Phobia of the Supernatural: A Distinct but Poorly Recognized Specific Phobia With an Adverse Impact on Daily Living

The psychological and psychiatric literature has seldom appreciated the clinical fact that fears of ghosts and kindred supernatural worries may be a cause of intense discomfort, poor sleep, and socio-occupational impairment. In the present article, this claim is illustrated by the clinical features of six patients who developed intense anxiety when they had to sleep alone at night. The fears were first noticed in childhood and persisted into adolescence and adulthood. At these times, they were overwhelmed by images of ghosts and haunted houses often experiencing a vivid impression that an immaterial being not perceivable by the ordinary senses was hovering around. Comorbidity with other phobias was the rule. Owing to shame and self-consciousness, the fears were seldom if ever discussed with healthcare professionals. The overall clinical and psychopathological picture was consistent with a diagnosis of a specific phobia. In a few cases, response to pharmacological treatment and cognitive-behavioral intervention has alleviated the symptoms. “Phobia of the supernatural” may be more common than usually thought. It must actively be sought for in patients complaining of poor sleep and daytime somnolence, and in patients with other types of phobia. The differential diagnosis of phobia of the supernatural includes nocturnal panic attacks, psychosis, other types of phobia that tend to occur during the night, dissociative states of sleep, dementia, and a few rare presentations of epilepsy. Systematic studies must be carried out to settle the neurobiological correlates of phobia of the supernatural as well as the possible benefit of different modalities of pharmacological and psychological treatment

A component-based product line architecture for workflow management systems

This paper presents a component-based product line for workflow management systems. The process followed to design the product line was based on the Catalysis method. Extensions were made to represent variability across the process. The domain of workflow management systems has been shown to be appropriate to the application of the product line approach as there are a standard architecture and models established by a regulatory board, the Workflow Management Coalition. In addition, there is a demand for similar workflow management systems but with some different features. The product line architecture was evaluated with Rapide simulation tools. The evaluation was based on selected scenarios, thus, avoiding implementation issues. The strategy that has been used to populate the architecture and experiment with the product line is shown. In particular, the design of the workflow execution manager component is described

A product line for workflow management systems

This paper presents an ongoing research on the development of a component-based product line architecture for workflow management systems. The research includes a process to design the proposed product line, the population of the product with components, the product member production process, architecture evaluation mechanisms using architecture description languages and support tools, a variability management process and the development of case studies to evaluate each proposed technique

Suporte a grupo sobre a plataforma CORBA :: um estudo comparativo entre as abordagens /

Dissertação (Mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico

O Sistema Capitalista e o Espectro Autista: uma Análise sobre o Capacitismo e Eugenia sob um Olhar Marxista

Este trabalho objetiva demonstrar a relação entre o capitalismo e a promoção de um pensamento eugenista voltado à normalização de corpos para tornar o trabalhador “útil” para continuar produzindo valor. Para isso, se busca explicar sobre a deficiência e o espectro autista, além das diferenças entre os modelos médico e social. Sobre o pensamento eugenista de normalização de corpos autísticos, o foco maior será no Estado nazista alemão. E uma discussão acerca da Análise do Comportamento Aplicada (ABA), com informações sobre sua origem e uso atual para pessoas do espectro autista, com críticas à prática como essa intervenção tem sido normalizadora de corpos autísticos. A conclusão é que em ambos os casos são sintomáticos de como o capitalismo, por meio de medidas mais explícitas como o nazismo, ou medidas mais sutis, como a ABA, acabam por gerar ações excludentes e normalizadoras, sendo em casos mais extremos, onde não seja possível essa normalização, a morte

Cadastro de pessoas

Esta nota técnica apresenta os problemas e propõe soluções técnicas para a implantação do processo de atualização dos dados cadastrais. A atualização dos dados cadastrais dos usuários da rede UNA-SUS é um processo desejável para a evolução da segurança, qualidade e a validade da informação administrada pela Secretaria Executiva do Sistema UNA-SUS (SE-UNA-SUS)

Apitoxin harvest affects population development but not the hygienic behavior of African-derived honey bees

The biological properties of apitoxin have prompted its production for use in human and animal health applications. However, the apitoxin harvest triggers a defense reaction in honeybee colonies, which includes the release of alarm pheromones (isopentyl acetate and 2-heptanone), which cause stress and could cause behavioral changes that influence the routine activities of the colony. Considering the lack of data in the literature describing the effects of the prolonged harvesting of apitoxin, the present study conducted over a period of one year, aimed to investigate whether the apitoxin harvest influences population development and hygienic behavior of African-derived Apis mellifera (L.). We observed that apitoxin harvest affected the uncapped brood area of the colonies during the months of April, May, and June, and affected the capped brood area in July. The hygienic behavior of the colonies was not affected. Furthermore, we observed that during the study year, there was loss by abandonment of nine of the colonies subjected to apitoxin harvesting. We conclude that under the conditions of this study, the apitoxin harvest can negatively influence the development of the colony population during certain times of the year, without affecting the hygienic behavior of the colonies

Gender and Hemispheric Asymmetries in Acquired Sociopathy

The emergence of enduring antisocial personality changes in previously normal individuals, or “acquired sociopathy,” has consistently been reported in patients with bilateral injuries of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Over the past three decades, cases of acquired sociopathy with (a) bilateral or (b) unilateral sparing of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex have been reported. These cases indicate that at least in a few individuals (a') neural structures beyond the ventromedial prefrontal cortex are also critical for normal social behavior, and (b') the neural underpinnings of social cognition may be lateralized to one cerebral hemisphere. Moreover, researchers have presented evidence that lesion laterality and gender may interact in the production of acquired sociopathy. In the present review, we carried out a comprehensive literature survey seeking possible interactions between gender and hemispheric asymmetry in acquired sociopathy. We found 85 cases of acquired sociopathy due to bilateral (N = 48) and unilateral (N = 37) hemispheric injuries. A significant association between acquired sociopathy and right hemisphere damage was found in men, whereas lesions were bilateral in most women with acquired sociopathy. The present survey shows that: (i) the number of well-documented single-cases of acquired sociopathy is surprisingly small given the length of the historical record; (ii) acquired sociopathy was significantly more frequent in men after an injury of the right or of both cerebral hemispheres; and (iii) in most women who developed acquired sociopathy the injuries affected both cerebral hemispheres. These findings may be especially valuable to neuroscientists and to functional neurosurgeons in particular for the planning of tumor resections as well as for the choice of the best targets for therapeutic neuromodulation

Selective transfer in the acquisition of english double object constrctions by brazilian learners

The present study investigates the acquisition of the English double object constructions (GOLDBERG, 1995) by Brazilian learners. We hypothesize that, due to first language (L1) influences, the prepositional ditransitive construction (John gave a book to Mary) will be acquired earlier, while the ditransitive construction (John gave Mary a book) will be part of the learner’s interlanguages (SELINKER, 1972) only at the advanced level of proficiency. We also hypothesize that learners may transfer (ODLIN, 1989) the placement of the object pronoun in pre-verbal position from their L1 to their interlanguage in early stages of acquisition (João me deu um livro / *John me gave a book). We test our hypotheses by comparing the performance of three groups of learners (beginning, intermediate, and advanced) and native speakers of English on an acceptability judgment task used as a measure of learnability and generalization. Results confirm the order of acquisition of the English double object constructions predicted for native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. Moreover, results suggest that, although mother tongue influences may have taken place, they do not do so pervasively, but rather selectively, corroborating the proposal by Kellerman (1983)