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Selected AbstractsThe effect of attentional training on body dissatisfaction and dietary restrictionEUROPEAN EATING DISORDERS REVIEW, Issue 3 2009Evelyn Smith Abstract The aim of the present study is to investigate the effect of attentional training towards shape, weight and food related information on body dissatisfaction and dietary restriction. A total of 98 female participants were trained to attend to negative shape/weight words, positive shape/weight words, negative (high calorie) food words, positive (low calorie) food words or neutral words. Subsequently, a body image challenge was presented and participants' body dissatisfaction and dietary restriction were measured. Results indicated that negative shape/weight attentional biases exacerbated body dissatisfaction and a bias towards negative food words intensified dietary restriction. The study provides evidence for specificity in the effects of attentional biases and supports the notion that attentional training may be a useful component in interventions to improve body image and reduce dieting. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association. [source] Clinical guidelines: attitudes, information processes and culture in English primary careINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HEALTH PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2001George Dowswell Abstract The application to clinical medicine of evidence-based clinical guidelines is an increasingly international policy prescription, yet research on how such guidelines might be implemented has tended to focus on change initiatives without seeking to understand change processes. This paper reports an empirical study of guideline implementation in UK general practice. Most GPs welcome guidelines as a means of improving care, though have reservations about their authority, relevance and effect on professional autonomy. ,Clan' organizational culture predominates and general practices do not generally have well-functioning internal arrangements for the management of clinical evidence and related information. We found no coherent relationships between these variables and practices' actual uptake of guidelines. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Classification of leaf imagesINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF IMAGING SYSTEMS AND TECHNOLOGY, Issue 1 2006Chia-Ling Lee Abstract There are tremendous content-based retrieval systems. Most of them are applied to general image databases. Some were proposed for specified databases such as texture databases, ancient paintings, document image databases, digital mammography, face image databases, etc. However, there are fewer for plant databases. Plants are used in various fields such as in foodstuff, medicine, and industry. Recently, plant is important for environment protection. On the other hand, the problem of plant destruction becomes worse in the few years. We should train people to know about plants, in turn, to treasure and protect them. In addition to the limited number of expert botanists, the convenient content-based retrieval system for plant is necessary and useful, since it can retrieve related information and knowledge from plant database for the query leaf so as to facilitate fast learning of plants. In this study, a leaf database is constructed and a classification method for leaves is proposed. Most approaches for leaf classification in literature used contour-based features. The proposed method tries to use region-based features. The reasons are that region-based features are more robust than contour-based features since significant curvature points are hard to find. Those features adopted include aspect ratio, compactness, centroid, and horizontal/vertical projections. The effectiveness of the proposed method has been demonstrated by various experiments. On the average, our method has the classification accuracy for 1-NN rule as 82.33% and the recall rate for 10 returned images as 48.2%, while the contour-based method has 37.6% and 21.7%, respectively. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 16, 15,23, 2006 [source] Informed Investors and the InternetJOURNAL OF BUSINESS FINANCE & ACCOUNTING, Issue 7-8 2010Amir Rubin Abstract:, During the last decade the Internet has become an increasingly important source for gathering company related information. We employ Wikipedia editing frequency as an instrument that captures the degree in which the population is engaged with the processing of company-related information. We find that firms whose information is processed by the population more frequently are associated with lower analysts' forecast errors, smaller analysts' forecast dispersions, and significant changes in bid-ask spreads on analysts' recommendation days. These results indicate that information processing over the Internet is related to the degree to which investors and analysts are informed about companies. [source] Some Paths Toward Making Praxis Scores More UsefulJOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL MEASUREMENT, Issue 2 2000Howard Wainer In this study we describe an analytic method for aiding in the generation of subscales that characterize the deep structure of tests. In addition we also derive a procedure for estimating scores for these scales that are much more statistically stable than subscores computed solely from the items that are contained on that scale. These scores achieve their stability through augmentation with information from other related information on the test. These methods were used to complement each other on a data set obtained from a Praxis administration. We found that the deep structure of the test yielded ten subscales and that, because the test was essentially unidimensional, ten subscores could be computed, all with very high reliability. This result was contrasted with the calculation of six traditional subscales based on surface features of the items. These subscales also yielded augmented subscores of high reliability. [source] Ex post and ex ante prediction of unobserved multivariate time series: a structural-model based approachJOURNAL OF FORECASTING, Issue 1 2007Fabio H. Nieto Abstract A methodology for estimating high-frequency values of an unobserved multivariate time series from low-frequency values of and related information to it is presented in this paper. This is an optimal solution, in the multivariate setting, to the problem of ex post prediction, disaggregation, benchmarking or signal extraction of an unobservable stochastic process. Also, the problem of extrapolation or ex ante prediction is optimally solved and, in this context, statistical tests are developed for checking online the ocurrence of extreme values of the unobserved time series and consistency of future benchmarks with the present and past observed information. The procedure is based on structural or unobserved component models, whose assumptions and specification are validated with the data alone.,,Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Evaluation of HIV/AIDS Education in Russia Using a Video ApproachJOURNAL OF SCHOOL HEALTH, Issue 6 2000Mohammad R. Torabi ABSTRACT: HIV/AIDS has intruded upon the geographic, political, ethnic, gender, and sexual orientation of communities all over the world. As of April 1999, Russia has recorded approximately 13,532 cases of HIV infection. Since the costs of treatment are expensive for many countries, and especially for Russia, educational intervention appears to offer the most effective and affordable solution. A quasi-experimental design, with pre/post tests and intervention (through video education)/control groups, was used to study 20 public schools in St. Petersburg, Russia. Results confirmed the lack of HIV/AIDS education in schools and insufficient information sources from parents, friends, and public health education. ANCOVA statistics demonstrated that use of video education significantly improved students' scores on knowledge and attitudes related to HIV/AIDS prevention. Thus, health educators should consider video education as an effective and efficient tool to present facts to a young audience when they face constraints of shortage of funds, lack of trained teachers, and scarcity of related information. [source] Can Nutritional Label Use Influence Body Weight Outcomes?KYKLOS INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF SOCIAL SCIENCES, Issue 4 2009Andreas C. Drichoutis SUMMARY Many countries around the world have already mandated, or plan to mandate, the presence of nutrition related information on most pre-packaged food products. Health advocates and lobbyists would like to see similar laws mandating nutrition information in the restaurant and fast-food market as well. In fact, New York City has already taken a step forward and now requires all chain restaurants with 15 or more establishments anywhere in US to show calorie information on their menus and menu board. The benefits were estimated to be as much as 150,000 fewer obese New Yorkers over the next five years. The implied benefits of the presence of nutrition information are that consumers will be able to observe such information and then make informed (and hopefully healthier) food choices. In this study, we use the latest available dataset from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2005,2006) to explore whether reading such nutrition information really has an effect on body weight outcomes. In order to deal with the inherent problem of cross-sectional datasets, namely self-selection, and the possible occurrence of reverse causality we use a propensity score matching approach to estimate causal treatment effects. We conducted a series of tests related to variable choice of the propensity score specification, quality of matching indicators, robustness checks, and sensitivity to unobserved heterogeneity, using Rosenbaum bounds to validate our propensity score exercise. Our results generally suggest that reading nutrition information does not affect body mass index. The implications of our findings are also discussed. [source] Efficacy of risperidone in the treatment of delirium in elderly patientsPSYCHOGERIATRICS, Issue 2 2008Koji IKEZAWA Abstract Background:, Despite increasing recognition of delirium as a serious complication of physical illness, little has been reported in this area. Interest has been raised in treatment options other than haloperidol, such as atypical antipsychotic agents. Methods:, A 2-week open-label trial of risperidone for the treatment of delirium was conducted to assess the efficacy and tolerance of this medication in elderly patients. Twenty-two patients with DSM-IV-defined delirium were investigated. All patients had the hyperactive,hyperalert variant of delirium. Patients received a fixed dose of risperidone (mean 1.5 ± 0.7 mg; range 0.5,3 mg). Delirium was assessed using the Delirium Rating Scale (DRS) at baseline and on Days 1, 3, 5, 7, and 14 after the initiation of risperidone treatment. Clinical and demographic data, as well as risperidone therapy related information, were collected. Results:, Delirium resolved in all patients over the course of treatment. The mean period over which delirium resolved was 4.0 ± 2.9 days. The mean DRS score at baseline was 20.7 ± 3.0. The DRS score improved from baseline to Day 1 of treatment and continued to improve until the study end-point. Mild side-effects were present in 27.3% of patients. Stepwise logistic regression identified a decrease of 2 points or higher on the DRS on Day 1 associated with side-effects. There were no significant differences in the response to treatment with the different doses of risperidone used. Conclusion:, Our findings indicate that low-dose risperidone (0.5,3.0 mg/day) is effective and safe for the treatment of delirium in elderly patients, and that an early response on Day 1 of treatment may be associated with side-effects in these patients. [source] Repeated partial eyewitness questioning causes confidence inflation but not retrieval-induced forgettingAPPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 1 2009Geralda Odinot During a crime investigation eyewitnesses are often interviewed more than once. Repeated post-event questioning offers an opportunity for retrieval practice. Practicing retrieval of a subset of memories may suppress access to related memories, a phenomenon known as retrieval-induced forgetting. In this short report we investigated the generalization of retrieval-induced forgetting to episodic eyewitness memory of a complex event. The results indicated that repeated retrieval improves future recall of practiced information, but does not induce forgetting of related information. Retrieval practice, however, did result in higher confidence ratings, both for correct and incorrect answers. The practical consequence of this study is that repeated questioning should be avoided if possible. Not because it may induce retrieval-induced forgetting, but because it may lead to confidence inflation. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] An Adaptive Recipe Implementation in Case-Based Formalism for Abnormal Condition ManagementCHEMICAL ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY (CET), Issue 12 2005D. Rizal Abstract This paper deals with accurate recipe implementation for abnormal condition management in a batch process using a case-based reasoning (CBR) approach. A set of new problems can be solved by reusing proven process solutions. The proposed system integrates quantitative and qualitative parameters for adaptation of cases. A novel methodology to generate accurate recipes and to adapt to the processes is introduced during normal and abnormal conditions. In particular, the differences between current conditions and the references (recipes) should be managed to prevent any hazardous conditions arising. The processes are evaluated using their similarity to the past cases. This intelligent approach distinguishes plausible cases, generates accurate recipes, and adapts to new situations. The aim is to use the offline historical process data and safety related information in order to propose changes and adjustments in the processes. [source] A Follow-up Study of Characteristics of Young People that Dropout and Continue Psychotherapy: Service Implications for a Clinic in the CommunityCHILD AND ADOLESCENT MENTAL HEALTH, Issue 2 2009Geoffrey Baruch Background:, The paper reports the findings from a follow-up study of the factors that contribute to whether young people dropout or continue once-weekly psychotherapy at a voluntary sector psychotherapy service for young people aged 12 to 21 years. Method:, The study uses data from an ongoing audit of the psychotherapy service that started in 1993; 882 young people were included in the study. Premature termination of treatment was defined as dropping out before the 21st session. Continuation in treatment was defined as remaining in therapy after 20 sessions. Measures and areas of interest used in the study include diagnostic measures, the Youth Self Report Form and Young Adult Self Report Form, demographic characteristics and treatment related information. Results:, Young people who continued in treatment were more likely to be older, have anxieties about sexual and relationship issues and have higher scores on self-reported anxiety-depression. Young people who dropped out of treatment were more likely to be younger, have higher self-reported delinquency scores, have a diagnosis of hyperactivity-conduct disorder and be homeless. Conclusions:, The study of treatment termination has demonstrated the value of service audit and has led to a significant change in clinical practice. [source] | ||||||||||||||||