What Does Islam Say About Dieting?

Dieting is very important to maintain a healthy and peaceful life. Today, most of the health problems are related with dieting. Thus, the modern health science recommends a number of suggestions regarding dieting for better health such as learning the five basic food groups (grains, vegetables, fruits, dairy, and meat); eating three times a day; decreasing the amount of fat; increasing the amount of fruits, vegetables and grains; including an adequate amount of iron; and avoiding excessive rich food, salt, sugar, and fat. Religion can also play a vital role for our good health and lifestyle. The main concern of this paper was to present an analytical justification regarding what Islam as a religion advocates about dieting along with the modern food and nutrition sciences.     

Perceptions of Challenges Affecting Research Ethics Committees’ Members at Medical and Health Science Colleges in Omani and Jordanian Universities

Journal of Academic Ethics - In recent years there has been an increase in research conducted in the Middle East, with a corresponding increase in the challenges faced by members of the Research...     

Using International Videoconferencing to Provide Staff Training on Functional Behavioral Assessment

Videoconferencing has been successfully implemented to teach functional analysis (FA) procedures to service providers who support individuals with autism spectrum disorders. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the acquisition of the competencies for implementing FA methodology for special education teachers after participation in a group‐format workshop via a videoconferencing program in which the training site and the remote site were located on different continents, connected through the internet. Four special education teachers in Saudi Arabia who did not have previous exposure to functional behavior assessment participated in the study. Teachers received 3 h of group‐format training via Skype followed by individualized feedback. Training involved role‐playing, video modeling, and reading materials. Results indicate that all four participants mastered the skills across at least two of the conditions with one participant demonstrating mastery across all four conditions. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Identity Theft in the Academic World Leads to Junk Science

In recent years, identity theft has been growing in the academic world. Cybercriminals create fake profiles for prominent scientists in attempts to manipulate the review and publishing process. Without permission, some fraudulent journals use the names of standout researchers on their editorial boards in the effort to look legitimate. This opinion piece, highlights some of the usual types of identity theft and their role in spreading junk science. Some general guidelines that editors and researchers can use against such attacks are presented.     

Doing the Right Thing: A Qualitative Investigation of Retractions Due to Unintentional Error

Retractions solicited by authors following the discovery of an unintentional error—what we henceforth call a “self-retraction”—are a new phenomenon of growing importance, about which very little is known. Here we present results of a small qualitative study aimed at gaining preliminary insights about circumstances, motivations and beliefs that accompanied the experience of a self-retraction. We identified retraction notes that unambiguously reported an honest error and that had been published between the years 2010 and 2015. We limited our sample to retractions with at least one co-author based in the Netherlands, Belgium, United Kingdom, Germany or a Scandinavian country, and we invited these authors to a semi-structured interview. Fourteen authors accepted our invitation. Contrary to our initial assumptions, most of our interviewees had not originally intended to retract their paper. They had contacted the journal to request a correction and the decision to retract had been made by journal editors. All interviewees reported that having to retract their own publication made them concerned for their scientific reputation and career, often causing considerable stress and anxiety. Interviewees also encountered difficulties in communicating with the journal and recalled other procedural issues that had unnecessarily slowed down the process of self-retraction. Intriguingly, however, all interviewees reported how, contrary to their own expectations, the self-retraction had brought no damage to their reputation and in some cases had actually improved it. We also examined the ethical motivations that interviewees ascribed, retrospectively, to their actions and found that such motivations included a combination of moral and prudential (i.e. pragmatic) considerations. These preliminary results suggest that scientists would welcome innovations to facilitate the process of self-retraction.     

Psychometric Characteristics of the Wish to Be Dead Scale (WDS) in Iranian Psychiatric Outpatients

The Wish to be Dead Scale (WDS) was administered to a convenience sample of 200 Iranian psychiatric outpatients. Using a Principal Component Analysis, two factors were identified, labeled Lack of purpose in life (F1), and Lack of interest in living (F2). The WDS had good reliability and significant positive correlations with scores on the Beck Suicide Ideation Scale and with other measures of mental ill-health. This study provides evidence of the usefulness of the WDS for assessing psychiatric patients.     

The impact of a laryngectomy on the spouse: Who is better off?

Background: Diabetes self-care is a key element in the overall management of diabetes. However, the importance of psychosocial factors for successful disease management is under investigated. This study aimed at exploring the role of coping styles and social support in the relationship between self-care activities and glycated haemoglobin in patients with type 2 diabetes.

Methods: One hundred adults (60% female, aged 40–70 years) with type 2 diabetes completed questionnaires assessing self-care activities, coping styles and social support. In addition, a blood test was performed to obtain glycated haemoglobin levels.

Results: Result showed significant relationships of glycated haemoglobin with self-care activities, coping styles and social support. Regression analysis indicated that social support had a moderating role on the relationship between self-care activities and glycated haemoglobin, such that, at very high levels of social support the association, between Self-Care and HbA1c disappears.

Conclusions: Findings indicate that health care providers, within the context of the Iranian social and cultural situation, should pay more attention to psychosocial factors when addressing self-care activities. Delineation of the role of coping styles and social support might be useful for identifying patients in need of particular counselling and support for improving self-care activities and HbA1c levels.     

A model of amygdala–hippocampal–prefrontal interaction in fear conditioning and extinction in animals

Empirical research has shown that the amygdala, hippocampus, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) are involved in fear conditioning. However, the functional contribution of each brain area and the nature of their interactions are not clearly understood. Here, we extend existing neural network models of the functional roles of the hippocampus in classical conditioning to include interactions with the amygdala and prefrontal cortex. We apply the model to fear conditioning, in which animals learn physiological (e.g. heart rate) and behavioral (e.g. freezing) responses to stimuli that have been paired with a highly aversive event (e.g. electrical shock). The key feature of our model is that learning of these conditioned responses in the central nucleus of the amygdala is modulated by two separate processes, one from basolateral amygdala and signaling a positive prediction error, and one from the vmPFC, via the intercalated cells of the amygdala, and signaling a negative prediction error. In addition, we propose that hippocampal input to both vmPFC and basolateral amygdala is essential for contextual modulation of fear acquisition and extinction. The model is sufficient to account for a body of data from various animal fear conditioning paradigms, including acquisition, extinction, reacquisition, and context specificity effects. Consistent with studies on lesioned animals, our model shows that damage to the vmPFC impairs extinction, while damage to the hippocampus impairs extinction in a different context (e.g., a different conditioning chamber from that used in initial training in animal experiments). We also discuss model limitations and predictions, including the effects of number of training trials on fear conditioning.