Mental Health nurses' attitudes towards personality disorder

The importance of the impact of nurses views towards personality disorder and their place in acute mental health environments are surveyed.A total of 49 registrants were surveyed all with at least one years experience and all on part one of the active register. Overall 66% of respondents did not feel that patients with a personality disorder should be treated in an acute inpatient setting, with only 36% reporting feeling confident in their abilities when working with this patient group. Almost all respondents 98% called for more training which the authors feel is a positive reflection on the profession.

Polymorphisms in SLC6A4, PAH, GABRB3, and MAOB and modification of psychotic disorder features

We tested four genes [phenylalanine hydroxylase (PAH), the serotonin transporter (SLC6A4), monoamine oxidase B (MAOB), and the gamma-aminobutyric acid A receptor beta-3 subunit (GABRB3)] for their impact on five schizophrenia symptom factors: delusions, hallucinations, mania, depression, and negative symptoms. In a 90 family subset of the Irish Study of High Density Schizophrenia Families, the PAH 232 bp microsatellite allele demonstrated significant association with the delusions factor using both QTDT (F = 8.0, p = .031) and QPDTPHASE (chi-square = 12.54, p = .028). Also, a significant association between the GABRB3 191 bp allele and the hallucinations factor was detected using QPDTPHASE (chi-square 15.51, p = .030), but not QTDT (chi-square = 2.07, p = .560). (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Threshold In School – As Event And Place For The Autism Spectrum Disorder Pupil

As architects and designers we have a responsibility to provide an inclusive built environment. For the Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) sufferer however, the built environment can be a frightening and confusing place, difficult to negotiate and tolerate. The challenge of integrating more fully into society is denied by an alienating built environment. This barrier can be magnified for ASD pupils in a poorly designed school, where their environment can further distance them from learning. Instead, if more at ease in their surroundings, in an ASD friendly environment, the ASD pupil stands a greater chance of doing better.

Whilst researchers have looked at the classroomenvironment, the transition of classroom to corridor andbeyond has so far been largely ignored. However, theneed for a well-considered threshold between class andcorridor needs to be considered. In this regard, threshold is much more than a doorway, but instead an event that demands a carefully considered place. The following paper firstly outlines why threshold as place andevent for the ASD pupil should be given consideration. It then goes onto highlight, through case studies in anIrish context, the opportunities for aiding the ASD pupil integrating in a mainstream school environment throughsensitive use of threshold. Finally it highlights inconclusion, some of the benefits for an enriched school environment for all pupils, if considering threshold as design generator.The objective is straightforward. By increasing awareness of the relationship between the ASD child and the built environment it will hopefully facilitate greater inclusion of the ASD pupil into mainstream education and society at large.

Conceptual and Perceptual Priming and Dissociation in Chronic Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.

Cognitive models of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) assert that memory processes play a significant role in PTSD (see e.g., Ehlers & Clark, 2000). Intrusive reexperiencing in PTSD has been linked to perceptual processing of trauma-related material with a corresponding hypothesized lack of conceptual processing. In an experimental study that included clinical participants with and without PTSD (N = 50), perceptual priming and conceptual priming for trauma-related, general threat, and neutral words were investigated in a population with chronic trauma-induced complaints as a result of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The study used a new version of the word-stem completion task (Michael, Ehlers, & Halligan, 2005) and a word-cue association task. It also assessed the role of dissociation in threat processing. Further evidence of enhanced perceptual priming in PTSD for trauma stimuli was found, along with evidence of lack of conceptual priming for such stimuli. Furthermore, this pattern of priming for trauma-related words was associated with PTSD severity, and state dissociation and PTSD group made significant contributions to predicting perceptual priming for trauma words. The findings shed light on the importance of state dissociation in trauma-related information processing and posttraumatic symptoms.

Increasing entanglement through engineered disorder in the random Ising chain

The ground-state entanglement entropy between block of sites in the random Ising chain is studied by means of the Von Neumann entropy. We show that in presence of strong correlations between the disordered couplings and local magnetic fields the entanglement increases and becomes larger than in the ordered case. The different behavior with respect to the uncorrelated disordered model is due to the drastic change of the ground state properties. The same result holds also for the random three-state quantum Potts model.

Patient anxiety and IV sedation in Northern Ireland

Background In recent years there has been an increase in the provision of conscious sedation, which is said to be a safe and effective means of managing the anxious patient. However, there are no guidelines to aid the dental practitioner in assessing the patient's need for sedation based on their level of anxiety.

Aims and methods The present study investigated the importance of patient anxiety as an indicator for IV sedation, using focus groups to inform the development of narrative vignettes. Ninety-nine practitioners responded to a series of scenarios to determine whether the level of patient anxiety and the patient's demand for IV sedation influenced their decision making.

Results Level of dental anxiety had a stronger influence on the clinician's decision making than patient demand, with increasing levels of dental anxiety being positively associated with the likelihood of clinicians indicating a need for IV patient sedation and also, the likelihood of clinicians providing IV sedation to these patients. Only 14% (n = 14) of respondents reported formally assessing dental anxiety.

Conclusions While dental anxiety is considered to be a key factor in determining the need for IV sedation, there is a lack of guidance regarding the assessment of anxiety among patients.

Does infection by Nosema ceranae cause "Colony Collapse Disorder" in honey bees (Apis mellifera)?

Nosema ceranae is an emergent and potentially virulent pathogen of the honey bee (Apis mellifera) that has spread across the world in the last 10 or so years. Its precise origin and timing of spread are currently unclear because of a lack of appropriate genetic markers and inadequate sampling in putative Asian source populations. Though it has been dismissed as a cause of CCD in the USA based on correlational analyses of snapshot sampling of diseased hives, observations of naturally infected colonies suggest that it leads to colony collapse in Spain. Experiments are sorely needed to investigate its impact on individuals and colonies, and to pin down a causal relationship between N. ceranae and colony collapse. Whether N. ceranae is displacing N. apis is uncertain. For temperate zone apiculturalists, global climate change may mean that N. ceranae presents more of a challenge than has hitherto been considered the case.

Disorder-induced phase transition in a one-dimensional model of rice pile

We propose a one-dimensional rice-pile model which connects the 1D BTW sandpile model (Phys. Rev. A 38 (1988) 364) and the Oslo rice-pile model (Phys. Rev. Lett. 77 (1997) 107) in a continuous manner. We found that for a sufficiently large system, there is a sharp transition between the trivial critical behaviour of the 1D BTW model and the self-organized critical (SOC) behaviour. When there is SOC, the model belongs to a known universality class with the avalanche exponent tau = 1.53. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Motor Skills in Children Aged 7–10 Years, Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder

This study used the Movement Assessment Battery for Children (M-ABC2) to assess the level of motor skill in children aged 7-10 years with autism (n=18) and compared their performance to two groups of age-matched typically developing children; a receptive vocabulary matched group (n=19) and a nonverbal IQ matched group (n=22). Although the results support previous work, as indicated by a significant general motor impairment in the group with autism, a sub-analysis of the M-ABC2 revealed that there were only 2 out of 8 subcomponent skills which showed universally significant specific deficits for the autism group; namely catching a ball and static balance. These results suggest that motor skill deficits associated with autism may not be pervasive but more apparent in activities demanding complex, interceptive actions or core balance ability.