Innovative psychological treatments for depression

A number of high-intensity psychosocial interventions have been shown to be as efficacious as and more enduring than medications in the treatment of nonpsychotic depression. Moreover, there have been important advances in the development of strategies to facilitate the selection of the best treatment for a given patient with a depression diagnosis. However, the demand for services is too great to be met by conventional high-intensity approaches alone. Some of the most exciting work in recent years has focused on the development of low-intensity approaches that can benefit many people and do so cost-effectively

Introducing the modified paranormal belief scale: distinguishing between classic paranormal beliefs, religious paranormal beliefs and conventional religiosity among undergraduates in Northern Ireland and Wales

Previous empirical studies concerned with the association between paranormal beliefs and conventional religiosity have produced conflicting evidence. Drawing on Rice's (2003) distinction between classic paranormal beliefs and religious paranormal beliefs, the present study proposed a modified form of the Tobacyk Revised Paranormal Belief Scale to produce separate scores for these two forms of paranormal belief, styled 'religious paranormal beliefs' and 'classic paranormal beliefs'. Data provided by a sample of 143 undergraduate students in Northern Ireland and Wales, who completed the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity alongside the Tobacyk Revised Paranormal Belief Scale, demonstrated that conventional religiosity is positively correlated with religious paranormal beliefs, but independent of classic paranormal beliefs. These findings provide a clear framework within which previous conflicting evidence can be interpreted. It is recommended that future research should distinguish clearly between these two forms of paranormal beliefs and that the Tobacyk Revised Paranormal Beliefs Scale should be routinely modified to detach the four religious paranormal belief items from the total scale score

A time-line approach for the generation of simulated settlements

In this paper we present a model for procedurally generating virtual settlements populated with roads, land parcels and buildings. Our model improves on existing research by considering historical influence on settlement growth. To do this, an interactive time-line is used, allowing for a designer to specify a number of architectural periods. These architectural periods are then used in the generation process, giving the designer a robust tool to interactively generate photo-realistic urban scenes. Our results show that a variety of settlement types and sizes can be generated. In addition, we demonstrate that road patterns within real-world settlements can be created using our system

Real-Time Analysis of Drosophila Post-Embryonic Haemocyte Behaviour

BACKGROUND: The larval stage of the model organism Drosophila is frequently used to study host-pathogen interactions. During embryogenesis the cellular arm of the immune response, consisting of macrophage-like cells known as plasmatocytes, is extremely motile and functions to phagocytise pathogens and apoptotic bodies, as well as produce extracellular matrix. The cellular branch of the larval (post-embryonic) innate immune system consists of three cell types-plasmatocytes, crystal cells and lamellocytes-which are involved in the phagocytosis, encapsulation and melanisation of invading pathogens. Post-embryonic haemocyte motility is poorly understood thus further characterisation is required, for the purpose of standardisation. METHODOLOGY: In order to examine post-embryonic haemocyte cytoskeletal dynamics or migration, the most commonly used system is in vitro cell lines. The current study employs an ex vivo system (an adaptation of in vitro cell incubation using primary cells), in which primary larval or pre-pupal haemocytes are isolated for short term analysis, in order to discover various aspects of their behaviour during events requiring cytoskeleton dynamics. SIGNIFICANCE: The ex vivo method allows for real-time analysis and manipulation of primary post-embryonic haemocytes. This technique was used to characterise, and potentially standardised, larval and pre-pupal haemocyte cytoskeleton dynamics, assayed on different extracellular matrices. Using this method it was determined that, while larval haemocytes are unable to migrate, haemocytes recovered from pre-pupae are capable of migration