771 research outputs found
Bostonia. Volume 13
Founded in 1900, Bostonia magazine is Boston University's main alumni publication, which covers alumni and student life, as well as university activities, events, and programs
Internet-based interventions for behavioral addictions: A systematic review
Background and aims
Behavioral addictions are a public health problem that causes harm to both individuals and society. Internet-based interventions offer potential benefits over face-to-face therapy for the treatment of behavioral addictions, including their accessibility, perceived anonymity, and low costs. We systematically reviewed the characteristics and effectiveness of these interventions.
Methods
A systematic literature search was conducted in: PubMed, PsycINFO, Embase, and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials. A standardized methodological quality assessment was performed on all identified studies via the Effective Public Health Practice Project (EPHPP) Quality Assessment Tool.
Results
Twenty-nine studies were assessed in this systematic review. Between them, considerable heterogeneity was noted in various study characteristics, including screening tools, inclusion criteria, and outcome measures. Attrition rates also ranged widely (9–89%), as did study quality, with three of the 29 studies rated strong, 12 moderate, and 14 weak methodologically. Twenty-two studies focused on gambling disorder, most revealing significant within-group effects for the assessed intervention on gambling-related symptoms and four of these studies identified significant between-group effects. Behavioral addictions studied in the remaining studies included gaming disorder, internet use disorder, hoarding disorder, and pornography use disorder, revealing generally-promising, albeit limited results.
Conclusions
Internet-based interventions seem promising at reducing gambling problems, but too few studies have been published, to date, for conclusions to be drawn for other behavioral addictions. Internet-based interventions targeting other behavioral addictions – like gaming disorder, internet use disorder, hoarding disorder, and pornography use disorder – remain under-examined, warranting considerable additional research to assess their effectiveness
The effect of e-mental health interventions on academic performance in university and college students:A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials
Background: Mental health symptoms are common among college and university students and these can affect their academic performance. E-mental health interventions have proven effective in addressing mental health complaints but their effect on academic performance has not been synthesized yet. Objectives: To synthesize the evidence from randomized controlled trials for the effectiveness of e-mental health interventions on academic performance in college and university students compared to inactive controls. Data sources and eligibility criteria: We searched six databases (PubMed, Cochrane library, CINAHL, ERIC, PsycINFO, Web of Science) during the period January 2000 until September 2019 for randomized controlled trials that reported on e-mental health interventions (guided or unguided) for college and university students and measured academic performance (e.g. grade point average). Study appraisal and synthesis methods: Study and participant characteristics and the academic performance measures at post-intervention were extracted. The latter were pooled and Hedges' g was calculated as the effect size. Heterogeneity and publication bias were investigated. Results: Six studies containing 2428 participants were included in the meta-analysis. These focussed on either mood and anxiety or alcohol and tobacco use. The pooling of data resulted in a small but non-significant effect of g = 0.26 (95% CI, −0.00, 0.52; p = .05) on academic performance, favouring e-mental health interventions over inactive controls. Interventions had positive effects on depression (g = −0.24) and anxiety (g = −0.2). Heterogeneity was high. Discussion: Despite the small and non-significant effect, our meta-analysis points to a promising direction for the effectiveness of e-mental health interventions on academic performance. Yet, these results must be interpreted with caution, as heterogeneity was high and few studies on the effectiveness of e-mental health interventions for students reported academic performance measures
Systematic thermal reduction of neutronization in core-collapse supernovae
We investigate to what extent the temperature dependence of the nuclear
symmetry energy can affect the neutronization of the stellar core prior to
neutrino trapping during gravitational collapse. To this end, we implement a
one-zone simulation to follow the collapse until beta equilibrium is reached
and the lepton fraction remains constant. Since the strength of electron
capture on the neutron-rich nuclei associated to the supernova scenario is
still an open issue, we keep it as a free parameter. We find that the
temperature dependence of the symmetry energy consistently yields a small
reduction of deleptonization, which corresponds to a systematic effect on the
shock wave energetics: the gain in dissociation energy of the shock has a small
yet non-negligible value of about 0.4 foe (1 foe = 10^51 erg) and this result
is almost independent from the strength of nuclear electron capture. The
presence of such a systematic effect and its robustness under changes of the
parameters of the one-zone model are significative enough to justify further
investigations with detailed numerical simulations of supernova explosions.Comment: 15 pages, 2 tables, 3 figure
Self-energy Effects in the Superfluidity of Neutron Matter
The superfluidity of neutron matter in the channel is studied by
taking into account the effect of the ground-state correlations in the
self-energy. To this purpose the gap equation has been solved within the
generalized Gorkov approach. A sizeable suppression of the energy gap is driven
by the quasi-particle strength around the Fermi surface.Comment: 8 pages and 3 figure
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