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Press Releases from Pabst Science Publishers (68 total)

Health literacy: How to improve health behaviors

Health literacy is defined as "people´s knowledge, motivation and competences to access, understand, appraise and apply information to make judgements and take decisions in everyday life healthcare concerning disease prevention and health promotion to maintain and improve quality of life during the life course." In a new volume Anne-Kathrin Mayer and colleagues shed light on the concept of health literacy from different disciplines: psychology, educational sciences, health sciences and

Health literacy: how to improve the advantages and to reduce the risks

The new volume "Health literacy across the lifespan" stresses the importance of health literacy for changing multiple health-risk-factors. Anne-Kathrin Mayer and colleagues shed light on a concept from different disciplines: psychology, educational sciences, health sciences and public health, communication sciences, and information sciences. It is undisputed that health is strongly influenced by individual efforts aimed at the promotion of health and the prevention of illness or recovery from diseases. These

Directed deceased donation: beyond the impartial allocation system

"Within a pluralistic account of morality, partial values have a merit of their own and should be assessed in their own terms. These values are extremely relevant in the field of organ transplantation, but are misunderstood at a political level where partiality is put at par with injustice, and where fairness is exclusively taken as impartial justice." Dr. Medard Hilhorst (Erasmus Medical University Rotterdam) argues "that partial values are fundamental

Transplantation: Prisoners are killed for their organs in China

Transplantation: China is the only country in the world systematically using organs from prisoners for transplantation, Professor Huige Li reports. For over 40 years, executed prisoners were used as the main organ source in China. It´s a profitable international business. A number of Chinese Hospitals claimed that they could provide liver transplants in the time range between 3 to 30 days. The report appeared in "Ethical, Legal and Psychosocial Aspects

Applying multiple indices to monitor bullying longitudinally

Psychological Test and Assessment Modeling: Japanese Scientists demonstrate the multiple ways to monitor the condition of bullying in a whole school level as well as year group and class levels by using traditional index of the change in number of reported bullying/victimization, in conjunction with new indices of the bully/victim ratio and the number of helpless victims. "The study showed that along with the traditional index, by applying these new

Chemsex parties: Gay and bisexual men get high and have sex

Gay or bisexual adults are more likely to take illicit drugs. A five-year research project undertaken by the Lesbian and Gay Foundation reported levels of last-year drug use among their lesbian, gay and bisexual survey respondents in England at seven times the rate found in the general population - especially among males. Christine Schierano and Gary R. Potter report that a small sub-section of the gay population participates in ´chemsex

Increasing mental health in managers and organisations: how to improve transcult …

Management Psychology: International organizations are in need of an internal and an external diversity focus. Transcultural competences can support the efficiency in diverse organisations with regard to human resource management and the managing of interrelationships of the internal personnel as well as external customers, clients and suppliers. To make diverse teams work effectively and successfully, it is important that team members develop transcultural skills, Dr. Claude-Helene Mayer and Dr. Christian

Advantages of Educational Large-Scale Assessments

Now the journal Psychological Test and Assessment Modeling published the second part of the special issue on current methodological issues in educational large-scale assessments. The first part of the issue, which was published at the end of last year, consisted of four papers highlighting the diversity of challenges currently faced within large-scale assessments while simultaneously introducing potential solutions. The second part of the issue will now primarily focus on

Drugs research: Misuse by shareholders of the drugs industry

A new textbook illustrates the complex and multi-faceted dimensions of evidence building in European drugs research. On one level, the authors have identified practical and philosophical challenges regarding knowledge production including, for example, measurements of the drugs problem; researching the online world; and interpreting on-site drug tests. On another level, the authors have highlighted challenges regarding knowledge production such as the misuse of evidence by knowledge brokers and policymakers.

New Methodological Issues in Educational Large-Scale Assessments

Psychological Test and Assessment Modeling: Educational Large-Scale Assessments are objects of a growing and highly active area of research. The Journal Psychological Test and Assessment Modeling 4/2016 publishes four papers highlighting the diversity of challenges while simultaneously introducing potential solutions. The authors, all established experts in the field of Large-Scale Assessments, demonstrate exciting new ways of handling the transition to computer-based testing, maintaining maximum measurement precision, and dealing with missing

Psychological Test and Assessment Modeling: Metric scales for emotion measuremen …

Psychological Test and Assessment Modeling: Ordinal Difference Scaling allows to measure emotion intensity on a metric scale level for most individuals. As a consequence, quantitative emotion theories become amenable to empirical test on the individual level using indirect measurements of emotional experience, Dres. Martin Junge and Rainer Reisenzein (University Greifswald) found in a new study (published in Psychological Test and Assessment Modeling). "A direct implication of the finding that indirect

Coaching and training for managers: Empowering transcultural leadership competen …

Managing healthy transcultural organisations is based on the strength and the sense of coherence of individuals, to comprehend, manage, and create meaning in challenging work situations. To cope with these challenges, managers need to activate their individual resources and increase their transcultural and conflict management competences. The psychologists Claude-Helene Mayer and Christian Martin Boness deliver the appropriate (self-)coaching and training manual: "Creating mental health across cultures". The book aims at

Water and dialysis fluids: How to avoid dangerous contaminations

Current opinions among nephrologists indicate that water quality is even more important for the longterm clinical success of hemodialysis therapy than the biocompatibility of dialysis membranes. Dialytic therapies, such as haemodiafiltration (HDF) or high volume haemodiafiltration, have become popular due to their improved performance followed by a better patient survival. Dialysis modes, such as HDF, need large volumes of substitution fluids that have to be prepared from water of appropriate

Commercial kidney transplantation: high burden of serious complications

The Multi-Organ Transplant Center Dammam (Saudi Arabia) reviewed the outcome of patients undergone commercial kidney transplantation in foreign clinics - and observed bad results. Meteb AlBugami et al. report in the Abstract Book to the 4th ELPAT Congress: "All recipients of commercial kidney transplantation who presented to our center within a year of their transplants, between Sept. 2008 and Dec. 20013 were included in the study. Total of 46 recipients, with

Uterus Transplantation: First Promising Results in Sweden

"The worldwide experience of uterus transplantation is so far 11 published cases (Saudi Arabia 1, Turkey 1, Sweden 9), and 2 unpublished cases (China 1, US 1). The results of the Swedish study that is the first case series are promising," Niclas Kvarnström (Gothenburg/Sweden) reports in the Abstractbook "4th Elpat Congress. Ethical, Legal and Psychosocial Aspects of Transplantation". Nine women in the Swedish Group without an uterus were transplanted with

Illegal trading of human organs: a worldwide growing market

Illegal organ trade is on the rise worldwide - with approx. one billion USD per year. The study "Trafficking in Human Beings for the Purpose of Organ Removal" provides new insights and recommendations. "Brokers are key players in the organ trade network. They financially benefit the most from these transactions." Brokers may include doctors, hospitals and matching agencies. They operate individually or work with agencies and organized groups - e.g.

Nephrology: How to improve and maintain dialysis water purity

Nephrology: Dialysis water free of bacterial contamination and void of chemical contaminants is of paramount importance, and continuous actions should be taken to improve and maintain its status. Dialysis water purity requirements have evolved over the time to satisfy new therapeutic objectives in the renal replacement therapy. The new textbook "Water and Dialysis Fluids" provides medical rationale supporting the use of high grade water and dialysis fluid purity, several engineering

Educational Hypertext: How to avoid the risk of getting lost in the text

Advantages of educational hypertext: The high degree of freedom of the users to arrange the reading sequence in hypertext themselves ultimately results in active knowledge acquisition. However, it also contains the risk of getting lost in the text, Anja Neumann and colleagues note in their study "Recommendations for text composition and navigation aids". The study suggests "that the construction of a coherent situation model from the hypertext works best if

Psychological Test and Assessment Modeling: PROMIS Fatigue measure items can be …

Fatigue is the most prevalent and distressing symptom related to cancer and its treatment affecting functioning and quality of life. The National Cancer Institute´s Clinical Trials Planning Meeting adopted the PROMIS Fatigue Measure as the standard to use clinical trials. Bryce B. Reeve et al. evaluated the psychometric properties of PROMIS and reported the results in "Psychological Test and Assessment Modeling": "Twelve of 14 PROMIS fatigue items performed well across

Autoimmune diseases: Autoantibodies differ in their diagnostic sensitivity and s …

The prevalence of autoimmune diseases in the population - 3 to 5% - underlines the importance of autoantibody diagnostics in the public health sector. Autoimmune thyroid diseases are currently considered to be the most common autoimmune diseases, followed by rheumathoid arthritis, antiphospholipid syndrome and autoimmune liver diseases. New developments in diagnostics required an updated, 3rd edition of the diagnostic reference "Autoantibodies in Systemic Autoimmune Diseases". Testing for autoantibodies can be

Useful: e-health tools for drug users

E-health tools contribute to work with drug users. Cristina Vale Pires and colleagues analysed the most common strategies used by netreach work to address the needs of drug users: Information provision, online drug self-assessment tests, drug testing, user-led forums, DoctorX, Apps. (Publication in the new handbook "Between street and screen - Traditions and innovations in the drugs field") The study identified 43 websites based in 14 European countries, as netreach

Shamans in cyberspace and sacramental drug use

Neo-shamanism: Drug mysticism is a cultural theme associated with social drug use. Professor Dr. Alfred Springer (Vienna) explored new discourse and practice in sacramental drug use and the practice of achieving ecstasy. Neo-shamanism is not a single, cohesive belief system, but a collective term for many philosophies and activities. It comprises an eclectic range of beliefs and practices that involve attempts to attain altered states of consciousness and communicate

Intensive connections between auditory and social intelligence

"Social and Auditory Intelligence are promising constructs that have not to be subsumed under the label of inflationary constructs. The unique components of the constructs, social understanding, nonverbal auditory intelligence, and auditory social/ emotion perception are narrower than expected," Dr. Kristin Seidel emphasizes in her study "Assessment of Social and Auditory Intelligence - New Perspectives and Approaches". How are social and auditory intelligence conneced? "The most direct and obvious means of

Psychological Test and Assessment Modeling: Attention, scientific reasoning and …

Risto Hotulainen and colleagues (Helsinki University) examined how attention measured in prolonged over-learned response tasks predicts scientific reasoning and school performance and if high levels of attention have a significant relationship with high level scientific reasoning and school performance. "Modeling showed that the most powerful single predictor of school performance was scientific reasoning. In general, in the comprehensive model, attention added little to the predictive validity indicated by scientific

Old age: more optimism and well-being in males, more pessimism and neurosis in f …

Longevity is no longer today´s concern; rather, it is the quality of life of the aging, Professor Eva Sandis (Fordham University/USA) notes. She examined world population trends among the elderly, their impact on family structures and functions - and the implications for social policy. Sandis found major gender similarities and differences among aging North Americans: "For example, as to the effects of genes and socialization on longevity, females appear to

Organ donation and transplantation in emerging economies: organ trafficking, mis …

"The impact of commerce, transplant tourism and organ trafficking remains a burning issue in the global community of transplantation. Emerging economies became the centre of transplant commerce and tourism with centers in many countries. The views differ in the selling and buying countries," Dr. S.A. Anwar Naqvi and colleagues (Karachi/Pakistan) report. Experienced physicians provide an overview in the new handbook "Organ Transplantation: Ethical, Legal and Psychosocial Aspects. Global Issues, Local

Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership: Physicians and scientists are wa …

In an open letter physicians and scientists demand that German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel halts negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and request a responsible policy for a sustainable and viable society: Open letter to German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel Appeal to halt negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) Dear Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel, On February 13, 2013, the US-American president and representatives of the European Union announced

Development of leadership: Tension between culture and structure is dysfunctiona …

There is probably tension in every organization. Productive tension is essential, if anything is to be accomplished. Contradictions that are too great result in dysfunctional tension - out of which nothing good will arise, Dr. Felix Frei states in his new publication "The final 33 Leadership Letters". The psychologist and consultant believes "that nowadays it is the psychological tension between culture and structure that is most dysfunctional. This can be

Experimental Psychology: High time-of-day effects on cognitive control depend on …

Elisabeth Cohors-Fresenborg and colleagues (TU Dresden) investigated the vulnerability of cognitive control functioning to variations in individual daytime optima. While previous studies on the influence of daytime effects on cognitive control revealed a rather inconsistent picture, the experimental psychologists specifically implemented a task that allowed for a quantitative approach investigating cognitive control. "34 extreme/moderate morning and 34 extreme evening chronotypes performed the Majority Function Task in their individual daytime optimum

Mentally Ill Patients in Prison Undertreated

"It is doubtful whether the majority of prisoners with psychiatric illnesses in Germany receive appropriate care such as that mandated by the European Convention on Human Rights and other international charters. Major deficits in German inpatient psychiatric care of prisoners are the lack of facilities for treating those with chronic mental illnesses and the inadequate management of acutely psychotic or delirious prisoners, which in many places leads to temporary

Sense of coherence improves the ability to manage conflicts in organizations

The sense of coherence sensu Aaron Antonovsky is considered as a universal construct measuring a global life orientation, a way of viewing the life as comprehensible, manageable and meaningful. The sense of coherence improves the ability to perceive and manage conflicts within an organizational context, Prof. Dr. Claude-Helene Mayer reports in her new handbook "Exploring Mental Health". "Managers scoring high in sense of coherence - understand conflicts and the complexity

Autoimmunity in myocarditis and dilated cardiomyopathy

Autoimmune Diseases: "Myocarditis is an acquired inflammatory condition involving the myocardial tissue. Although myocarditis is largely associated with viral infections, some cases remain idiopathic, while in others there is convincing evidence of autoimmune pathophysiology. Autoimmunity is influenced by genetic, immune, hormonal and environmental factors. Myocardial injury (due to infection, ischaemia, inflammation, toxins or other cardiotoxic factors) may trigger exposure to autoantigens, subsequently, initiating an autoimmune response, causing myocarditis and dilated

Allergic asthma bronchiale: Plasmapheresis with Clinical Success

"Therapeutic Apheresis or adsorption methods would seem advisable in patients with severe therapy-resistant allergic asthma bronchiale, particularly in status asthmaticus when medical therapy is inadequate. One could also consider Therapeutic Apheresis in the chronic steroid dependent asthmatic to decrease steroid requirements when indicated," Dr. Rolf Bambauer and colleagues suggest in their textbook "Therapeutic Plasma Exchange and Selective Plasma Separation Methods". Based on the assumption that plasmapheresis can interrupt the allergic

Walter Land: Crucial role of innate immune events in organ transplantation

"There is growing evidence that innate immune events provide critical initiating steps in immune responses to transplantation and key pathogenic steps in the tissue damage characteristic of humoral and cellular rejection. In fact, when I coined the term Innate Alloimmunity in 2002, I never foresaw the effect it would have on transplant thinking today," Professor Dr. Walter Land (Munich) emphasizes in his textbook "Innate Alloimmunity". "This book reflects the beginning

Factor V leiden and prothrombin G20210A mutations may predispose for cerebral in …

A recent age- and sex-matched paired case-control study comparing patients suffering from cerebral infarction with and without patent foramen ovale (PFO) revealed that the occurence of factor V leiden and, to a lesser extent, of prothrombin G20210 A mutation is a clinically relevant risk for the development of cerebral infarction in association with PFO. Berhard Stephan and his team at the University Hospitals of Saarland, Homburg (Germany) studied a total of

Teachers´ burnout is related to lowered speed and quality for short-term tasks

Tuulia Ortner (Berlin) investigated the relation between burnout and performance assessed by computerized, short-term behavioral tasks. She reported in Psychological Test and Assessment Modeling: "Several relations between scales related to exhaustion and task performance were revealed; significant relations were shown for scores representing working speed in a situation involving hindrance of scheduled course of action, the quality of solved tasks in a situation with two colliding tasks, and the quality

Relationships Between Parents and Adult Children: The Difficulties Are Growing

Relationships between parents and adult children become more and more difficult, Prof. Dr. Matti Gershenfeld (Jenkintown/USA) states. "There are huge emotional ties, a lifetime of relationships of joy, pain, expectations, and disappointments. There are unresolved issues of power and control. Not only are there all of those issues which have always existed, but today there are an additional set of reasons why the relationships are difficult." The psychologist found in

Paradoxical embolism essential for the occurence of stroke in association with P …

The clinical significance of inherited thrombophilia in the pathogenesis of cerebral infarction associated with patent foramen ovale (PFO) is estimated in a different way according to recent reports. Bernhard Stephan and Colleagues (University Hospital Homburg/Saarland, Germany) found in their study that Factor V G1691A-mutations combined with PFO play a significant role in the pathogenesis of cerebral infarction. "The prevalence of PFO in the general population is reported to be

Immunology: Distinctive features of autoantibodies in and out of the context of …

"Although autoantibodies are a hallmark of autoimmune illnesses, they are also observed in other disease conditions and even in healthy individuals. By means of careful analysis of the intrinsic features of autoantibodies our group in Sao Paulo (Brazil) has disclosed several differences in the autoimmune humoral response observed in patients with systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases and in healthy individuals," Allessandra and colleagues report. "Autoantibodies in healthy individuals occured in lower

Transplantation, Innate Alloimmunity: Primary Allograft Injury Leads to Alloimmu …

The rediscovery of innate immunity appears to have revolutionized not only basic immunology but transplant immunology as well. Walter Land described in his new monograph the emerging role of innate immunity in organ transplantation. "We are confident that this book will change the scientific and practical viewpoints of transplantologists in their day-to-day work," the Editor, Mehmet Haberal, comments. Land outlines modern notions in immunology claiming that the innate immune defense

Reference-Book: Quality Assurance and Improvement in the Field of Hygiene in Dia …

The "Guideline for Applied Hygiene in Dialysis Units" represents a reference book which links hygiene with quality management and gives answers to all relevant practical questions. The advantages for nephrologists and their staff are relevant: Streamlining and optimising the process, prevention of mistakes and their resulting costs as well as the improvement of treatment safety. The areas of responsibility become clearer. Documented processes ease the tractability as well as the

Psychological Test and Assessment Modeling: Cognitive analytical approach introd …

With the increased interest in student-level diagnostic information from multiple performance assessments, it becomes possible to create multivariate classifications of knowledge, skills and abilities. Dres. Robert W. Lissitz and Feifei Li (University od Maryland/USA) propose a systematic, multivariate and non-compensating standard setting approach for performance assessment with complex tasks. The paper reg. "cognitive analytical approach" (CAA) appeared in Psychological Test and Assessment Modeling (formerly Psychology Science/Psychologische Beiträge). "Cognitive analytical approach

Autoimmune forms of complement associated kidney disorders

"The field of autoimmune forms of kidney disorders is rapidly progressing and new autoimmune forms and new pathological principles are emerging. Based on similarities among various related kidney disorders, common pathophysiological principles are currently defined. This reveals a spectrum of disorders which is relevant for therapy," Professor Dr. Peter Zipfel and colleagues report. "Hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) and membranproliferative glomerulonephritis (MPGN ore dense deposit disease) represent severe kidney diseases, which

Chronic fatigue syndrome and sick building syndrome may be autoimmune diseases

"The role of environmental factors, such as those entailing an immune adjuvant activity, is well established in the pathogenesis of immune mediated diseases. It appears that the activation of the immune system by adjuvants either natural (i.e. infectious agents) or pharmaceutical ones (i.e., vaccines containing alum or silicone), can trigger manifestations of autoimmunity or even autoimmune diseases", Yehuda Shoenfeld and Nancy Agmon-Levin (Tel-Hashomer, Israel) report. "However, these manifestations are

Greece: Citizens View Corruption as a Normal Way of Getting Things Done

"There are a number of ambivalences characterising perceptions of corruption in Greece", PD Dr. Giannakopoulos (University Konstanz/Germany) reports. He found in his EU-research-project "Crime and Culture": "There are strong beliefs about corruption being highly widespread and diffused in the social fabric, because: - Corruption should indeed be considered as a dominant social attitude and acceptable behaviour, or even as one of the main evils in modern Greek society (social disease); - General

Cross-Cultural Study of Infants and Toddlers: Developmental Stages According to …

"Cross-cultural research has been particularly useful in demonstrating the universality of cognitive stages during child development. For instance, the sequence and timing of Piagetian sensorimotor learning in infancy appears quite similar across cultures", Professor Dr. Alice Sterling Honig (Syracuse University, USA) reports. "Despite the gradual nature of continuity in early development, cross-cultural studies indicate that there exist discontinuities in the developmental milestones achieved in the early years. For example, the

Non invasive respiratory support successfully used in a multi-trauma setting

Non invasive respiratory support has been used in a wide variety of settings. I. Condon and P. Papadakos (Rochester/USA) publish a case report illustrating the benefit of such support in a complex multi-trauma patient. The case presentation appeared in Applied Cardiopulmonary Pathophysiology: "A 42 year-old male restrained driver was brought to the trauma bay with multiple injuries. These included: aortic transection, frontal lobe hemorrhages, bilateral pneumothoraces, multiple rib

Organ Transplantation: Children as Donors

The field of organ transplantation is at its most poignant when a child dies in circumstances where he/she may be considered a potential donor. Undeniably the death of a child is one of the most distressing of bereavements as parents naturally expect to outlive their children. Marion J. Sibelink and colleagues (Medical Center Groningen/NL) analyzed key issues that needed to be resolved to enhance the probability of the best parental

Successful Introducing Performance-based Reward Systems within Collectivistic Na …

"Individualism versus Collectivism is an important cultural value concerning its influence on the reward system design in a way that Individualism favours the performance-based reward system, whereas Collectivism emphasizes job security, group rewards and internal equity ... Is it possible to introduce the performance-based reward system within the collectivistic cultural context, and, if it is possible, how?" Biljana Bogicevic Milikic (Belgrade/Serbia) proposed following her research findings "that Collectivism strongly influences

An appropriate dialysis treatment provides the unique opportunity to slow down c …

"Cardiac disease is the major cause of death in dialysis patients, accounting for half of the total mortality. When routinely assessed by echocardiography, the proportion of patients with abnormal dimensions of cardiac compartments is even higher. When chronic kidney disease progresses, cardiovscular damage starts to develop and may already be quite severe before dialysis is started," Branko Braam and colleagues report in their textbook "Hypertension and Cardivascular Aspects of Dialysis

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