Press Releases from Pabst Science Publishers (68 total)
Yoga - successful in the treatment of drug addiction
"Yoga might be helpful in the treatment of drug addiction. Drugs - their primary effects may be sedative, stimulating, or dissociative - all can produce some kind of euphoria, which might have a quality similar to that of altered states of consciousness arrived at through Yoga techniques," Professor Dr. Peter Sedlmeier reports.
"How can these euphoric states be induced by drugs? Consciousness can be released from inhibition by sedative drugs…
William Stern on the "psychical time of presence": A cognitive model of time per …
The new Supplement to "Journal für Philosophie und Psychiatrie", written by David Romand (Paris), "aims to revisit the theory of the psychical time of presence (psychische Präsenzzeit), a model of time perception and autonoetic consciousness proposed by the German psychologist William Stern (1871-1938) in the late 19th century, from the historical point of view as well as in the context of current cognitive neurosciences. Stern's central argument is that the…
Hygiene and quality: Standards for every dialysis centre
"The immunodeficiency of the dialysis patient, the risk of transmissions of infectious diseases, the high technical demand of the treatment as well as the requirement for a regular repetition of the treatment, all these factors require that a distinct consciousness and behaviour concerning hygiene is respected by all those concerned within the facility", the "Guideline for Applied Hygiene in Dialysis Units" postulate.
The guideline serves all professional groups who are…
Limited Performance in Dual-Task-Situations
The question of whether information can be retrieved from memory concurrently to other cognitive processes is an important issue in cognitive psychology. Rico Fischer pursued this question by investigating whether people can access information in memory in one task while being occupied processing a different task.
The results generally favour the interpretation that semantic memory retrieval processes in dual-tasks require access to central capacity resources and are thus subject to…
Young people use LSD as illicit tool in order to achieve socially accepted goals
Characteristics of psychedelic drug use show significant transformation during the 50-year period to the present. Susanna Prepeliczay (University of Bremen/Germany) reports "socio-cultural aspects related to non-medical LSD use, combining theoretical and empirical perspectives in order to identify central determinants and motivations. With the social history of LSD, three phases can be distinguished:
- The use during the 1960s associated with the counterculture known as the Psychedelic Movement, going along with a…
Transplantation of lungs: recovered from donors after euthanasia
Donors after cardiac death have increasingly provided organs for lung transplantation in Belgium. Between 01/2007-12/2009 in Leuven 17 isolated lung transplantations were performed from cardiac death donors, including four after euthanasia, Dirk van Raemdonck and colleagues (Leuven) report. "All donors expressed their wish for organ donation once their request for euthanasia was granted according to Belgian legislation. All donors suffered from an unbearable non-malignant disorder." One recipient died from a…
Stereotype Threat Impairs the Creativity
What are the most likely mediators of stereotype threat effects? Dr. Beate Seibt found in her research, how the prevention focus plays a role in many stereotype threat effects:
1. diminished speed due to stronger concern for accuracy
2. impairment of creative insight processes
3. impairment of creative generation processes
4. a conservative answering bias with a tendency to withhold answers and to insure against false alarms
"In addition, stereotype specific effects such as…
Autoimmunity and idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy
"Despite great improvements in heart failure therapy, the prognosis of patients with idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) remains poor. One of the most important reasons is that the present heart failure management is aimed mostly at restoration of neurohormonal balance, rather than targeting primary causes of the disease. As a matter of fact, a substantial subgroup of DCM and chronic heart failure is accompanied by autoimmune mechanism in particular by a…
Systematical investigation: Connections between diagrams and mental structures
"Human reasoning about spatial environments, spatial configurations as well as design problems often involves external diagrammatic representations such as sketches, drawings, or maps. Frequently, a good use of diagrams is prerequisite to successfully solving the problems involved. Also, many spatial configuration and design problems show great potential for partial automatization as various but by no means all problem solving steps can be outsourced to computational problem solvers. Realizing this potential…
Kidney Transplantation in Highly Immunized Patients – The Role of Plasmapheres …
Highly immunized patients with end-stage renal disease are at risk considering rejections and infections after kidney transplantation. However these patients also insist on performing a kidney transplantation. Nephrologists from the University Clinic Düsseldorf (Germany) present (Transplantationsmedizin 4/2010) data on the clinical course of 9 highly immunized patients after allogenic kidney transplantation who received a desensitization protocol including plasmapheresis (Transplantationsmedizin):
"Between 2008 and 2009 a total of 9 highly immunized patients were…
Japan´s Nuclear Crisis: The Psychology of Recovery
"Japan is in the middle of a catastrophe that transcends any talk of trauma and resilience. But few can doubt that the country will eventually repair itself; that´s what people do, none more so than the Japanese", Benedict Cary reports (The New York Times). Prof. Helmut Loiskandl, Sociologist in Tokyo, described the main reason - the general feature of consciousness in Japan:
"In short, a moral decision is a decision…
Effects of protein A immunoadsorption on methylglyoxal levels in patients with c …
A. O. Doesch and colleagues (Heidelberg) investigated effects of immunoadsorption (IA) on methylglyoxal (MG) levels in patients with chronic non-familial dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), as well as clinical and humoral markers of heart failure. The study appeared in Applied Cardiopulmonary Pathophysiology 1/2011:
Background: Previous studies have demonstrated favourable outcomes of IA in DCM patients with diabetes mellitus (DM) and that MG sensitizes cultured cardiomyocytes to injury by post-translational modification of Thioredoxin via…
Psychological Test and Assessment Modeling: Quantitative approaches to the study …
Psychological Test and Assessment Modeling 1/2011 presents the special issue “Quantitative approaches to the study of self-regulated learning” II – presents the second half of five of the studies published in the previous issue (4/2010) on self-regulated learning, edited by Marion Porath, Heidrun Stoeger, and Albert Ziegler.
Klug, Ogrin, Keller, Ihringer, and Schmitz remind us in their contribution of the importance of viewing self-regulated learning as a process. They show…
Long Term Survival after Combined Liver- and Kidney Transplantation
"Combined liver and kidney transplantation is an established therapeutic option in patients with profound and irreversible liver and kidney failure. Patients with hepatitis B or C and chronic renal failure, with polycystic liver and kidney disease and patients with primary hyperoxaluria typ I (pHI) are the main groups of patients qualifying for this operation," Dr. M. Oppert and colleagues (Charite/Virchow, Berlin) report (Transplantationsmedizin).
"We retrospectively evaluated long-term survival of 68 patients…
Psychological Test and Assessment Modeling: New approaches to the study of self- …
In Psychol Test Assess Model 4/2010, five studies highlight exciting new directions in the research of self-regulated learning (SRL). The studies focus on learning contexts, school and classroom practices, relationships among psychological constructs, and innovative measurement of SRL. Guest-Editors are Marion Porath, Albert Ziegler, Heidrun Stoeger.
N.E. Perry, C. Thauberger, and L. Hutchinson report on how gStudy software and its associated learning kit supported young children in learning about the…
Epicardial microwave ablation is an effective treatment option for patients with …
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the aetiology behind a high percentage of strokes. Recently simplified ablation procedures became more relevant in the surgical treatment of AF. One advantage of microwave ablation (MW) is that it can be used epicardially. M. Knaut, S. Kolberg, S. Brose, F. Jung (Dresden) report results of a prospective, randomized, controlled, mono centre trial (in Applied Cardiopulmonary Pathophysiology 4/2010):
"In two arms, with and without ablation,…
Every sixth citizen of the former Yugoslavia experienced forced displacement
"In the last decade of the 20th century, the former Yugoslavia was theatre of four wars: 1. War in Slovenia (June 27– July 7, 1991); 2. War in Croatia (summer 1991 – 1995); 3. War in Bosnia and Herzegovina (spring 1992 – November 1995); 4. War between NATO and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, i.e. Serbia and Montenegro (March 23 – June 11, 1999). Each of these conflicts resulted in…
Biological and Chemical Weapons: "The Use by Terrorists is a Realistic Threat"
Joshua Shemer and Shmuel C. Shapira, leading physicians in Israel, are warning: "Until recently, the use of chemical and biological warfare by countries, including nations ruled by dictators and totalitarians, was prohibited. The threat, however, prevails. The latest events in the USA have taught us that chemical and biological warfare, as well as radiation weapons, could be used quite easily by fanatic terrorist groups."
"While the doctrine of management of…
