Designing pre-bariatric surgery education: The value of Patients' experiences

Within the field of bariatric surgery, preoperative education to empower patients to adapt to the postoperative lifestyle and get the best outcomes in terms of health and quality of life is not standardised across the UK and is based mainly on clinical experience. In this study, the authors used qualitative research and a structured framework to design a preoperative psychosocial education course for people undergoing surgery. Qualitative interviews were performed to determine issues that previous surgery recipients felt were missing from their preoperative education, and the current educational course was redesigned to include this content. The study provides a template from which other Trusts could evaluate and improve their education

Female-perpetrated sexual abuse: a review of victim and professional perspectives

Professional attitudes towards female-perpetrated sexual abuse (FPSA) reportedly reflect he gender-role expectations found in broader society, which cast males almost exclusively as sexual aggressors or willing sexual recipients, females as sexually non-coercive or victims and male-perpetrated sexual abuse as particularly significant or injurious. Such views, however, appear to stand in contrast to the perspectives of individuals who have experienced FPSA. This paper details a systematic review of peer-reviewed quantitative and qualitative literature examining these different (professional and victim) perspectives. Although the methodological shortcomings of primary papers limit the conclusions that can be drawn, the findings suggest that victim and professional perspectives of FPSA remain discrepant; professionals generally considered FPSA as less serious, less harmful and less deserving of investigation than male-perpetrated abuse; while victims of FPSA felt their experiences influenced significantly their psychological wellbeing and abilities to form and maintain interpersonal relationships. These findings are discussed in relation to professional practice and suggestions for future research

Do Gravity-Related Sensory Information Enable the Enhancement of Cortical Proprioceptive Inputs When Planning a Step in Microgravity?

International audienceWe recently found that the cortical response to proprioceptive stimulation was greater when participants were planning a step than when they stood still, and that this sensory facilitation was suppressed in microgravity. The aim of the present study was to test whether the absence of gravity-related sensory afferents during movement planning in microgravity prevented the proprioceptive cortical processing to be enhanced. We reestablished a reference frame in microgravity by providing and translating a horizontal support on which the participants were standing and verified whether this procedure restored the proprioceptive facilitation. The slight translation of the base of support (lateral direction), which occurred prior to step initiation, stimulated at least cutaneous and vestibular receptors. The sensitivity to proprioceptive stimulation was assessed by measuring the amplitude of the cortical somatosensory-evoked potential (SEP, over the Cz electrode) following the vibration of the leg muscle. The vibration lasted 1 s and the participants were asked to either initiate a step at the vibration offset or to remain still. We found that the early SEP (90–160 ms) was smaller when the platform was translated than when it remained stationary, revealing the existence of an interference phenomenon (i.e., when proprioceptive stimulation is preceded by the stimulation of different sensory modalities evoked by the platform translation). By contrast, the late SEP (550 ms post proprioceptive stimulation onset) was greater when the translation preceded the vibration compared to a condition without pre-stimulation (i.e., no translation). This suggests that restoring a body reference system which is impaired in microgravity allowed a greater proprioceptive cortical processing. Importantly, however, the late SEP was similarly increased when participants either produced a step or remained still. We propose that the absence of step-induced facilitation of proprioceptive cortical processing results from a decreased weight of proprioception in the absence of balance constraints in microgravity

De-constructing Risk, Therapeutic Needs and the Dangerous Personality Disordered Subject

The focus of this article is on the Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder (DSPD) programme and its successor, the Offender Personality Disorder Pathway: two initiatives in England and Wales with the aim of protecting the public from dangerous offenders through a combination of preventive detention and therapeutic intervention in prisons and psychiatric hospitals. In this article, I first explore how the dangerous yet potentially redeemable DSPD subject was constructed by policymakers before turning to examine how the risks this group posed were translated into therapeutic needs under the DSPD programme. In so doing, I contend that prisoners’ mental health needs are not only targeted for humane reasons but also as a means of facilitating the cost-effective management of difficult and disruptive individuals. Furthermore, meeting these needs can serve as an intermediate step towards drawing difficult prisoners into mainstream offending behaviour programmes explicitly targeting criminogenic risk factors. Ultimately, I conclude that, given that meeting prisoners’ mental health needs is contingent on the compatibility of therapeutic regimes with the priorities of the prison, treatment programmes will ultimately yield to the overriding concerns of security and control in the event of conflict

Sensory modulation of movement, posture and locomotion

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Women who Sexually Offend Display Three Main Offense Styles: A Re-Examination of the Descriptive Model of Female Sexual Offending

This study examined a theory constructed to describe the offense process of women who sexually offend-the Descriptive Model of Female Sexual Offending (DMFSO). In particular, this report sets out to establish whether the original three pathways (or offending styles) identified within United Kingdom convicted female sexual offenders and described within the DMFSO (i.e., Explicit-Approach, Directed-Avoidant, Implicit-Disorganized) were applicable to a small sample (N = 36) of North American women convicted of sexual offending. Two independent raters examined the offense narratives of the sample and-using the DMFSO-coded each script according to whether it fitted one of the three original pathways. Results suggested that the three existing pathways of the DMFSO represented a reasonable description of offense pathways for a sample of North American women convicted of sexual offending. No new pathways were identified. A new "Offense Pathway Checklist" devised to aid raters' decision making is described and future research and treatment implications explored

LEAST SQUARE APPROACH FOR ESTIMATING OF LAND SURFACE TEMPERATURE FROM LANDSAT-8 SATELLITE DATA USING RADIATIVE TRANSFER EQUATION

Land Surface Temperature (LST) is one of the significant variables measured by remotely sensed data, and it is applied in many environmental and Geoscience studies. The main aim of this study is to develop an algorithm to retrieve the LST from Landsat-8 satellite data using Radiative Transfer Equation (RTE). However, LST can be retrieved from RTE, but, since the RTE has two unknown parameters including LST and surface emissivity, estimating LST from RTE is an under the determined problem. In this study, in order to solve this problem, an approach is proposed an equation set includes two RTE based on Landsat-8 thermal bands (i.e.: band 10 and 11) and two additional equations based on the relation between the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and emissivity of Landsat-8 thermal bands by using simulated data for Landsat-8 bands. The iterative least square approach was used for solving the equation set. The LST derived from proposed algorithm is evaluated by the simulated dataset, built up by MODTRAN. The result shows the Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) is less than 1.18°K. Therefore; the proposed algorithm can be a suitable and robust method to retrieve the LST from Landsat-8 satellite data

Urban Heat Island Growth Modeling Using Artificial Neural Networks and Support Vector Regression: A case study of Tehran, Iran

Numerous investigations on Urban Heat Island (UHI) show that land cover change is the main factor of increasing Land Surface Temperature (LST) in urban areas. Therefore, to achieve a model which is able to simulate UHI growth, urban expansion should be concerned first. Considerable researches on urban expansion modeling have been done based on cellular automata. Accordingly the objective of this paper is to implement CA method for trend detection of Tehran UHI spatiotemporal growth based on urban sprawl parameters (such as Distance to nearest road, Digital Elevation Model (DEM), Slope and Aspect ratios). It should be mentioned that UHI growth modeling may have more complexities in comparison with urban expansion, since the amount of each pixel’s temperature should be investigated instead of its state (urban and non-urban areas). The most challenging part of CA model is the definition of Transfer Rules. Here, two methods have used to find appropriate transfer Rules which are Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) and Support Vector Regression (SVR). The reason of choosing these approaches is that artificial neural networks and support vector regression have significant abilities to handle the complications of such a spatial analysis in comparison with other methods like Genetic or Swarm intelligence. In this paper, UHI change trend has discussed between 1984 and 2007. For this purpose, urban sprawl parameters in 1984 have calculated and added to the retrieved LST of this year. In order to achieve LST, Thematic Mapper (TM) and Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM+) night-time images have exploited. The reason of implementing night-time images is that UHI phenomenon is more obvious during night hours. After that multilayer feed-forward neural networks and support vector regression have used separately to find the relationship between this data and the retrieved LST in 2007. Since the transfer rules might not be the same in different regions, the satellite image of the city has divided to several parts and for each part a specific CA model has defined. In the training step some pixels have randomly selected to calibrate the neural network and the regression. Then, using the trained neural network and support vector regression, LST in year 2007 has retrieved for all pixels. Results have indicated a great relationship between the simulated LST and the real one which has retrieved from thermal band of satellite image in 2007 (r = 0.843 for ANN method and r = 0.856 for SVR method). Although SVR caused to a better result, this method is much more time consuming than ANN method, especially when the number of training pixels increase