The Development of an Internet-Based Treatment for Problem Gamblers and Concerned Significant Others: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial

Problem gambling creates significant harm for the gambler and for concerned significant others (CSOs). While several studies have investigated the effects of individual cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for problem gambling, less is known about the effects of involving CSOs in treatment. Behavioral couples therapy (BCT) has shown promising results when working with substance use disorders by involving both the user and a CSO. This pilot study investigated BCT for problem gambling, as well as the feasibility of performing a larger scale randomized controlled trial. 36 participants, 18 gamblers and 18 CSOs, were randomized to either BCT or individual CBT for the gambler. Both interventions were Internet-delivered self-help interventions with therapist support. Both groups of gamblers improved on all outcome measures, but there were no differences between the groups. The CSOs in the BCT group lowered their scores on anxiety and depression more than the CSOs of those randomized to the individual CBT group did. The implications of the results and the feasibility of the trial are discussed.     

Effect of Sexual Arousal on Cortical Coupling During Performance of the Tower of Hanoi Task in Young Men

Sexual arousal affects cognitive processing, which depends on the coordinated functioning among cortical areas. The aim of this research was to determine whether previous observation of videos with sexual content affects the degree of cortical electroencephalographic (EEG) coupling during performance of an executive task. Cortical EEG correlations were calculated in three groups of heterosexual men under three conditions: at rest; during observation of a video with neutral, aggressive, or erotic content; and while performing the Tower of Hanoi task (TOH). Based on self-reports, it was shown that the erotic video induced general and sexual arousal, while the aggressive video affected valence and general arousal. Task performance was similar in all three groups. During performance of TOH, only the erotic group showed a decreased correlation between prefrontal areas with an increased correlation between parietal and prefrontotemporal areas, specifically in the slow bands. It is likely that these changes in the degree of cortical coupling could be associated with the cognitive strategies or functional adaptations that participants require to adequately solve the task during a state of sexual arousal. These data could contribute to improving our understanding of the central nervous mechanisms that underlie the effect of sexual arousal on the cognitive processes involved in tasks like TOH.     

Caring or Vulnerable Children? Sibling Relationships When Exposed to Intimate Partner Violence

Drawing on qualitative interviews with the children about how they and their siblings have responded to intimate partner violence, this paper explores processes of victim positioning. In their narratives, some children positioned themselves in line with notions of vulnerable victims, while others positioned themselves as caregivers or changed their positions vis‐à‐vis their siblings. In their stories, they assigned and assumed positions in interaction with their siblings. Receiving sibling support and care was in the narratives related to the quality of the sibling relationship, the shared experiences of violence and the age order.     

Organizing local social service measures to counteract long-term social assistance receipt. What works? Experiences from Sweden

Active labour market policies and programs (ALMPs) have over the last decades been established as main instruments to promote the transition from welfare to work. In this article we study strategies employed by Swedish municipalities to help recipients ending spells of social assistance take-up. By using a combination of quantitative and qualitative data we try to identify which approaches stand out as more successful than others with respect to social assistance duration. We have formed pairs of municipalities similar in important respects, but with different social assistance exit rates as predicted by a statistical model. Then we conducted case studies in the selected municipalities’ social assistance units, gathering information on how work is carried out and organized. Information was collected by semi-structured interviews with department managers and front-line social workers. In the interviews we identified various elements of practice that emerged as relevant, suggesting that shorter spells follow from activation with a focus on human resource development, programmes targeted at young adults, well-functioning collaboration, and use of sanctions or an overall approach characterized by systemized efforts.     

Foster children's experiences and expectations concerning the child‐welfare officer role—Prerequisites and obstacles for close and trustful relationships

The question of whether the Swedish social services are fulfilling their obligation to monitor and support children in foster care is attracting increasing attention. The importance of closeness and trust between children and their child‐welfare officers has been highlighted in particular. The aim of this article is to study foster children's experiences and expectations concerning the role of the child‐welfare officer, and how these constitute prerequisites for, and possible obstacles to the officers developing close and trustful relationships with the children under prevailing institutional conditions. Data from our evaluation of a national pilot project with supervision representatives provide the empirical basis. Our theoretical point of departure is that the relationship between the child and the child‐welfare officer is affected by the officer's role—a role that is negotiated under the prevailing institutional conditions and in interaction with the children's experiences of and expectations about that role. The results show that most children emphasize that the relationship with their officer is negatively affected by a lack of time, availability, and trust. It is also weakened by the children's general expectation that child‐welfare officers only act in their official role, a role that is associated with a formal and distanced relationship.     

Prediction in multilevel generalized linear models

Summary.  We discuss prediction of random effects and of expected responses in multilevel generalized linear models. Prediction of random effects is useful for instance in small area estimation and disease mapping, effectiveness studies and model diagnostics. Prediction of expected responses is useful for planning, model interpretation and diagnostics. For prediction of random effects, we concentrate on empirical Bayes prediction and discuss three different kinds of standard errors; the posterior standard deviation and the marginal prediction error standard deviation (comparative standard errors) and the marginal sampling standard deviation (diagnostic standard error). Analytical expressions are available only for linear models and are provided in an appendix . For other multilevel generalized linear models we present approximations and suggest using parametric bootstrapping to obtain standard errors. We also discuss prediction of expectations of responses or probabilities for a new unit in a hypothetical cluster, or in a new (randomly sampled) cluster or in an existing cluster. The methods are implemented in gllamm and illustrated by applying them to survey data on reading proficiency of children nested in schools. Simulations are used to assess the performance of various predictions and associated standard errors for logistic random-intercept models under a range of conditions.     

Work-Related Road Safety: An Analysis Based on U.K. Bus Driver Performance

The effects of age and experience on accident involvement for bus drivers were investigated, with special emphasis upon the first years of being an operator, using two methods. First, direct calculations between these variables were undertaken. Thereafter, a variant of the method of quasi-induced exposure (a ratio of culpable versus nonculpable accidents in the population) was used and referred to as the indirect method. These methods yielded fairly similar results, given that the samples used were drawn from the same population but only partly overlapping. It was found that experience had the strongest effect on accidents in the first year of driving, while age had a u-shaped association with accidents, that is, young and old drivers had more accidents, something that was more apparent when experience was held constant. These results show that, for bus drivers, experience is initially more important than age, but after two or three years, the effect is small. Thereafter, age is the more discernible variable, although it is a very weak factor in predicting crash risk.     

社会体育的发展和高校体育教学的改革

社会体育的兴起 ,促使高校体育的教学目的与任务有了新的改变和发展 ,高校体育教学 ,要改革 ,要适应社会需要 ,要使体育教学成为学生健身的动力 ,这也是提高全民族身体素质的需要     

A hierarchical frailty model applied to two-generation melanoma data

We present a hierarchical frailty model based on distributions derived from non-negative Lévy processes. The model may be applied to data with several levels of dependence, such as family data or other general clusters, and is an alternative to additive frailty models. We present several parametric examples of the model, and properties such as expected values, variance and covariance. The model is applied to a case-cohort sample of age at onset for melanoma from the Swedish Multi-Generation Register, organized in nuclear families of parents and one or two children. We compare the genetic component of the total frailty variance to the common environmental term, and estimate the effect of birth cohort and gender.     

Information Hazards in Biotechnology

With the advance of biotechnology, biological information, rather than biological materials, is increasingly the object of principal security concern. We argue that both in theory and in practice, existing security approaches in biology are poorly suited to manage hazardous biological information, and use the cases of Mousepox, H5N1 gain of function, and Botulinum toxin H to highlight these ongoing challenges. We suggest that mitigation of these hazards can be improved if one can: (1) anticipate hazard potential before scientific work is performed; (2) consider how much the new information would likely help both good and bad actors; and (3) aim to disclose information in the manner that maximally disadvantages bad actors versus good ones.