Models of peer support to remediate post-intensive care syndrome: A report developed by the SCCM Thrive International Peer Support Collaborative

Objective: Patients and caregivers can experience a range of physical, psychological, and cognitive problems following critical care discharge. The use of peer support has been proposed as an innovative support mechanism. Design: We sought to identify technical, safety and procedural aspects of existing operational models of peer support, among the Society of Critical Care Medicine Thrive Peer Support Collaborative. We also sought to categorize key distinctions between these models and elucidate barriers and facilitators to implementation. Subjects: 17 Thrive sites from the USA, UK, and Australia were represented by a range of healthcare professionals. Interventions: Via an iterative process of in-person and email/conference calls, members of the Collaborative, defined the key areas on which peer support models could be defined and compared; collected detailed self-reports from all sites; reviewed the information and identified clusters of models. Barriers and challenges to implementation of peer support models were also documented. Results: Within the Thrive Collaborative, six general models of peer support were identified: Community based, Psychologist-led outpatient, Models based within ICU follow-up clinics, Online, Groups based within ICU and Peer mentor models. The most common barriers to implementation were: recruitment to groups, personnel input and training: sustainability and funding, risk management and measuring success. Conclusion: A number of different models of peer support are currently being developed to help patients and families recover and grow in the post-critical care setting

Comparative Advertising Wars: An Historical Analysis of Their Causes and Consequences

This historical study contributes to the extensive literature on comparative advertising by examining the causes and consequences of comparative advertising wars; that is, when one advertiser responds to a direct or implied attack by another advertiser. Primary and secondary sources consist of articles published in historic and contemporary marketing and advertising trade journals, such as Printers’ Ink, Advertising & Selling, and Advertising Age. The findings reveal that well-publicized advertising wars occurred frequently between major U.S. advertisers throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, and that they most often occurred in product and service markets characterized by intense competition. Many, if not most, advertisers’ principal motive for responding to a comparative advertising attack has been emotional rather than rational. The findings also reveal that advertising wars often became increasingly hostile, leading to negative consequences for all combatants, as well as a broad and negative social consequence in the form of potentially misleading advertising.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Probabilistic categorization: How do normal participants and amnesic patients do it?

In probabilistic categorization tasks, various cues are probabilistically (but not perfectly) predictive of class membership. This means that a given combination of cues sometimes belongs to one class and sometimes to another. It is not yet clear how categorizers approach such tasks. Here, we review evidence in favor of two alternative conceptualizations of learning in probabilistic categorization: as rule-based learning, or as incremental learning. Each conceptualization forms the basis of a way of analyzing performance: strategy analysis assumes rule-based learning, while rolling regression analysis assumes incremental learning. Here, we contrasted the ability of each to predict performance of normal categorizers. Both turned out to predict responses about equally well. We then reviewed performance of patients with damage to regions deemed important for either rule-based or incremental learning. Evidence was again about equally compatible with either alternative conceptualization of learning, although neither predicted an involvement of the medial temporal lobe. We suggest that a new way of conceptualizing probabilistic categorization might be fruitful, in which the medial temporal lobe help set up representations that are then used by other regions to assign patterns to categories. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

A summary of the formation and seasonal progression of the Northeast Water Polynya

A summary of the seasonal development of the Northeast Water Polynya ice cover characteristics is presented. This is based primarily on satellite remote sensing observations, with some in situ measurements, including both new and published data

Towards a History of Mass Violence in the Etat Indépendant du Congo, 1885-1908

The present article provides an up-to-date scholarly introduction to mass violence in the Etat Indépendant du Congo (Congo Free State, EIC). Its aims are twofold: to offer a point of access to the extensive literature and historical debates on the subject, and to make the case for exchanging the currently prevalent top-down narrative, with its excessive focus on King Leopold's character and motives, for one which considers the EIC's culture of violence as a multicausal, broadly based and deeply engrained social phenomenon. The argument is divided into five sections. Following a general outline of the EIC's violent system of administration, I discuss its social and demographic impact (and the controversy which surrounds it) to bring out the need for more regionally focused and context sensitive studies. The dispute surrounding demographics demonstrates that what is fundamentally at stake is the place the EIC's extreme violence should occupy in the history of European ‘modernity’. Since approaches which hinge on Leopoldian exceptionalism are particularly unhelpful in clarifying this issue, I pause to reflect on how such approaches came to dominate the distinct historiographical traditions which emerged in Belgium and abroad before moving on to a more detailed exploration of a selection of causes underlying the EIC's violent nature. While state actors remain in the limelight, I shift the focus from the state as a singular, normative agent, towards the existence of an extremely violent society in which various individuals and social groups within and outside of the state apparatus committed violent acts for multiple reasons. As this argument is pitched at a high level of abstraction, I conclude with a discussion of available source material with which it can be further refined and updated