Mourning and melancholia revisited: correspondences between principles of Freudian metapsychology and empirical findings in neuropsychiatry

Freud began his career as a neurologist studying the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system, but it was his later work in psychology that would secure his place in history. This paper draws attention to consistencies between physiological processes identified by modern clinical research and psychological processes described by Freud, with a special emphasis on his famous paper on depression entitled 'Mourning and melancholia'. Inspired by neuroimaging findings in depression and deep brain stimulation for treatment resistant depression, some preliminary physiological correlates are proposed for a number of key psychoanalytic processes. Specifically, activation of the subgenual cingulate is discussed in relation to repression and the default mode network is discussed in relation to the ego. If these correlates are found to be reliable, this may have implications for the manner in which psychoanalysis is viewed by the wider psychological and psychiatric communities

Geothermal Site Assessment Using the National Geothermal Data System (NGDS), with Examples from the Hawthorne Ammunition Depot Area

The Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology and Great Basin Center for Geothermal Energy have compiled nearly 50,000 Great Basin groundwater samples into an Access database, encompassing all known spatial, physical, and geochemical features. The database schema is a partial template for the National Geothermal Data System (NGDS), a DOE-sponsored compendium of geothermal data spanning all 50 states. The database can be queried to produce worksheets customized to user requirements, greatly simplifying data extraction for other software applications (e.g., GoogleEarth). This paper examines the features and functionality of the existing database, its integration into the 50-state NGDS, and its usage in geothermal exploration and development. In particular, we examine the dataset for Hawthorne, NV, which has been supplemented extensively by the Naval Geothermal Program Office and subcontractor Epsilon Systems Solutions, Inc. As we demonstrate, a database user can identify Hawthorne-area thermal anomalies several ways: through spatial interpolation of database geothermometry, temperature gradient calculations, and other geochemical signatures. The ratios of B/Cl, Li/Cl, and As/Cl may identify zones of geothermal potential, as can regional patterns of total dissolved solids, Na-K-Ca ternary diagrams, and trace element ternary diagrams

Angoff’s Delta method revisited: improving the DIF detection under small samples

Most of the methods for detecting differential item functioning (DIF) are suitable when the sample sizes are sufficiently large to validate the null statistical distributions. There is no guarantee, however, that they still perform adequately when there are few respondents in the focal group or in both the reference and the focal group. Angoff’s Delta plot is a potentially useful alternative for small-sample DIF investigation, but it suffers from improper DIF flagging criterion. The purpose of this paper is to improve this classification rule under mild statistical assumptions. This improvement yields a modified Delta plot with an adjusted DIF flagging criterion for small samples. A simulation study was conducted to compare the modified Delta plot to both the classical Delta plot approach and the Mantel-Haenszel method. It is concluded that the modified Delta plot is consistently less conservative and more powerful than the usual Delta plot, and is also less conservative and more powerful than the Mantel-Haenszel method as long as at least one group of respondents is small