Precursors and Possible Effects of Psychological Stress

The term stress can be used to refer to a generalised somatic response, involving hormonal activity, which renders an individual ready to react to a wide range of events. With continued stress there can result a wide range of pathological developments, including physical and psychological symptoms. This paper will review the social and psychological factors which appear to increase the stress response and will also examine some of the physical consequences of exposure to stress-inducing agents. Emphasis will be given to the possibilities that stress may result from common experiences of living in modern complex society. Individual differences need to be considered as moderators of stress, and also the means whereby people may be taught to cope with stress

Social representation of the profession of psychology and the application of artificial intelligence: European Union regulatory authority and the application of psychology as a paradigm for the future

The digitisation of work affects thinking with respect to who will work, what work will entail and how governments will control change. The development of artificial intelligence (AI) is recognized as a threat and as a facilitator of change. The European Union leads in the development of regulatory power in the area. We examine these regulations and how they may affect the application of AI to work, especially with respect to psychology. Psychology is a profession universally conceived in the recent past to be immune from the predations of automation due to the level of cognitive and emotional skills believed to underly competence. The image or social representation of the discipline/profession plays a role in how the discipline is perceived and understood and how it is placed within the predicted matrix of jobs under threat. We demonstrate that psychology may not be immune in the context of a contemporary social representation. Regulatory practices in training and employment put psychology under threat as a “safe” profession. Europe has regulated and commodified the practice and training of psychology and hence has magnified the threat of replacement of those practices by AI. Governments and the professions need to be mindful of these consequences

Rural Kenyan men's awareness of danger signs of obstetric complications

151) recognizing long labour as obstetric danger signs. More educated participants were significantly more knowledgeable than less educated participants (Kruskal-Wallis H=14.47; df=3; p=0.002). CONCLUSION: Participants were very proficient in identifying the danger signs of obstetric complications, with better knowledge in more educated men. Maternal mortality across Kenya remains high, however, so assessing knowledge nationally, and researching whether men are translating this knowledge into action would be recommended

Objective measurement of cough frequency during COPD exacerbation convalescence

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Cough and sputum production are associated with adverse outcomes in COPD and are common during COPD exacerbation (AE-COPD). This study of objective cough monitoring using the Hull Automated Cough Counter and Leicester Cough Monitor software confirms that this system has the ability to detect a significant decrease in cough frequency during AE-COPD convalescence. The ability to detect clinically meaningful change indicates a potential role in home monitoring of COPD patients

The Status of Wildlife in Protected Areas Compared to Non-Protected Areas of Kenya

We compile over 270 wildlife counts of Kenya's wildlife populations conducted over the last 30 years to compare trends in national parks and reserves with adjacent ecosystems and country-wide trends. The study shows the importance of discriminating human-induced changes from natural population oscillations related to rainfall and ecological factors. National park and reserve populations have declined sharply over the last 30 years, at a rate similar to non-protected areas and country-wide trends. The protected area losses reflect in part their poor coverage of seasonal ungulate migrations. The losses vary among parks. The largest parks, Tsavo East, Tsavo West and Meru, account for a disproportionate share of the losses due to habitat change and the difficulty of protecting large remote parks. The losses in Kenya's parks add to growing evidence for wildlife declines inside as well as outside African parks. The losses point to the need to quantify the performance of conservation policies and promote integrated landscape practices that combine parks with private and community-based measures

Continuous cough monitoring using ambient sound recording during convalescence from a COPD exacerbation

Purpose Cough is common in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and is associated with frequent exacerbations and increased mortality. Cough increases during acute exacerbations (AE-COPD), representing a possible metric of clinical deterioration. Conventional cough monitors accurately report cough counts over short time periods. We describe a novel monitoring system which we used to record cough continuously for up to 45 days during AE-COPD convalescence. Methods This is a longitudinal, observational study of cough monitoring in AE-COPD patients discharged from a single teaching-hospital. Ambient sound was recorded from two sites in the domestic environment and analysed using novel cough classifier software. For comparison, the validated hybrid HACC/LCM cough monitoring system was used on days 1, 5, 20 and 45. Patients were asked to record symptoms daily using diaries. Results Cough monitoring data were available for 16 subjects with a total of 568 monitored days. Daily cough count fell significantly from mean±SEM 272.7±54.5 on day 1 to 110.9±26.3 on day 9 (p<0.01) before plateauing. The absolute cough count detected by the continuous monitoring system was significantly lower than detected by the hybrid HACC/LCM system but normalised counts strongly correlated (r=0.88, p<0.01) demonstrating an ability to detect trends. Objective cough count and subjective cough scores modestly correlated (r=0.46). Conclusions Cough frequency declines significantly following AE-COPD and the reducing trend can be detected using continuous ambient sound recording and novel cough classifier software. Objective measurement of cough frequency has the potential to enhance our ability to monitor the clinical state in patients with COPD

Conflict radio and ethnic warfare in Liberia, 1980-1997

This study provides an historical account of the development of radio broadcasting in Liberia between 1980 and 1997, focusing on two periods, the regime of Samuel K. Doe (1980-1989) and the ascension of Charles. Taylor during the Liberian Civil War (1990-1997). The emphasis is on their differing approaches to the accumulation of broadcast resources and the extent to which they used them to incite extra-national groups to commit acts of violence against their ethnic opponents. Under Doe, foreign assistance funded a national network of radio stations that was instrumental in connecting hinterland populations to the capital, Monrovia. As such they were prized assets, but atrophied due to the ineptitude of the regime. During the civil war they became valuable property, and Taylor's radio propaganda campaign provided a second front against enemies both domestic and foreign. Using archived transcripts of major radio broadcasts, print news, and published memoirs of survivors of the latter period, I suggest that both leaders incited ethnic hatreds to varying degrees. I speculate that Doe's brand of incitement may have been an inadvertent side-effect of conflated national and ethnic politics. Taylor's propaganda, on the other hand, was much more explicit. The evidence clearly indicates that Taylor used a long-term campaign of media domination specifically to terrorize ethnic groups, elicit compliance from subject populations within territory under his control, program his forces to kill, discredit his enemies, and more generally to facilitate his personal pursuit of power

Lepton-flavour-violating tau decays from triality

Motivated by flavour symmetry models, we construct theories based on a low-energy limit featuring lepton flavour triality that have the flavour-violating decays $\tau^\pm \to \mu^\pm \mu^\pm e^\mp$ and $\tau^\pm \to e^\pm e^\pm \mu^\mp$ as the main phenomenological signatures of physics beyond the standard model. These decay modes are expected to be probed in the near future with increased sensitivity by the Belle II experiment at the SuperKEKB collider. The simple standard model extensions featured have doubly-charged scalars as the mediators of the above decay processes. The phenomenology of these extensions is studied here in detail.Comment: 24 pages, 4 figures Additional references and neutrino mass discussion added. Matches version accepted for publication in Physical Review