Building cardiovascular disease competence in an urban poor Ghanaian community: A social psychology of participation approach

This paper describes conceptual, methodological, and practical insights from a longitudinal social psychological project that aims to build cardiovascular disease (CVD) competence in a poor community in Accra, Ghana's capital. Informed by a social psychology of participation approach, mixed method data included qualitative interviews and household surveys from over 500 community members, including people living with diabetes, hypertension, and stroke, their caregivers, health care providers, and GIS mapping of pluralistic health systems, food vending sites, bars, and physical activity spaces. Data analysis was informed by the diagnosis‐psychosocial intervention‐reflexivity framework proposed by Guareschi and Jovchelovitch. The community had a high prevalence of CVD and risk factors, and CVD knowledge was cognitive polyphasic. The environment was obesogenic, alcohol promoting, and medically pluralistic. These factors shaped CVD experiences and eclectic treatment seeking behaviours. Psychosocial interventions included establishing a self‐help group and community screening and education. Applying the “AIDS‐competent communities” model proposed by Campbell and colleagues, we outline the psychosocial features of CVD competence that are relatively easy to implement, albeit with funds and labour, and those that are difficult. We offer a reflexive analysis of four challenges that future activities will address: social protection, increasing men's participation, connecting national health policy to community needs, and sustaining the project.     

Assessment of Executive Functions after Treatment of Childhood Acute Lymphoid Leukemia: a Systematic Review

Neuropsychology Review - Individuals treated for childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) have a high survival rate. This fact, however, may lead to neurocognitive impairments in survivors, as...     

Ethical Decision Making in Autonomous Vehicles: The AV Ethics Project

Science and Engineering Ethics - The ethics of autonomous vehicles (AV) has received a great amount of attention in recent years, specifically in regard to their decisional policies in accident...     

Is Multiculturalism Discriminatory?

Res Publica - Many political theorists are multiculturalists. They believe that states ought to support and accommodate minority cultures, even if they disagree about when such support and...     

Thought-shape fusion in anorexia nervosa: an experimental investigation

Cognitive biases and cognitive distortions have been implicated as important factors in the development and maintenance of many disorders. The concept of thought-shape fusion (TSF) in eating disorders was developed by Shafran, Teachman, Kerry, and Rachman (British Journal of Clinical Psychology 38 (1999) 167) as a variant of thought-action fusion, described by Shafran, Thordarson and Rachman (Journal of Anxiety Disorders 10 (1996) 379). TSF occurs when thinking about eating certain types of food increases a person's estimate of their shape and/or weight, elicits a perception of moral wrongdoing, and/or makes the person feel fat. Shafran et al. (1999) examined both the psychometric and experimental properties of TSF in an undergraduate sample. This paper reports an extension of this work to a clinical group (N=20) of patients with anorexia nervosa. After completing a set of relevant questionnaires, participants were asked to think about a food which they considered extremely fattening. They were then asked to write out the sentence, "I am eating--.", inserting the name of the fattening food in the blank. After being asked to rate their anxiety, guilt, feelings about their weight, morality, etc., participants were given the opportunity to neutralize their statement in any way they chose. The majority of the participants neutralized in ways consistent with the findings of Shafran et al. (1999). The results are discussed in terms of cognitive-behavioural formulations of eating disorders, and of the influence of cognitive biases and cognitive distortions on the processing of information relevant to food, weight and shape in anorexia nervosa.     

Physical activity,motor ability,and school readiness of 6-yr.-old children

The aim of this investigation was to study the relationships between physical activity, motor ability, and school readiness in 6-yr.-old children. In total, 294 healthy children from Tartu were studied (161 boys and 133 girls). The physical activity of children was reported by parents and teachers using the questionnaire of Harro. The motor ability of children was evaluated using various tests from the Eurofit test battery as well as the 3-min. endurance shuttle run test. The Controlled Drawing Observation rest was used as a predictor of school readiness and development of mental abilities. Indoor physical activities predicted 19-25% of total variance in motor scores for these preschool children. Motor ability tests, which demand children's total attention and concentration, appear related to the chosen measures of school readiness.     

Classical Non-Associative Lambek Calculus

We introduce non-associative linear logic, which may be seen as the classical version of the non-associative Lambek calculus. We define its sequent calculus, its theory of proof-nets, for which we give a correctness criterion and a sequentialization theorem, and we show proof search in it is polynomial.     

Satisfiability Testing for Boolean Formulas Using Δ-trees

The tree-based data structure of -tree for propositional formulas is introduced in an improved and optimised form. The -trees allow a compact representation for negation normal forms as well as for a number of reduction strategies in order to consider only those occurrences of literals which are relevant for the satisfiability of the input formula. These reduction strategies are divided into two subsets (meaning- and satisfiability-preserving transformations) and can be used to decrease the size of a negation normal form A at (at most) quadratic cost. The reduction strategies are aimed at decreasing the number of required branchings and, therefore, these strategies allow to limit the size of the search space for the SAT problem.     

Neuronal changes in normal human aging and Alzheimer's disease

This article discusses age-related changes in brain weight, total number of cortical neurons, cortical dendrites, spine, and synapse density. The conclusion is that the present outlook is less grim than it was 30 years ago. Age-related reduction appears to be specific to brain region and cortical layer rather than a general feature. In addition, we describe a different pattern of changes that occur in Alzheimer's disease patients. This review concludes that the association cortices in particular are affected in aging and Alzheimer's disease and that the primary visual and somatosensory cortices are relatively spared.