Telling Stories about Dynamic Networks with Graph Comics

International audienceIn this paper, we explore graph comics as a medium to communicate changes in dynamic networks. While previous research has focused on visualizing dynamic networks for data exploration, we want to see if we can take advantage of the visual expressiveness and familiarity of comics to present and explain temporal changes in networks to an audience. To understand the potential of comics as a storytelling medium, we first created a variety of comics during a 3 month structured design process, involving domain experts from public education and neuroscience. This process led to the definition of 8 design factors for creating graph comics and propose design solutions for each. Results from a qualitative study suggest that a general audience is quickly able understand complex temporal changes through graph comics, provided with minimal textual annotations and no training

Anarchy in the UK: Reading Beryl the Peril via historic conceptions of childhood

© 2014 Taylor & Francis. Much work within the field of childhood studies has focused on the social discourses through which childhood is understood. This article draws on this work in developing a critical framework for considering the appeal of Beryl the Peril. The article examines the influence of conceptualisations of childhood prevalent in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These theorised children as disruptive and requiring restraint. Approved literature for children sought to socialise them into the adult order. However, a more subversive strain, identifiable in Lewis Carroll's Alice novels, celebrated an anarchic vision of childhood. This article examines how Beryl the Peril negotiated these conflicting conceptions of childhood. Beryl is an unruly force; her opponent, and representative of social authority, is Dad. Their clashes play out the tensions in these articulations of childhood. The development of Beryl over nearly 60 years provides an opportunity to examine how her subversive spirit has remained appealing

Initial evidence review - Strategies for encouraging psychological and emotional resilience in response to loneliness 2019

It is now widely accepted that loneliness is influenced by a combination of psychological factors, including attitudes to participating in social interactions and mental health problems, as well as environmental factors such as living far from family and friends and life events and transitions such as bereavement and moving away from home. Despite increased recognition of the importance of individual-level processes and meanings that influence the experience of loneliness, there is a gap in our knowledge of how best to address the psychological factors that contribute to chronic loneliness. In this report, we aim to synthesise information from a range of sources in order to identify the psychological pathways to loneliness and relevant psychological barriers to accessing strategies which target social isolation. The report highlights promising interventions that have potential to target the psychological aspects of loneliness. It makes a series of recommendations to improve understanding and delivery of effective psychological interventions to address loneliness and how the interaction between such strategies and community-based interventions. We conducted an extensive scoping review of the academic literature, including online database searches and broader searches reviewing conference abstracts and reports from the Third Sector. We obtained expert opinions by speaking to relevant stakeholders including people with lived experiences of loneliness, charitable organisations working with people who are experiencing chronic loneliness, and those involved in developing and evaluating interventions to tackle loneliness. Much of the work focused on older adults but we also looked at interventions delivered across the age range. We report the findings from this work, including an overview of the wide range of psychological factors which might explain why some people who are chronically lonely struggle to engage with community strategies and other sources of support that are available. These factors include having mental health problems, personality characteristics and having unhelpful beliefs and behaviours related to social interactions. We recommend that interventions that target either the psychological or social aspects of loneliness should not be provided in isolation, and that multi-modal interventions are likely to be most successful. Further research evidence is needed to evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of delivering psychological interventions in conjunction with community-based strategies. Social prescribing is a potential opportunity for the successful delivery of psycho-social interventions. For example, integration of psychological and community-based support could be promoted by including directories of psychological support in guides to community based resources, and by connecting social prescribing link workers with their local improving access to psychological therapies services. The social psychological approaches such as the Groups 4 Health model (Haslam et al., 2019; Haslam, Cruwys, Haslam, Dingle & Chang, 2016) show promise and potentially could bridge psychological and social understandings of loneliness. There is preliminary research evidence that interventions that address the psychological factors involved in loneliness can be successful, and there are various approaches to addressing these factors across the UK, although many initiatives have not yet been fully evaluated. The strongest research evidence was found for cognitive behavioural interventions, and there are some promising developments, including digital initiatives which are designed to change individuals’ thoughts and feelings about loneliness, that are worthy of further evaluation. We would also recommend that acceptance and commitment therapy is formally evaluated as an intervention for loneliness. We noted that the research base in this area is still underdeveloped and more work is needed to demonstrate which interventions are most accessible to people who are chronically lonely and can feasibly be delivered within NHS and community settings. Research into the potential adverse effects of psychological interventions, individual differences in responsiveness and the longer term impact on loneliness is also needed. It is likely that including measures of loneliness in evaluations of interventions for social anxiety and grief and in routine work with older adults in improving access to psychological therapies services would yield data that will contribute to the growing evidence base in this area. We hope that bringing together the research evidence and expert opinion in this report will increase awareness of the wide range of psychological factors implicated in loneliness and lead to further provision of psychological interventions for loneliness, in combination with community based support for social isolation

Psychosocial Interventions to Reduce Compulsory Psychiatric Admissions: A Rapid Evidence Synthesis

Background Compulsory mental health hospital admissions are increasing in several European countries but are coercive and potentially distressing. It is important to identify which mental health service models and interventions are effective in reducing compulsory admissions. Methods We conducted a rapid evidence synthesis to explore whether there is any evidence for an effect on compulsory admissions for 15 types of psychosocial intervention, identified by an expert group as potentially relevant to reducing compulsory admission. A search for randomised controlled trials (RCTs) reporting compulsory admission as a primary or secondary outcome or adverse event was carried out using clinical guidelines, recent systematic reviews, and database searches postdating these reviews. Findings We found 949 RCTs reporting on the interventions of interest, of which 19 reported on compulsory admission. Our narrative synthesis found some evidence for the effectiveness of crisis planning and self-management, while evidence for early intervention services was mixed. We did not find evidence to support adherence therapy, care from crisis resolution teams and assertive community treatment, but numbers of relevant studies were very small. We found no trials which tested effects on compulsory admission of the nine other intervention types. Interpretation Crisis planning and self-management interventions with a relapse prevention element are most promising for preventing compulsory admissions. Given our broad search strategy, the lack of evidence demonstrates that there is an urgent need for more research on interventions which may reduce compulsory admissions

Stereoselective synthesis of 1,3-disubstituted dihydroisoquinolines vial-phenylalanine-derived dihydroisoquinoline N-oxides.

The preparation of chiral pool-derived nitrone 3 and its use in the protecting-group free, stereoselective synthesis of a range of 1,3-disubstituted tetrahydroisoquinolines is described. Grignard reagent additions to nitrone 3 yielded trans-1,3-disubstituted N-hydroxytetrahydroisoquinolines 6 with good levels of selectivity, while 1,3-dipolar cycloadditions to this nitrone provided access to 3-(2-hydroxyalkyl)isoquinolines 12 as single diastereomers

Mencipta ulang Komik : Reinventing Comics

Jakarta237 p, Gmb, 25 cm