The Relationship Between Suicide Ideation and Parasuicide: An Electrophysiological Investigation Using the Loudness Dependence of Auditory Evoked Potential

The loudness dependence of the auditory evoked potential (LDAEP) has been proposed as a promising valid and a non-invasive indicator of behaviorally relevant central 5-HT functioning. There is limited research on the utility of the LDAEP in discriminating individuals who engage in various degrees of suicidal behavior. The primary purpose of the present study was to examine if the LDAEP, as a measure of central serotonergic functioning, can be useful in distinguishing groups of individuals who: (a) solely experience suicidal ideation (SI group); (b) experience suicidal ideation and have engaged in deliberate self-harm acts (SH group); and (c) individuals with no history of suicidal ideation or deliberate self-harm behavior (control group). I was also interested in observing whether the nature of individuals’ suicidal behavior (i.e., cognitive versus cognitive and behavioral) would differentiate individuals’ performance on Self-Aggression Paradigm (behavioral measure of self-aggression; SAP) and Suicide-Implicit Association Test (reaction-time based measure of implicit cognitive associations with death/suicide; S-IAT). Forty-eight participants consisting of college students and community members were recruited for this study. I predicted that (1) The SH group would exhibit the largest LDAEP slope, followed by the SI group, and finally the Control group; (2) The SH group would obtain the largest mean shock score and would self-select the highest number of “20” shock, followed by the SI group, and finally the Control group; (3) SI and SH groups would obtain a more negative S-IAT index, indicating pro-suicide tendencies, than the Control group; (4) the LDAEP slope would be positively related to the SAP indexes and negatively related to S-IAT index; and (5) the LDAEP would be positively related to the self-report measures of self-harm behavior and aggression, and negatively related to self-report measure of reasons for living. Contrary to expectations, most of our predictions were not supported. Clinical implications and future research directions are discussed

ITF Enhancing Human Security Develops New Strategic Goals

In response to changing global challenges, ITF Enhancing Human Security broadened its focus from mine action to human security

Assessing the negotiation experience: quick accession or good representation?

This article examines the negotiation phase on two levels: First, it assesses domestic organising, the processes of adopting a negotiating position and the relevant actors involved. By a comparative analysis of the experiences from Estonia, Slovenia and Hungary, "best management" practises will be condensed. These are subsequently applied to Croatian negotiation management in order to identify potential problems. In a second step, the findings will be put into the wider context of the political consequences of the negotiation strategy, providing recommendations for alternative modes of domestic organising. It will be argued that the Croatian negotiation structure is streamlined in order to match ambitions to complete negotiations in a very short time. However, this institutional set-up concentrates one-dimensionally on executive expertise and reinforces problems in domestic representation and legitimisation. It therefore fails to accommodate to new strategic developments like enlargement-fatigue in the European Union and "euro-fatigue" in Croatia

Process-oriented Iterative Multiple Alignment for Medical Process Mining

Adapted from biological sequence alignment, trace alignment is a process mining technique used to visualize and analyze workflow data. Any analysis done with this method, however, is affected by the alignment quality. The best existing trace alignment techniques use progressive guide-trees to heuristically approximate the optimal alignment in O(N2L2) time. These algorithms are heavily dependent on the selected guide-tree metric, often return sum-of-pairs-score-reducing errors that interfere with interpretation, and are computationally intensive for large datasets. To alleviate these issues, we propose process-oriented iterative multiple alignment (PIMA), which contains specialized optimizations to better handle workflow data. We demonstrate that PIMA is a flexible framework capable of achieving better sum-of-pairs score than existing trace alignment algorithms in only O(NL2) time. We applied PIMA to analyzing medical workflow data, showing how iterative alignment can better represent the data and facilitate the extraction of insights from data visualization.Comment: accepted at ICDMW 201

Performance testing of a low power consumption wireless sensor communication system integrated with an energy harvesting power source

This paper presents the performance testing results of a wireless sensor communication system with low power consumption integrated with a vibration energy harvesting power source. The experiments focus on the system’s capability to perform continuous monitoring and to wirelessly transmit the data acquired from the sensors to a user base station, completely battery-free. Energy harvesting technologies together with system design optimisation for power consumption minimisation ensure the system’s energy autonomous capability demonstrated in this paper by presenting the promising testing results achieved following its integration with Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) and Body Area Network (BAN) applications

Duty-cycle passive time characterisation for input power and energy storage variation of an energy harvesting tailored wireless sensing system

Open access journalThis experimental study investigates the duty-cycle passive times modifications for a low power wireless sensing system (WSS) designed for energy harvesting technology when its input power level and energy storage size are varying. The different low power WSSs presented in the literature feature specific designs aimed at solving particular problems, and due to their specificity their performance indicators are not directly comparable. As a result of this incompatibility, one cannot identify a correlation between the input power, energy storage element size, passive and active time variations to evaluate the potential usability of the system for static or dynamic testing. The present work covers this result comparison gap induced by the incompatibility factor, providing the experimental data obtained as a result of input power level and energy storage size variation for the same low power WSS, thus generating a reference point for the advanced designer and also for the inexperienced user. The experimental results illustrate that, by varying the storage capacity of a low power WSS, its input power range can be enlarged by up to 20 times.Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC

ITF: A Look at the Past, Present and Future of Mine Action

The International Trust Fund for Demining and Mine Victims Assistance (ITF) was established March 12, 1998, by the government of the Republic of Slovenia. The main activities of ITF are demining, mine victims assistance (MVA), training, mine awareness, mine risk education (MRE), Geographical Information Systems (GIS) development and regional cooperation. In the years since its inception, ITF has developed into the main regional actor in the field of mine action (MA) in the region of southeastern Europe (SEE). In addition, ITF is strongly involved in connecting the region through the Southeastern Europe Mine Action Coordination Council (SEEMACC)