6,353 research outputs found
The impact of masculinity upon men with psychosis who reside in secure forensic settings
Purpose
Masculinity is a core cognitive structure that plays a central role in organising attitudinal and behavioural processes. Yet there is limited research focussing upon the meaning of masculinity for men who have a past history of violent behaviour, who experience psychotic phenomena and reside in secure forensic settings. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
Q-methodology was used to elucidate the factors regarding how men who experience psychotic phenomena perceive their masculinity. Ten participants from a secure forensic setting performed a 49-statement Q-sort task.
Findings
Principal component factor analysis with varimax rotation was performed on the ten completed Q-sorts which revealed a three-factor solution, accounting for 57 per cent of the variance in the data. The factors were interpreted and discussed under the following headings: âassured and asserting maverickâ, âcalm, confident, composed conformistâ and ânurturing provider in the face of adversityâ. This revealed that men with psychosis have different, predominantly pro-social explanatory frameworks for their representation of masculinity.
Research limitations/implications
This study revealed that men with psychosis have different, predominantly pro-social explanatory frameworks for their representation of masculinity. However, the study was limited by its lack of longitudinal assessment and the inclusion of a greater number of participants may have enhanced the representativeness and generalisability of the findings.
Practical implications
Therapeutic discussions in respect of masculinity itself could provide men with the opportunity to develop newer, more adaptive conceptualisations of themselves, help them develop greater self-awareness and understanding of the sources of their presenting concerns, which in turn could enhance a provisional formulation of their difficulties. It would also be potentially valuable to understand how these patterns of masculinity map onto coping, recovery style and service engagement. Furthermore, services could also benefit from becoming more aware of hospitalisation being a shameful perhaps stigmatizing time for men with psychosis.
Social implications
It may be useful for people working in healthcare settings to be aware of how the service users they support perceive their masculinity, so the existential and deeper needs of male patients are provided with enough consideration. This is an important point, as some individuals are often reluctant or neglect to enquire about individualâs psychotic experiences and gender identification.
Originality/value
Although forensic psychiatric care is primarily populated by men who have committed violent acts, there is a limited research focussing upon the meaning of masculinity in this context. This is in spite of evidence which shows that maladaptive perceptions of masculinity can be reinforced during time spent residing in secure settings. The cultural constructs of masculinity and their respective impact upon the diagnosis, management and outcome of psychosis has also received little attention. Therefore, this research represents new and significant contributions to the field
Targeted search for continuous gravitational waves: Bayesian versus maximum-likelihood statistics
We investigate the Bayesian framework for detection of continuous
gravitational waves (GWs) in the context of targeted searches, where the phase
evolution of the GW signal is assumed to be known, while the four amplitude
parameters are unknown. We show that the orthodox maximum-likelihood statistic
(known as F-statistic) can be rediscovered as a Bayes factor with an unphysical
prior in amplitude parameter space. We introduce an alternative detection
statistic ("B-statistic") using the Bayes factor with a more natural amplitude
prior, namely an isotropic probability distribution for the orientation of GW
sources. Monte-Carlo simulations of targeted searches show that the resulting
Bayesian B-statistic is more powerful in the Neyman-Pearson sense (i.e. has a
higher expected detection probability at equal false-alarm probability) than
the frequentist F-statistic.Comment: 12 pages, presented at GWDAW13, to appear in CQ
Combined color indexes and photometric structure of galaxies NGC 834 and NGC 1134
We present the results of BVRI photometry of two galaxies with active star
formation: NGC 834 and NGC 1134. Combined color index Q_{BVI} was used to
investigate the photometrical structure of the galaxies. Index Q_{BVI} is not
affected by internal extinction and is sensitive to the presence of blue stars.
Ring-like region with active star formation at 15" from the center reveals
itself in the Q_{BVI} map of NGC 834. Three-arm spiral structure is well-seen
on the Q_{BVI} map of NGC 1134.
We propose to use the combined indexes Q_{BVI} and similarly defined indices
as a tracers of Star Formation activity and structure of dusty galaxies.Comment: 3 pages, 4 embedded figures, LaTeX2e, using the EslabStyle.cls file,
presented as a poster in the 33rd ESLAB Symp. "Star formation from the small
to the large scale", Noordwijk, The Netherlands, 2-5 November 1999, (F.
Favata, A.A. Kaas & A. Wilson eds, ESA SP-445
Learning Timbre Analogies from Unlabelled Data by Multivariate Tree Regression
This is the Author's Original Manuscript of an article whose final and definitive form, the Version of Record, has been published in the Journal of New Music Research, November 2011, copyright Taylor & Francis. The published article is available online at http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/09298215.2011.596938
The Ontology of Intentional Agency in Light of Neurobiological Determinism: Philosophy Meets Folk Psychology
The moot point of the Western philosophical rhetoric about free will
consists in examining whether the claim of authorship to intentional, deliberative
actions fits into or is undermined by a one-way causal framework of determinism.
Philosophers who think that reconciliation between the two is possible are known as
metaphysical compatibilists. However, there are philosophers populating the other
end of the spectrum, known as the metaphysical libertarians, who maintain that claim
to intentional agency cannot be sustained unless it is assumed that indeterministic
causal processes pervade the action-implementation apparatus employed by the agent.
The metaphysical libertarians differ among themselves on the question of whether the
indeterministic causal relation exists between the series of intentional states and
processes, both conscious and unconscious, and the action, making claim for what has
come to be known as the event-causal view, or between the agent and the action,
arguing that a sort of agent causation is at work. In this paper, I have tried to propose
that certain features of both event-causal and agent-causal libertarian views need to be
combined in order to provide a more defendable compatibilist account accommodating
deliberative actions with deterministic causation. The ââagent-executed-eventcausal
libertarianismââ, the account of agency I have tried to develop here, integrates
certain plausible features of the two competing accounts of libertarianism turning
them into a consistent whole. I hope to show in the process that the integration of these
two variants of libertarianism does not challenge what some accounts of metaphysical
compatibilism proposeâthat there exists a broader deterministic relation between the
web of mental and extra-mental components constituting the agentâs dispositional
systemâthe agentâs beliefs, desires, short-term and long-term goals based on them,
the acquired social, cultural and religious beliefs, the general and immediate and
situational environment in which the agent is placed, etc. on the one hand and the
decisions she makes over her lifetime on the basis of these factors. While in the
ââIntroductionââ the philosophically assumed anomaly between deterministic causation
and the intentional act of deciding has been briefly surveyed, the second section is
devoted to the task of bridging the gap between compatibilism and libertarianism. The
next section of the paper turns to an analysis of folk-psychological concepts and
intuitions about the effects of neurochemical processes and prior mental events on the
freedom of making choices. How philosophical insights can be beneficially informed
by taking into consideration folk-psychological intuitions has also been discussed,
thus setting up the background for such analysis. It has been suggested in the end that
support for the proposed theory of intentional agency can be found in the folk-psychological intuitions, when they are taken in the right perspective
The bloodstream differentiation - division of Trypanosoma brucei studied using mitochondrial markers
In the bloodstream of its mammalian host, the African trypanosome Trypanosoma brucei undergoes a life cycle stage differentiation from a long, slender form to a short, stumpy form. This involves three known major events: exit from a proliferative cell cycle, morphological change and mitochondrial biogenesis. Previously, models have been proposed accounting for these events (Matthews & Gull 1994a). Refinement of, and discrimination between, these models has been hindered by a lack of stage-regulated antigens useful as markers at the single-cell level. We have now evaluated a variety of cytological markers and applied them to investigate the coordination of phenotypic differentiation and cell cycle arrest. Our studies have focused on the differential expression of the mitochondrial enzyme dihydrolipoamide dehydrogenase relative to the differentiation-division of bloodstream trypanosomes. The results implicate a temporal order of events: commitment, division, phenotypic differentiation
Atomic Beams
Contains research objectives and reports onLincoln Laboratory, Purchase Order DDL-B222U.S. Air Force under Air Force Contract AF19(604)-520
Turboprop cargo aircraft systems study
The effects of using advanced turboprop propulsion systems to reduce the fuel consumption and direct operating costs of cargo aircraft were studied, and the impact of these systems on aircraft noise and noise prints around a terminal area was determined. Parametric variations of aircraft and propeller characteristics were investigated to determine their effects on noiseprint areas, fuel consumption, and direct operating costs. From these results, three aircraft designs were selected and subjected to design refinements and sensitivity analyses. Three competitive turbofan aircraft were also defined from parametric studies to provide a basis for comparing the two types of propulsion
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