Randomised controlled trial of efficacy of teaching patients with bipolar disorder to identify early symptoms of relapse and obtain treatment

OBJECTIVE: To determine the efficacy of teaching patients with bipolar disorder (manic-depressive psychosis) to identify early symptoms of relapse and seek prompt treatment from health services. DESIGN: Single blind randomised controlled trial with matching on four baseline variables using a minimisation algorithm. SETTING: Mental health services in four NHS trusts (one teaching, three non-teaching). SUBJECTS: 69 patients with bipolar disorder who had had a relapse in the previous 12 months. INTERVENTIONS: Seven to 12 individual treatment sessions from a research psychologist plus routine care or routine care alone. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Time to first manic or depressive relapse, number of manic or depressive relapses, and social functioning examined by standardised interviews every six months for 18 months. RESULTS: 25th centile time to first manic relapse in experimental group was 65 weeks compared with 17 weeks in the control group. Event curves of time to first manic relapse significantly differed between experimental and control groups (log rank 7.04, df=1, P=0.008), with significant reductions in the number of manic relapses over 18 months (median difference 30% (95% confidence interval 8% to 52%), P=0.013). The experimental treatment had no effect on time to first relapse or number of relapses with depression, but it significantly improved overall social functioning (mean difference 2.0 (0.7 to 3.2), P=0.003) and employment (mean difference 0.7 (0.1 to 1.3), P=0.030) by 18 months. CONCLUSION: Teaching patients to recognise early symptoms of manic relapse and seek early treatment is associated with important clinical improvements in time to first manic relapse, social functioning, and employment.     

Content-Centered Collaboration Spaces in the Cloud

Emphasizing communication, collaborative work, and community, the authors envision a cloud-based platform that inverts the traditional application-content relationship by placing content rather than applications at the center, enabling users to rapidly build customized solutions around their content items. The future of collaboration will focus on building and sustaining communities around content, tasks, and ideas. Hosted entities known as content spaces will support ecosystems of users and developers around this content. To make their case, the authors review the dominant trends in computing that motivate the exploration of new approaches for content-centered collaboration and discuss ways to address certain core problems for users and organizations.     

Stable and transient determinants of students' perceived control: Implications for instruction in the college classroom.

Stable uncontrollability and transient loss of control were examined in conjunction with quality of college instruction. Students with internal and external loci of control received no training or either contingent or noncontingent feedback. We manipulated the quality of instruction by using a ?-hr videotaped lecture that varied in expressiveness (low and high). The dependent measures were student achievement and achievement attributions. For those who received no prelecture feedback, expressiveness improved the achievement of internal- but not external-locus students on a test after the lecture. Expressiveness effects on achievement and causal attributions also differed, depending on whether students previously received contingent or noncontingent feedback before the lecture. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evaluation of the performance of iron‐based oxygen scavengers,with comments on their optimal applications

Oxygen scavengers are commonly used in packaged foods in Japan and much less so in other developed countries, in spite of the advantages that they offer in maintaining quality and extending shelf‐life. The reason stems from the additional cost involved, and even more so because of the lack of sufficient technical information on their performance and the lack of understanding of how to apply them effectively. In the present study the performance of iron‐based oxygen‐scavenging sachets was evaluated. It was found that the actual scavenging capacity is much higher than the ‘nominal’ capacity provided by the manufacturers. Also, a significant distribution in the oxygen absorption capacity exists, even in the same scavenger type. The rate of oxygen scavenging was found to depend on the scavenger type and capacity. It was also found that in an atmosphere containing CO₂ (as in MAP applications) the iron‐based oxygen scavengers also absorb CO₂. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Multichannel, Single Tral Event Related Potential Classification

We report on the effect of electrode placement and number of electrodes on the classification of single trial event related potentials (ERP's). The subjects read propositions relating fictitious people and their occupations while ERP's were recorded. The subjects decided if the proposition was correct or incorrect and responded as per instructions. The single trial, multichannel ERP data were classified using various methods, e. g., hold-out, leave-one-out, resubstitution. Several other factors were examined to determine their effect on ERP classification, including taking a majority vote among channels, using the single best channel, and averaging the data across channels for a single ERP. The results from other experiments are compared to those presented here.     

Cross-language computational investigation of the length effect in reading aloud.

The authors examined whether 2 computational models of reading, the dual-route cascaded model (M. Coltheart, K. Rastle, C. Perry, R. Langdon, and J. C. Ziegler, 2001) and the connectionist 2-layer model (M. Zorzi, G. Houghton, and B. Butterworth, 1998), were able to predict the pattern that the length effect found in reading aloud is larger in German than in English (J. C. Ziegler, C. Perry, A. M. Jacobs, and M. Braun, 2001). The results showed that the dual-route cascaded model, which uses a serial mechanism for assembling phonology, successfully predicted this cross-language difference. In contrast, the connectionist model of Zorzi et al. (1998) predicted the opposite: a larger length effect in English than in German. Both the success of one model and the failure of the other highlight fundamental differences between 2 major classes of computational models. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How many do you see? The use of nonspoken representations in first-grade mathematics lessons.

Not all relevant instructional information comes in the form of spoken words. In the present study, the authors examine multiple modalities of nonspoken forms of representation—specifically gestures, pictures, objects, and writing—used by 3 teachers in 3 yrs of 1st-grade math lessons. Teachers frequently used visually based modalities of representation and tended to produce combinations of representational forms rather than isolated representations. There were individual differences in their preference for representation types. Teachers used representations to accompany important spoken terms and to respond to student confusion. With nonspoken representations, teachers conveyed information critical to the explanation of mathematical concepts. Students must attend to the visual as well as vocal means of expressing information to gain access to all of the information presented in mathematics lessons. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)