101 research outputs found
The link between childhood trauma and dissociation in frequent users of classic psychedelics and dissociatives
Background: Childhood trauma severity is associated with the level of subsequent substance use as well as with the self-reported severity of dissociation. Classic psychedelics and dissociatives target neurotransmitter systems thought to be involved in the onset of dissociative symptoms and may evoke severe and long-lasting symptoms of depersonalization in some users. However, it is currently unclear whether drug use puts people with a history of childhood trauma at higher risk of developing dissociative symptoms.
Objectives: The current study investigates whether the one-year prevalence of substance use significantly moderates the link between childhood trauma and the severity of depersonalization.
Methods: Participants (n = 297, of which 80.2% were active users) filled out an online self-report questionnaire including the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), the Cambridge Depersonalisation Scale (CDS), and information about their substance use.
Results: Results indicate that childhood trauma and substance use are significant individual predictors of dissociation scores in this sample, but no moderation of substance use on the link between childhood trauma and depersonalization was established.
Conclusions: It is hypothesized that the quality (particularly the context) of the experience of substance use rather than the sheer quantity may be responsible for the manifestation of depersonalization
Supporting the learning of deaf students in higher education: a case study at Sheffield Hallam University
This article is an examination of the issues surrounding support for the learning of deaf students in higher education (HE). There are an increasing number of deaf students attending HE institutes, and as such provision of support mechanisms for these students is not only necessary but essential. Deaf students are similar to their hearing peers, in that they will approach their learning and require differing levels of support dependant upon the individual. They will, however, require a different kind of support, which can be technical or human resource based. This article examines the issues that surround supporting deaf students in HE with use of a case study of provision at Sheffield Hallam University (SHU), during the academic year 1994-95. It is evident that by considering the needs of deaf students and making changes to our teaching practices that all students can benefit
Scalar conservation laws with nonconstant coefficients with application to particle size segregation in granular flow
Granular materials will segregate by particle size when subjected to shear,
as occurs, for example, in avalanches. The evolution of a bidisperse mixture of
particles can be modeled by a nonlinear first order partial differential
equation, provided the shear (or velocity) is a known function of position.
While avalanche-driven shear is approximately uniform in depth, boundary-driven
shear typically creates a shear band with a nonlinear velocity profile. In this
paper, we measure a velocity profile from experimental data and solve initial
value problems that mimic the segregation observed in the experiment, thereby
verifying the value of the continuum model. To simplify the analysis, we
consider only one-dimensional configurations, in which a layer of small
particles is placed above a layer of large particles within an annular shear
cell and is sheared for arbitrarily long times. We fit the measured velocity
profile to both an exponential function of depth and a piecewise linear
function which separates the shear band from the rest of the material. Each
solution of the initial value problem is non-standard, involving curved
characteristics in the exponential case, and a material interface with a jump
in characteristic speed in the piecewise linear case
Towards Reliable Automatic Protein Structure Alignment
A variety of methods have been proposed for structure similarity calculation,
which are called structure alignment or superposition. One major shortcoming in
current structure alignment algorithms is in their inherent design, which is
based on local structure similarity. In this work, we propose a method to
incorporate global information in obtaining optimal alignments and
superpositions. Our method, when applied to optimizing the TM-score and the GDT
score, produces significantly better results than current state-of-the-art
protein structure alignment tools. Specifically, if the highest TM-score found
by TMalign is lower than (0.6) and the highest TM-score found by one of the
tested methods is higher than (0.5), there is a probability of (42%) that
TMalign failed to find TM-scores higher than (0.5), while the same probability
is reduced to (2%) if our method is used. This could significantly improve the
accuracy of fold detection if the cutoff TM-score of (0.5) is used.
In addition, existing structure alignment algorithms focus on structure
similarity alone and simply ignore other important similarities, such as
sequence similarity. Our approach has the capacity to incorporate multiple
similarities into the scoring function. Results show that sequence similarity
aids in finding high quality protein structure alignments that are more
consistent with eye-examined alignments in HOMSTRAD. Even when structure
similarity itself fails to find alignments with any consistency with
eye-examined alignments, our method remains capable of finding alignments
highly similar to, or even identical to, eye-examined alignments.Comment: Peer-reviewed and presented as part of the 13th Workshop on
Algorithms in Bioinformatics (WABI2013
Levels and equivalence in credit and qualifications frameworks: Contrasting the prescribed and enacted curriculum in school and college
Drawing on data from an empirical study of three matched subjects in upper secondary school and further education college in Scotland, this article explores some of the factors that result in differences emerging from the translation of the prescribed curriculum into the enacted curriculum. We argue that these differences raise important questions about equivalences which are being promoted through the development of credit and qualifications frameworks. The article suggests that the standardisation associated with the development of a rational credit and qualifications framework and an outcomes-based prescribed curriculum cannot be achieved precisely because of the multiplicity that emerges from the practices of translation
An analysis of the status of democracy in South Africa, with specific reference to local government
KrygskundePolitieke Wetenskap (Mil.)Please help us populate SUNScholar with the post print version of this article. It can be e-mailed to: [email protected]
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Quantifying surplus and sustainability in the archaeological record at the carthaginian-roman urban mound of zita, tripolitania
Cultural ecological theory is applied to a spatially and temporally bounded archaeological data set to document long-term paleoeco-logical processes and associated sociopolitical behaviors. Volumetric excavations, treating the material culture of an archaeological matrix similar to an ecological core, can yield quantifiable frequencies of surplus goods that provide a multiproxy empirical lens into incremental changes in land use practices, natural resource consumption, and, in this case, likely overexploitation. Archaeological methods are employed to quantify cultural ecological processes of natural resource exploitation, industrial intensification, sustainability and scarcity, and settlement collapse during the colonial transition between Carthaginian and Roman North Africa. The data indicate that overexploitation of olive timber for metallurgical fuel taxed the ecological metabolism of the Zita resource base, likely contributing to a collapse of the entire local economic system. © 2021 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved.12 month embargo; published online 20 July 2021This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]
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