Minimal mindfulness of the world as an active control for a full mindfulness of mental states intervention: A Registered Report and Pilot study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max Lovell ◽  
Zoltan Dienes

Mindfulness is a continual renewal of non-elaborative attention on an object of focus, without clinging or aversion, and with equanimity. As this requires the capacity to monitor and control the extent to which one is on task, it is a metacognitive exercise. Mindfulness is especially metacognitive when directed towards mental states themselves, which is how the practice was conceived in the original Buddhist scriptures. Alternatively, mindfulness could be directed towards the world around oneself in a less metacognitive fashion. Notably, whilst mindfulness of the world is directed towards the referents of sensory states (e.g. “the sky is blue”), mindfulness of mental states includes a higher-order awareness of the experience of a sensory state as a mental state in and of itself (e.g. “I see the sky is blue”) – as a sensation.We test the centrality of metacognition in mindfulness practice by contrasting a full Mindfulness of Mental States intervention against a minimal Mindfulness of the World intervention, to act as a potential active control for non-specific effects. We also used the standard Waitlist control. Survey measures of mindfulness directed at the world and mental states separately, along with depression and anxiety measures, will be administered, along with participant expectations for each of these outcomes. Bayesian contrasts between the two mindfulness interventions will be the primary analysis to test for the first time the effects of mindfulness against a true active control (if it should turn out to be one). Pilot data (available online, above) presented in the first section below show some promising initial results. Between the Mental States and World focused conditions, evidence in the hypothesised direction was discovered on the Observe facet of the 24-item FFMQ-sf (other facets were insensitive), and on the PHQ-4 measure of depression and anxiety. Bar one single-item measure, evidence for the null was relegated to comparisons between the World and Waitlist groups, indicating its function as a placebo.

2020 ◽  
pp. 315-318
Author(s):  
Ana Hedberg Olenina

Over the past twenty years, evolving technologies have allowed us to map the activity of the brain with unprecedented precision. Initially driven by medical goals, neuroscience has advanced to the level where it is rapidly transforming our understanding of emotions, empathy, reasoning, love, morality, and free will. What is at stake today is our sense of the self: who we are, how we act, how we experience the world, and how we interact with it. By now nearly all of our subjective mental states have been tied to some particular patterns of cortical activity. Beyond the radical philosophical implications, these studies have far-reaching social consequences. Neuroscientists are authoritatively establishing norms and deviations; they make predictions about our behavior based on processes that lie outside our conscious knowledge and control. The insights of neuroscience are being imported into the social sphere, informing debates in jurisprudence, forensics, healthcare, education, business, and politics. A recent collection of essays, compiled by Semir Zeki, a leading European proponent of applied neuroscience, in collaboration with the American lawyer Oliver Goodenough, calls for further integration of lab findings into discussions of public policy and personnel training....


EDIS ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (1) ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Demian F. Gomez ◽  
Jiri Hulcr ◽  
Daniel Carrillo

Invasive species, those that are nonnative and cause economic damage, are one of the main threats to ecosystems around the world. Ambrosia beetles are some of the most common invasive insects. Currently, severe economic impacts have been increasingly reported for all the invasive shot hole borers in South Africa, California, Israel, and throughout Asia. This 7-page fact sheet written by Demian F. Gomez, Jiri Hulcr, and Daniel Carrillo and published by the School of Forest Resources and Conservation describes shot hole borers and their biology and hosts and lists some strategies for prevention and control of these pests. http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fr422


Author(s):  
Y. Arockia Suganthi ◽  
Chitra K. ◽  
J. Magelin Mary

Dengue fever is a painful mosquito-borne infection caused by different types of virus in various localities of the world. There is no particular medicine or vaccine to treat person suffering from dengue fever. Dengue viruses are transmitted by the bite of female Aedes (Ae) mosquitoes. Dengue fever viruses are mainly transmitted by Aedes which can be active in tropical or subtropical climates. Aedes Aegypti is the key step to avoid infection transmission to save millions of people in all over the world. This paper provides a standard guideline in the planning of dengue prevention and control measures. At the same time gives the priorities including clinical management and hospitalized dengue patients have to address essentially.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-204
Author(s):  
Shrikant Verma ◽  
Mohammad Abbas ◽  
Sushma Verma ◽  
Syed Tasleem Raza ◽  
Farzana Mahdi

A novel spillover coronavirus (nCoV), with its epicenter in Wuhan, China's People's Republic, has emerged as an international public health emergency. This began as an outbreak in December 2019, and till November eighth, 2020, there have been 8.5 million affirmed instances of novel Covid disease2019 (COVID-19) in India, with 1,26,611 deaths, resulting in an overall case fatality rate of 1.48 percent. Coronavirus clinical signs are fundamentally the same as those of other respiratory infections. In different parts of the world, the quantity of research center affirmed cases and related passings are rising consistently. The COVID- 19 is an arising pandemic-responsible viral infection. Coronavirus has influenced huge parts of the total populace, which has prompted a global general wellbeing crisis, setting all health associations on high attentive. This review sums up the overall landmass, virology, pathogenesis, the study of disease transmission, clinical introduction, determination, treatment, and control of COVID-19 with the reference to India.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (10-3) ◽  
pp. 82-92
Author(s):  
Gekkaya Funda

The formation of external policy of any country aims at serving the state’s interests. For this matter, many countries seek their way through this by taking into account the potential prospects available to them. The fundamental subtleties and factors that influence a state’s choices of external policy include geographical location, history, security, culture, trade, political ideology, military might, et cetera. Countries often make external contacts based on some regulations and response to unfolding events. Thus, external policy to an extent pertains to the guiding principles outlined to be pursued through state values, decisions and actions taken by the states themselves and their attempt to develop, manage and control the external relations of national societies. In this regard, the Caucasian region has been an important factor in Turkey’s foreign policy. Since these states emerged in the early 1990s, energy has taken a center stage within the region, while Turkey remains a transit route to the world...


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 9538-9542

In vision of searching for the right Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) for a specific mission, there are multiple factors to be considered by the operator such as mission, endurance, type of payload and range of the telemetry and control. This research is focusing on extending control range of the UAS by using 4G-LTE network to enable beyond-line-of-sight flying for the commercial UAS. Major UAS such Global Hawk, Predator MQ-1 are able to fly thousands of kilometers by the use of satellite communication. However, the satellite communication annual license subscription can be very expensive. With this situation in mind, a new type of flight controller with 4G-LTE communication has been developed and tested. Throughout the research, blended-wing-body (BWB) Baseline B2S is used as the platform for technology demonstrator. Result from this analysis has proven that the proposed system is capable to control a UAS from as far as United Kingdom, with a latency less than 881 ms in average. The new added capability can potentially give the commercial UAS community a new horizon to be able to control their UAS from anywhere around the world with the availability of 4G-LTE connection


Author(s):  
Michael Sollberger
Keyword(s):  

Can some synaesthetic experiences be treated as veridical perceptual experiences, i.e. as conscious mental states in which worldly objects and their features perceptually appear as they really are? Most empirical scientists and philosophers working on synaesthesia answer this question in the negative. Contrary to this prevailing opinion, Mohan Matthen’s ‘When is Synaesthesia Perception?’ (Chapter 8, this volume) argues that such a dismissive approach to the epistemic properties of synaesthetic experiences is not mandatory. Matthen claims that there is conceptual room for a more tolerant approach according to which at least one variety of synaesthesia, which he calls ‘direct synaesthesia’, is epistemically on a par with everyday non-synaesthetic perception. The aim of this chapter is to evaluate the idea of ‘direct synaesthesia’ and to assess whether the accepted dogma that synaesthesia is always prone to error has to go.


1996 ◽  
Vol 118 (3) ◽  
pp. 482-488 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergio Bittanti ◽  
Fabrizio Lorito ◽  
Silvia Strada

In this paper, Linear Quadratic (LQ) optimal control concepts are applied for the active control of vibrations in helicopters. The study is based on an identified dynamic model of the rotor. The vibration effect is captured by suitably augmenting the state vector of the rotor model. Then, Kalman filtering concepts can be used to obtain a real-time estimate of the vibration, which is then fed back to form a suitable compensation signal. This design rationale is derived here starting from a rigorous problem position in an optimal control context. Among other things, this calls for a suitable definition of the performance index, of nonstandard type. The application of these ideas to a test helicopter, by means of computer simulations, shows good performances both in terms of disturbance rejection effectiveness and control effort limitation. The performance of the obtained controller is compared with the one achievable by the so called Higher Harmonic Control (HHC) approach, well known within the helicopter community.


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