways to learn more about the psychology of destructive obedience while still holding true to modern IRB standards of participant protection. One of the ways in which this has been attempted is through the invention of newer and safer paradigms of the Milgram task, perhaps the best known of which would be Jerry Burger\u27s (2009) partial replication of Milgram’s voice-feedback experiment. Five years later, a team of researchers devised a completely new obedience task, the simplified premise of which was to have naive participants take part in an online survey made to appear as a study in cognitive science (Haslam et al. 2014). The survey asked participants to describe images depicting groups of people with their choice of one of five listed negative words (e.g. “aggressive” or “brutal”). Initially this task was not at all abrasive in nature as the images depicted scenes such as Nazis at a rally, however the images shown incrementally became more positive in nature depicting scenes such as smiling children in a classroom; by this point, participants were meant to view the task as difficult to continue. This paradigm is discussed by Haslam et al (2014) in terms of an analogue to Burger’s. Haslam et al. (2014) report that as many as 53% of 151 participants (across 4 conditions) stopped the task, which sounds suggestive that these participants indeed found the task’s completion difficult. Though as these participants took the task online, it is unclear what their motivations were for stopping—could such a task truly present them with a situation closely analogous to that of the Berger task? This study attempted to answer this question by having 30 undergraduates from Bard College complete one of two variations of this task, the first of which had participants rate the relevant images using only negative words (as per the original task) and the second of which had them rate the negative images using only positive words. It was hypothesized that the second condition would strike participants as more difficult to complete, and therefore this condition would see higher levels of disobedience and indications of its difficulty in the post-test questionnaire. The data were inconsistent with this hypothesis. However, what was more interesting than the support or lack thereof for this hypothesis was the finding that both conditions of the task by Haslam et al. (2014) produced very low levels of both task defiance and reports of difficulty from participants. This is a finding which challenges the Haslam et al. paradigm as one to be viewed as an analogue to Burger’s. Finally, future directions are discussed which might improve the task in this regard

Fall prevention in the community: what older people say they need

Original article can be found at: http://www.bjcn.co.uk/ Copyright MA HealthcareUptake of and adherence to fall prevention interventions is often poor and we know little about how older people’s perceptions of and beliefs about fall prevention interventions affect uptake. This study aimed to explore older people’s perceptions of the facilitators and barriers to participation in fall prevention interventions. We undertook a qualitative study with older people who had taken part in, declined to participate or adhere to fall prevention interventions using semi-structured interviews (n=65), and 17 focus groups (n=122) with older people (including 32 South Asian and 30 Chinese older people) in primary and community care settings in the South of England. A number of factors acted as either barriers or facilitators to uptake of interventions. Older people also made recommendations for improving access to interventions. Community nurses are ideally placed to screen older people, identify those at risk of falling and refer them to appropriate interventions as well as providing health promotion and education.Peer reviewe

Manufacturing resiliency

As a forum for a prototypical form of education/manufacturing, this thesis enables manufacturing workers to learn how to adapt to differing situations in the workplace. By designing a resilient facility that allows for a change of production modes and processes, one may assist in empowering the manufacturing worker with the ability to remain employable. Upstate South Carolina has undergone a transformation over the last 40 years. The global economy has made itself readily apparent through increasing investment in the manufacturing base of this once agriculturally dominant pocket of the country. Population, demographics, real estate, and collective financial gain are but a few of the areas of life that have been directly impacted because of this addition to the area. With the ever-increasing rate of phasing in and out of products and processes, the industrial climate demands a flexible worker. Manufacturing workers need to be able to switch between modes of production in order to remain abreast with the industry. Collecting a pension at the end of a 25 to 30 year stint at one job is not the standard work experience anymore. The new reality is that at some point in the career of most workers a change will occur, be that of employer, position, or both. The ability to handle this change with poise, or career resiliency, can be achieved through early preparation and training. Industries are already taking measures to institute educational programs that aid their employees in acquiring new skills that may lead to subsequent employment once certain products or production modes are no longer needed. By forging partnerships between big business and education, a prototypical manufacturing facility can be created that will benefit local industry and the residents of the area. Employers are provided with a capable worker, and residents are given greater career opportunities

Low-Dimensional Quaternionic Matrix Groups

We focus on several properties of the Lie groups Sp(n) and SLn(H). We discuss their Lie algebras, the exponential map from the Lie algebras to the groups, as well as when this map is surjective. Since quaternionic multiplication is not commutative, the process of calculating the exponential of a matrix in Sp(n) or SLn(H) is more involved than the process of calculating the exponential of a matrix over the real or complex numbers. We develop processes by which this calculation may be reduced to a simpler problem, and provide an example to illustrate this. Additionally, we discuss properties of these groups such as centers, maximal tori, normalizers of the maximal tori, Weyl groups, and Clifford Algebras

Using a Slide in Beef Cattle Marketing

2 pp.Selling cattle in advance of delivery requires the seller to estimate the future weight of the cattle. The sale price usually must be adjusted because delivery weights differ from estimated weights. This publication explains how to use an "up slide and a "down slide to determine fair market value

Weight Loss and Illness Severity in Adolescents With Atypical Anorexia Nervosa.

BACKGROUND:Lower weight has historically been equated with more severe illness in anorexia nervosa (AN). Reliance on admission weight to guide clinical concern is challenged by the rise in patients with atypical anorexia nervosa (AAN) requiring hospitalization at normal weight. METHODS:We examined weight history and illness severity in 12- to 24-year-olds with AN (n = 66) and AAN (n = 50) in a randomized clinical trial, the Study of Refeeding to Optimize Inpatient Gains (www.clinicaltrials.gov; NCT02488109). Amount of weight loss was the difference between the highest historical percentage median BMI and admission; rate was the amount divided by duration (months). Unpaired t tests compared AAN and AN; multiple variable regressions examined associations between weight history variables and markers of illness severity at admission. Stepwise regression examined the explanatory value of weight and menstrual history on selected markers. RESULTS:Participants were 16.5 ± 2.6 years old, and 91% were of female sex. Groups did not differ by weight history or admission heart rate (HR). Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire global scores were higher in AAN (mean 3.80 [SD 1.66] vs mean 3.00 [SD 1.66]; P = .02). Independent of admission weight, lower HR (β = -0.492 [confidence interval (CI) -0.883 to -0.100]; P = .01) was associated with faster loss; lower serum phosphorus was associated with a greater amount (β = -0.005 [CI -0.010 to 0.000]; P = .04) and longer duration (β = -0.011 [CI -0.017 to 0.005]; P = .001). Weight and menstrual history explained 28% of the variance in HR and 36% of the variance in serum phosphorus. CONCLUSIONS:Weight history was independently associated with markers of malnutrition in inpatients with restrictive eating disorders across a range of body weights and should be considered when assessing illness severity on hospital admission

Exploration of synergistic and redundant information sharing in static and dynamical Gaussian systems

To fully characterize the information that two source variables carry about a third target variable, one must decompose the total information into redundant, unique, and synergistic components, i.e., obtain a partial information decomposition (PID). However, Shannon's theory of information does not provide formulas to fully determine these quantities. Several recent studies have begun addressing this. Some possible definitions for PID quantities have been proposed and some analyses have been carried out on systems composed of discrete variables. Here we present an in-depth analysis of PIDs on Gaussian systems, both static and dynamical. We show that, for a broad class of Gaussian systems, previously proposed PID formulas imply that (i) redundancy reduces to the minimum information provided by either source variable and hence is independent of correlation between sources, and (ii) synergy is the extra information contributed by the weaker source when the stronger source is known and can either increase or decrease with correlation between sources. We find that Gaussian systems frequently exhibit net synergy, i.e., the information carried jointly by both sources is greater than the sum of information carried by each source individually. Drawing from several explicit examples, we discuss the implications of these findings for measures of information transfer and information-based measures of complexity, both generally and within a neuroscience setting. Importantly, by providing independent formulas for synergy and redundancy applicable to continuous time-series data, we provide an approach to characterizing and quantifying information sharing amongst complex system variables

Emergency ambulance service involvement with residential care homes in the support of older people with dementia : an observational study

© 2014 Amador et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.BACKGROUND: Older people resident in care homes have a limited life expectancy and approximately two-thirds have limited mental capacity. Despite initiatives to reduce unplanned hospital admissions for this population, little is known about the involvement of emergency services in supporting residents in these settings.METHODS: This paper reports on a longitudinal study that tracked the involvement of emergency ambulance personnel in the support of older people with dementia, resident in care homes with no on-site nursing providing personal care only. 133 residents with dementia across 6 care homes in the East of England were tracked for a year. The paper examines the frequency and reasons for emergency ambulance call-outs, outcomes and factors associated with emergency ambulance service use. RESULTS: 56% of residents used ambulance services. Less than half (43%) of all call-outs resulted in an unscheduled admission to hospital. In addition to trauma following a following a fall in the home, results suggest that at least a reasonable proportion of ambulance contacts are for ambulatory care sensitive conditions. An emergency ambulance is not likely to be called for older rather than younger residents or for women more than men. Length of residence does not influence use of emergency ambulance services among older people with dementia. Contact with primary care services and admission route into the care home were both significantly associated with emergency ambulance service use. The odds of using emergency ambulance services for residents admitted from a relative's home were 90% lower than the odds of using emergency ambulance services for residents admitted from their own home. CONCLUSIONS: Emergency service involvement with this vulnerable population merits further examination. Future research on emergency ambulance service use by older people with dementia in care homes, should account for important contextual factors, namely, presence or absence of on-site nursing, GP involvement, and access to residents' family, alongside resident health characteristics.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Constructing Kinetically Controlled Denaturation Isotherms of Folded Proteins Using Denaturant-Pulse Chaperonin Binding

Methods to assess the kinetic stability of proteins, particularly those that are aggregation prone, are very useful in establishing ligand induced stabilizing effects. Because aggregation prone proteins are by nature difficult to work with, most solution based methods are compromised by this inherent instability. Here, we describe a label-free method that examines the denaturation of immobilized proteins where the dynamic unfolded protein populations are captured and detected by chaperonin binding