Dose–effect relationship in routine outpatient psychotherapy: Does treatment duration matter?

Objective: There is an ongoing debate concerning how outcome variables change during the course of psychotherapy. We compared the dose–effect model, which posits diminishing effects of additional sessions in later treatment phases, against a model that assumes a linear and steady treatment progress through termination. Method: Session-by-session outcome data of 6,375 outpatients were analyzed, and participants were categorized according to treatment length. Linear and log-linear (i.e., negatively accelerating) latent growth curve models (LGCMs) were estimated and compared for different treatment length categories. Results: When comparing the fit of the various models, the log-linear LGCMs assuming negatively accelerating treatment progress consistently outperformed the linear models irre- spective of treatment duration. The rate of change was found to be inversely related to the length of treatment. Conclusion: As proposed by the dose–effect model, the expected course of improvement in psychotherapy appears to follow a negatively accelerated pattern of change, irrespective of the duration of the treatment. However, our results also suggest that the rate of change is not constant across various treatment lengths. As proposed by the “good enough level” model, longer treatments are associated with less rapid rates of change.

Impact of viral load and the duration of primary infection on HIV transmission

Abstract Objectives: HIV 'treatment as prevention' (TasP) describes early treatment of HIV-infected patients intended to reduce viral load and transmission. Crucial assumptions for estimating TasP's effectiveness are the underlying estimates of transmission risk. We aimed to determine transmission risk during primary infection, and of the relation of HIV transmission risk to viral load. Design: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Methods: We searched PubMed and Embase databases for studies that established a relationship between viral load and transmission risk, or primary infection and transmission risk, in serodiscordant couples. We analysed assumptions about the relationship between viral load and transmission risk, and between duration of primary infection and transmission risk. Results: We found 36 eligible articles, based on six different study populations. Studies consistently found that larger viral loads lead to higher HIV transmission rates, but assumptions about the shape of this increase varied from exponential increase to saturation. The assumed duration of primary infection ranged from 1.5 to 12 months; for each additional month, the log10 transmission rate ratio between primary and asymptomatic infection decreased by 0.40. Conclusion: Assumptions and estimates of the relationship between viral load and transmission risk, and the relationship between primary infection and transmission risk, vary substantially and predictions of TasP's effectiveness should take this uncertainty into account.

Legal Implications of the Use of Export Taxes in Addressing Carbon Leakage: Competing Border Adjustment Measures

The prevailing uncertainties about the future of the post-Kyoto international legal framework for climate mitigation and adaptation increase the likelihood of unilateral trade interventions that aim to address climate policy concerns, as exemplified by the controversial European Union initiative to include the aviation industry in its emissions trading system. The emerging literature suggests that border carbon adjustment (BCA) measures imposed by importing countries would lead to substantial legal complications in relation to World Trade Organization law and hence to possible trade disputes. Lack of legal clarity on BCAs is exacerbated by potential counter or pre-emptive export restrictions that exporting countries might impose on carbon-intensive products. In this context, this paper investigates the interface between legal and welfare implications of competing unilateral BCA measures. It argues that carbon export taxes will be an inevitable part of the future climate change regime in the absence of a multilateral agreement. It also describes the channels through which competing BCAs may lead to trade conflicts and political complications as a result of their distributional and welfare impacts at the domestic and global levels.

The Quiet Eye and motor performance – Introducing fixation duration as an independent variable

Evidence suggests a strong relation between superior motor performance and the duration of the last fixation before movement initiation (called Quiet Eye, QE). Although this phenomenon proves to be quite robust, to date, only little is known about its functional role. Therefore, in two experiments, a novel paradigm is introduced, testing the QE as independent variable by experimentally manipulating the duration of the last fixation in a throwing task. In addition, this paradigm allowed for the manipulation of the predictability of the target position. Results of the first study revealed an increase in throwing accuracy as function of experimentally prolonged QE durations. Thus, the assumption that the QE does not surface as a mere by-product of superior performance could be confirmed. In the second study, this dependency was found only under high task-demand conditions in which the target position was not predictable. This finding confirms the hypothesis that it is the optimization of information processing which serves as the crucial mechanisms behind QE effects.

Three Shades of Embeddedness, State Capitalism as the Informal Economy, Emic Notions of the Anti-Market, and Counterfeit Garments in the Mauritian Export Processing Zone

Purpose This paper furthers the analysis of patterns regulating capitalist accumulation based on a historical anthropology of economic activities revolving around and within the Mauritian Export Processing Zone (EPZ). Design/methodology/approach This paper uses fieldwork in Mauritius to interrogate and critique two important concepts in contemporary social theory – “embeddedness” and “the informal economy.” These are viewed in the wider frame of social anthropology’s engagement with (neoliberal) capitalism. Findings A process-oriented revision of Polanyi’s work on embeddedness and the “double movement” is proposed to help us situate EPZs within ongoing power struggles found throughout the history of capitalism. This helps us to challenge the notion of economic informality as supplied by Hart and others. Social implications Scholars and policymakers have tended to see economic informality as a force from below, able to disrupt the legal-rational nature of capitalism as practiced from on high. Similarly, there is a view that a precapitalist embeddedness, a “human economy,” has many good things to offer. However, this paper shows that the practices of the state and multinational capitalism, in EPZs and elsewhere, exactly match the practices that are envisioned as the cure to the pitfalls of capitalism. Value of the paper Setting aside the formal-informal distinction in favor of a process-oriented analysis of embeddedness allows us better to understand the shifting struggles among the state, capital, and labor.

A serial scheme for minimizing the duration of resource-constrained projects within Microsoft Project

Microsoft Project is one of the most-widely used software packages for project management. For the scheduling of resource-constrained projects, the package applies a priority-based procedure using a specific schedule-generation scheme. This procedure performs relatively poorly when compared against other software packages or state-of-the-art methods for resource-constrained project scheduling. In Microsoft Project 2010, it is possible to work with schedules that are infeasible with respect to the precedence or the resource constraints. We propose a novel schedule-generation scheme that makes use of this possibility. Under this scheme, the project tasks are scheduled sequentially while taking into account all temporal and resource constraints that a user can define within Microsoft Project. The scheme can be implemented as a priority-rule based heuristic procedure. Our computational results for two real-world construction projects indicate that this procedure outperforms the built-in procedure of Microsoft Project