Imaginaries of Dying: The Visual Rhetoric of Stock Images Tagged with "Palliative Care".

In digital culture and its global economy, images circulate transnationally and shape cultural ideas about social and existential issues. While there is growing interest in death online, few studies have investigated the role of visual material in different forms of communication in this field. In this article, we examine the depiction of dying and death in stock photographs tagged with "palliative care" drawing on an image corpus of 618 photographs. Stock photographs are images produced for commercial purposes that are stored in databases by agencies on the Internet. To analyze how these representations depict fictional palliative care settings, we used visual grounded theory. The findings show that typical caregivers are portrayed as emphatic individuals, while patients appear as composed human beings facing death without fear. We argue that the images represent aspects of the modern hospice philosophy and the cultural narrative of healthy aging.

Psychotherapists' rated working alliance in an internet-based intervention for bereaved siblings.

Bereaved siblings often receive insufficient social support and are at higher risk for mental disorders. This study aimed to examine the role of the therapist-rated working alliance in an online intervention for bereaved siblings. Clients (n = 74, 95% female), aged 17-59 received writing assignments and individual feedback by CBT trained therapists over 6 weeks. Working alliance (Working Alliance Inventory) and treatment outcomes (Inventory of Complicated Grief, Beck Depression Inventory-II) were assessed. Results revealed that the working alliance significantly increased during the course of the treatment and a significant association between working alliance and the change in depression was found.

Empathy, cognitive functioning, and prosocial behavior in mentored children.

Assessing the effect mentors have on their mentees is methodologically challenging: most programs merely provide relatively short mentoring durations (typically in the range of 1 year), age ranges are usually rather small, and examining dyads with anything other than questionnaires has proven to be challenging in the past. Thus, although some excellent causal studies do exist, in general causal research is limited in the field and studies are opened up to social desirability. Using a controlled laboratory setting, the current study investigates the causal effect of a mentor's presence on the mentee's empathic accuracy, cognitive functioning, and prosocial behavior. The sample is characterized by a wide age range for mentees and long mentoring durations. Results support the hypothesis that mentees' performance is improved in all three domains when their mentor is present as compared to when their mentor is absent. Furthermore, mentoring duration was positively associated with the mentee's cognitive functioning when controlling for the mentee's age. The current findings extend our knowledge of the benefits of youth mentoring programs and demonstrate the necessity to include laboratory research when investigating mentoring dyads.

Comparison of Pantoprazole Concentrations in Simultaneous Cerebrospinal Fluid and Serum Samples.

BACKGROUND: Pantoprazole is a proton pump inhibitor drug mainly used for treating peptic diseases. Adverse effects of pantoprazole in the occasional central nervous system (CNS) include headache, vertigo and sleep disturbances. Data in rats suggest that proton pumps are expressed in the inner ear and in the epithelium of the choroid plexus, which would be a potential target to mediate such proton pump inhibitor effects. METHODS: To assess the distribution of pantoprazole into the human CNS despite its low lipophilicity (log p = 0.5), we quantified pantoprazole concentrations by liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry in serum and cerebrospinal fluid retain samples withdrawn simultaneously. Twenty-six sample pairs were obtained from 23 neurological patients with therapeutic administration of pantoprazole prior to sampling. RESULTS: Median (interquartile range) serum concentration of total pantoprazole was 142 ng/ml (30.8-622). Cerebrospinal fluid concentration of total pantoprazole was 2.79 ng/ml (1.59-7.3) and reached 2.0% (1.0-4.5%) of simultaneous serum concentrations. CONCLUSION: This value corresponds to the unbound fraction of pantoprazole in serum reported previously and indicates that pantoprazole CNS concentrations are high enough to exert some effects on possible CNS targets.

Biotransformation and detectability of the designer drug 2,5-dimethoxy-4-propylphenethylamine (2C-P) studied in urine by GC-MS, LC-MS(n), and LC-high-resolution-MS(n).

2,5-Dimethoxy-4-propylphenethylamine (2C-P) is a hallucinogenic designer drug of the phenethylamine class, the so-called 2Cs, named according to the ethyl spacer between the nitrogen and the aromatic ring. The aims of the present work were to identify the phases I and II metabolites of 2C-P. In addition, the detectability of 2C-P and its metabolites in urine as proof of an intake in clinical or forensic cases was tested. According to the identified metabolites, the following pathways were proposed: N-acetylation; deamination followed by reduction to the corresponding alcohol and oxidation to carbonic acid; mono- and bis-hydroxylation at different positions; mono- and bis-O-demethylation, followed by glucuronidation, sulfation, or both; and combination of these steps. Proof of an intake of a common user's dose of 2C-P was possible by both standard urine screening approaches, the GC-MS as well as the LC-MS(n) approach.

Implementing machine learning techniques for continuous emotion prediction from uniformly segmented voice recordings.

Introduction: Emotional recognition from audio recordings is a rapidly advancing field, with significant implications for artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction. This study introduces a novel method for detecting emotions from short, 1.5 s audio samples, aiming to improve accuracy and efficiency in emotion recognition technologies. Methods: We utilized 1,510 unique audio samples from two databases in German and English to train our models. We extracted various features for emotion prediction, employing Deep Neural Networks (DNN) for general feature analysis, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) for spectrogram analysis, and a hybrid model combining both approaches (C-DNN). The study addressed challenges associated with dataset heterogeneity, language differences, and the complexities of audio sample trimming. Results: Our models demonstrated accuracy significantly surpassing random guessing, aligning closely with human evaluative benchmarks. This indicates the effectiveness of our approach in recognizing emotional states from brief audio clips. Discussion: Despite the challenges of integrating diverse datasets and managing short audio samples, our findings suggest considerable potential for this methodology in real-time emotion detection from continuous speech. This could contribute to improving the emotional intelligence of AI and its applications in various areas.

Social Context and Gaming Motives Predict Mental Health Better Than Time Played: An Exploratory Regression Analysis with over 13,000 Video Game Players.

Video gaming has become massively adopted over the last years and Internet gaming disorder (IGD) has been noted as an increasing mental health problem. In this context, earlier studies focused on raw playtime (number of hours). Later studies also incorporated gaming motives while social contexts were not considered directly. Because social inclusion is one of the most powerful predictors of general mental health, in this study, we focused on the social context in which games are played. The sample consisted of 13,464 participants from 109 different countries, who played an average of ∼22 hours per week. Psychological well-being was assessed with the Satisfaction with Life Scale, the Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7 questionnaire, and the Social Phobia Inventory. We found that raw playtime is an uninformative predictor of a gamer's mental health and believe that earlier studies with smaller sample sizes may have overestimated its influence. Gaming motives (achievement and escapism, in particular) were generally found to be predictive. Of importance, the social context in which gamers play had large influence on their mental health and can potentially, in combination with the gaming motives, serve as a powerful predictor of clinically relevant at-risk groups in gaming.

A Group Comparison Test under Uncertain Group Membership.

An overwhelming majority of articles in psychology compare means, often between multiple groups. However, sometimes we do not know the exact group membership, but only a probability to be in one of the groups. Such information may come from classifiers trained on other datasets, prevalence of group memberships for some parts of the sample, multi-level situations where the group membership is only known as a ratio in an upper level, or expert ratings (e.g., whether a person has a pathological condition or not). We present a simple method that allows to compare group means in the absence of exact knowledge about group membership and investigate the loss of information depending on the probability values theoretically and in a large-scale simulation.

Change in attitudes toward aging: Cognitive complaints matter more than objective performance.

Converging longitudinal research suggests that more negative views on aging predict accelerated cognitive decline. Although conceptually suggested, reciprocal relationships between cognitive functioning and attitudes toward aging have remained less clear empirically. We used the 20-year data from the Interdisciplinary Longitudinal Study of Adult Development (ILSE) to better understand such potential bidirectionality. Drawing on 1,002 baseline participants from 2 age groups, a midlife (Mage = 43.7 at baseline) and an old age group (Mage = 62.5 at baseline), we examined longitudinal trajectories between attitude toward own aging, performance-based cognitive measures, and subjective cognitive complaints. Findings from multigroup latent growth curve modeling replicated previous findings that attitude toward own aging predicts cognitive change over 20 years in old age with 2 important specifications: We show that this effect (a) does not apply to midlife and (b) disappears in old age after controlling for depression over time. Further, as expected, cognitive complaints but not cognitive performance were related to change in attitude toward own aging in midlife and old age. Results suggest that differentiating between objective cognitive functioning and subjective cognitive complaints is important when investigating relations between cognitive functioning and attitude toward own aging in different age groups. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Reduced-volume and low-volume typing of Y-chromosomal SNPs to obtain Finnish Y-chromosomal compound haplotypes.

Single-nucleotide extension is a widespread method for typing Y-chromosomal single-nucleotide polymorphisms. In our study, we validated a multiplex minisequencing assay in a reduced-volume and in a low-volume approach. A four-plex assay was performed in a 6-microL multiplex reaction in 96-well microtiter reaction plates, which can be directly used for capillary electrophoresis. In a second approach, a six-plex assay was performed on a chemically structured glass slide. Both techniques have proven to be highly sensitive as well as time- and cost-saving, which makes them a valuable option not only for forensic purposes but also for population genetic studies where large sample numbers have to be analyzed. In the present paper, both techniques are compared and applied to analyze a population sample from the area of Turku, Finland. The most common haplogroup was found to be N1c*, which is nearly absent in western and central European populations. Additionally, 11 short tandem repeat markers were analyzed to further discriminate Y-chromosomal lineages.

Perceived reciprocity and relationship satisfaction: Age and relationship category matter.

Past work suggests that perceived reciprocity in social relationships declines with age. Although positive associations between perceived reciprocity and relationship satisfaction have been documented, relationship satisfaction seems to remain relatively stable over the life-span. Addressing this seemingly contradictory pattern of findings, we predicted that perceived reciprocity may become less important to relationship satisfaction with age and that this association differs across various relationship categories (i.e., spousal, communal, and exchange relationships). We tested these predictions applying multilevel models to cross-sectional and longitudinal data of middle-aged and older adults from the Interdisciplinary Longitudinal Study of Aging (ILSE). Consistent with past work, perceived reciprocity was lower in older than middle-aged adults and declined over time, while relationship satisfaction did not differ between age groups and increased over time. Inconsistent with our prediction, the association between perceived reciprocity and relationship satisfaction was stronger in older than middle-aged adults in our cross-sectional analyses. By contrast, the longitudinal analyses that were based on only older adults were consistent with our prediction: the association between perceived reciprocity and relationship satisfaction decreased over time. Additionally, the association between perceived reciprocity and relationship satisfaction differed between relationship categories, being particularly strong in spousal relationships and less in communal and exchange relationships. In general, our results suggest that both, age and relationship category, need to be considered when investigating perceived reciprocity and relationship satisfaction from an adult life-span perspective. (PsycINFO Database Record

Stability and change in subjective well-being: The role of performance-based and self-rated cognition.

The primary goal of this study was to address the stability-despite-loss paradox of subjective well-being. Performance-based and self-evaluative measures of cognitive functioning were examined as predictors of subjective well-being in middle-aged and older adults using data from the Interdisciplinary Longitudinal Study of Adult Development (ILSE). Consistent with past work, subjective well-being remained relatively stable over a period of 12 years in both age groups, although performance-based and self-rated cognition declined over time. Cognitive status, as determined by standard psychometric tests of fluid cognitive abilities, was unrelated to longitudinal change in subjective well-being. A symmetrical measure of self-rated cognitive performance predicted intraindividual change in subjective well-being in middle-aged but not older adults. This pattern of findings helps clarify why many older people may be able to maintain their subjective well-being, while their cognitive abilities decline. (PsycINFO Database Record