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

Emergency Manuals: How Quality Improvement and Implementation Science Can Enable Better Perioperative Management During Crises

© 2017 Sara N. Goldhaber-Fiebert, Carl Macrae How can teams manage critical events more effectively? There are commonly gaps in performance during perioperative crises, and emergency manuals are recently available tools that can improve team performance under stress, via multiple mechanisms. This article examines how the principles of implementation science and quality improvement were applied by multiple teams in the development, testing, and systematic implementations of emergency manuals in perioperative care. The core principles of implementation have relevance for future patient safety innovations perioperatively and beyond, and the concepts of emergency manuals and interprofessional teamwork are applicable for diverse fields throughout health care

catena-Poly[[[triaqua­sulfatozinc(II)]-μ-3,3′-bis­(3-pyrid­yl)-1,1′-(m-phenyl­ene)diurea] methanol solvate monohydrate]

In the title coordination polymer, {[Zn(SO4)(C18H16N6O2)(H2O)3]·CH3OH·H2O}n, the Zn2+ ion adopts a slightly distorted cis-ZnN2O4 octa­hedral geometry arising from three coordinated water mol­ecules, one sulfate ion and two bridging 3,3′-bis­(3-pyrid­yl)-1,1′-(m-phenyl­ene)diurea (bpmpbu) ligands. The dihedral angles between the central benzene ring and two terminal pyridine rings of the bpmbpu mol­ecule are 10.58 (17) and 34.63 (16)°. In the crystal, the ligands bridge the ZnII ions, thus generating a one-dimensional zigzag coordination polymer propagating in [010]. The crystal structure features extensive N—H⋯O and O—H⋯O hydrogen-bonding inter­actions

Good me bad me : Prioritization of the Good-Self during perceptual decision-making

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Scrum for product innovation : a longitudinal embedded case study

This article describes the innovation processes used in a partnership between Add Latent Ltd., an asset integrity and maintenance management consulting services provider in the energy sector and University of Salford. The challenge faced by the company is to make their in-house expertise more readily available to a worldwide audience. A longitudinal embedded case study has been used to investigate how installable desktop software applications have been redesigned to create a new set of cloud hosted software services. The innovation team adapted an agile scrum process to include exploratory prototyping and manage the geographical distribution of the team members. A minimum viable product was developed that integrated functional elements of previous software tools into an end-to-end data collection, analysis and visualisation product called AimHi which uses a cloud-hosted web services approach. Field trials were conducted using the software at the Uniper, Isle of Grain power station in Kent, UK. Enhancements were made to the AimHi product which was adopted for use at the Uniper site. The product emerged from a Knwledge Transfer Partnership whci was evaluated on cmplettion by InnovateUK and awarded the highest possible “outstanding” grade. The article illustrates how the scrum software development method was tailored for a product innovation context. Extended periods of evaluation and reflection, prototyping and requirement refinement were combined with periods of incremental feature development using sprints. The AimHi product emerged from a technology transfer and innovation project that has successfully reconciled conflicting demands from customers, universities, partner companies and project staff members

When expectancies harm comprehension: encoding flexibility in impression formation

We explored the possibility that the encoding flexibility processes postulated by Sherman and colleagues (1998) may also apply to intentional impression formation settings, even when cognitive resources are available to conceptually encode all of the behavioral information regardless of the relation of that information to the initial stereotypical expectancies. Three experiments offer evidence for the lower conceptual fluency for expectancy-incongruent behaviors, compared with congruent behaviors, as well as for the consequences of that difference for impression formation. Experiment 1 shows that incongruent behaviors are perceived as more difficult to understand in meaning. Experiment 2 links this lower conceptual fluency with a better discrimination of the specific trait implications of the behaviors. We further explore the role of conceptual encoding difficulty for developing personality impressions (Experiment 3). These studies reveal the implications of initial expectancies for the differential conceptual encoding of congruent and incongruent behaviors, even when the availability of cognitive resources is high, such as when forming an intentional impression about a person's personality. The link between this process and encoding the trait implications of behaviors may shed new light on impression formation processes and demand a revision of some of the assumptions that were made by the classical person memory model. We contend that behavior encoding in impression formation is likely to begin with default trait encoding but will be inhibited when the implications of the behavior conflict with previous trait expectancies (see also Wigboldus, Dijksterhuis, & van Knippenberg, 2003). (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Characterisation of the Toxoplasma gondii tyrosine transporter and its phosphorylation by the calcium-dependent protein kinase 3.

Toxoplasma gondii parasites rapidly exit their host cell when exposed to calcium ionophores. Calcium-dependent protein kinase 3 (TgCDPK3) was previously identified as a key mediator in this process, as TgCDPK3 knockout (∆cdpk3) parasites fail to egress in a timely manner. Phosphoproteomic analysis comparing WT with ∆cdpk3 parasites revealed changes in the TgCDPK3-dependent phosphoproteome that included proteins important for regulating motility, but also metabolic enzymes, indicating that TgCDPK3 controls processes beyond egress. Here we have investigated a predicted direct target of TgCDPK3, ApiAT5-3, a putative transporter of the major facilitator superfamily, and show that it is rapidly phosphorylated at serine 56 after induction of calcium signalling. Conditional knockout of apiAT5-3 results in transcriptional upregulation of most ribosomal subunits, but no alternative transporters, and subsequent parasite death. Mutating the S56 to a non-phosphorylatable alanine leads to a fitness cost, suggesting that phosphorylation of this residue is beneficial, albeit not essential, for tyrosine import. Using a combination of metabolomics and heterologous expression, we confirmed a primary role in tyrosine import for ApiAT5-3. However, no significant differences in tyrosine import could be detected in phosphorylation site mutants showing that if tyrosine transport is affected by S56 phosphorylation, its regulatory role is subtle

Bridging the gap: The St. Cloud Somali community’s view of illness and disease in a Western society & its effects on patient care

In this ethnographic study, we looked at how the Somali people view illness and disease in a Western society. In addition, we looked at how differing views and cultural practices affected their treatment and interpretation of Western medicine. Due to the ongoing increase of Somali people in the United States, this topic is important in showcasing the difficulties that newcomers face when it comes to medicine and how these experiences shape their view of Western medicine. These difficulties include language barriers and cultural differences. Our main focus was on the St. Cloud area due to its close proximity to the College of Saint Benedict and the fact that Minnesota has the highest percentage of Somali people in the U.S. The study involved interviews from the director of English Learners at Discovery Community Elementary School, doctors at the St. Cloud Hospital emergency department and within the CentraCare clinic system, a Somali community health worker, and Somali college students