Contemporary Supportive Therapy: A Review of History, Theory, and Evidence

Supportive psychotherapy interventions were developed as a part of psychodynamic psychotherapy work, and supportive psychotherapy was historically considered to be the default form of therapy only for lower-functioning patients. These roots unfortunately have resulted in supportive psychotherapy being viewed as an inferior form of treatment. In reality, supportive psychotherapy is a practical and flexible form of psychotherapy that helps patients with a wide range of psychiatric illnesses, including mood disorders, anxiety disorders, posttraumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, eating disorders, body dysmorphic disorder, and substance use disorders. In addition, supportive psychotherapy can be well-suited to higher-functioning patients, as well as to patients who are chronically lower-functioning. There is also evidence to support the use of supportive psychotherapy in patients with certain medical illnesses, including coronary artery disease, some gastrointestinal illnesses, HIV infection, and certain types of cancer. The goals of supportive psychotherapy include helping patients to understand emotional experiences, improving affective regulation and reality-testing, making use of their most effective coping strategies, and engaging in collaborative problem solving to reduce stressors and increase effective engagement with support systems.

Mapping of UV-C dose and SARS-CoV-2 viral inactivation across N95 respirators during decontamination

During public health crises like the COVID-19 pandemic, ultraviolet-C (UV-C) decontamination of N95 respirators for emergency reuse has been implemented to mitigate shortages. Pathogen photoinactivation efficacy depends critically on UV-C dose, which is distance- and angle-dependent and thus varies substantially across N95 surfaces within a decontamination system. Due to nonuniform and system-dependent UV-C dose distributions, characterizing UV-C dose and resulting pathogen inactivation with sufficient spatial resolution on-N95 is key to designing and validating UV-C decontamination protocols. However, robust quantification of UV-C dose across N95 facepieces presents challenges, as few UV-C measurement tools have sufficient (1) small, flexible form factor, and (2) angular response. To address this gap, we combine optical modeling and quantitative photochromic indicator (PCI) dosimetry with viral inactivation assays to generate high-resolution maps of “on-N95” UV-C dose and concomitant SARS-CoV-2 viral inactivation across N95 facepieces within a commercial decontamination chamber. Using modeling to rapidly identify on-N95 locations of interest, in-situ measurements report a 17.4 ± 5.0-fold dose difference across N95 facepieces in the chamber, yielding 2.9 ± 0.2-log variation in SARS-CoV-2 inactivation. UV-C dose at several on-N95 locations was lower than the lowest-dose locations on the chamber floor, highlighting the importance of on-N95 dose validation. Overall, we integrate optical simulation with in-situ PCI dosimetry to relate UV-C dose and viral inactivation at specific on-N95 locations, establishing a versatile approach to characterize UV-C photoinactivation of pathogens contaminating complex substrates such as N95s.

How Social Media Facilitates the Knowledge Management Process: A Systematic Review

The aim of this review is to present the social media roles that facilitate knowledge management processes. This paper used a systematic literature review method based on PRISMA guidelines. The literature search was conducted using the following five electronic scientific databases: Web of Knowledge, Science Direct, Emerald, PubMed and Scopus. The search identified 82 selected works and the findings showed that social media facilitates knowledge acquisition by being used as a source of knowledge, facilitating knowledge accessibility and influencing knowledge creation and creating an interactive environment. Social media has created a new dimension of knowledge organisation by evolving knowledge storage, retrieval and classification activities. Social media has developed into a new flexible form of user’s communication by removing knowledge-sharing barriers, and accelerated knowledge sharing, in particular collaborative sharing. Finally, social media facilitates knowledge application activities such as knowledge translation, decision-making, education, problem-solving, team work and research process. The knowledge activities in social media need to be monitored for quality and reliability, and endangerment of ethics, users’ privacy, fake news, false information and negative comments need to be maintained.

Role of Lipid Transfer Proteins (LTPs) in the Viral Life Cycle

Viruses are obligate parasites that depend on the host cell machinery for their replication and dissemination. Cellular lipids play a central role in multiple stages of the viral life cycle such as entry, replication, morphogenesis, and egress. Most viruses reorganize the host cell membranes for the establishment of viral replication complex. These specialized structures allow the segregation of replicating viral RNA from ribosomes and protect it from host nucleases. They also facilitate localized enrichment of cellular components required for viral replication and assembly. The specific composition of the lipid membrane governs its ability to form negative or positive curvature and possess a rigid or flexible form, which is crucial for membrane rearrangement and establishment of viral replication complexes. In this review, we highlight how different viruses manipulate host lipid transfer proteins and harness their functions to enrich different membrane compartments with specific lipids in order to facilitate multiple aspects of the viral life cycle.

Taqsīm as a Creative Musical Process in Arabic Music

Creativity plays a major role in various musical contexts including composition, performance and education. Although numerous studies have revealed how creativity is involved in processes of listening, improvising and composing, relatively little is known about the particularities of transcultural creative processes in music. In this article, we aim to shed light on the creative musical processes underlying taqsīm performance in Arabic music. To that end, qualitative interviews have been conducted with three Berlin-based oud players from Syria. Results of a thematic content analysis show that taqsīm encompasses multiple components (e.g., a flexible form and dependency on maqam as well as tonal music) and serves various functions such as developing artistic individuality. Moreover, taqsīm is affected by interactions between tradition and novelty. We discuss the interview data within the cross-cultural experiential model of musical creativity developed by Hill (2018), offering a fresh approach to studying taqsīm which goes beyond established concepts such as the improvisation-composition continuum.

Implementing Geo Positioning System for Children Tracking Location Monitoring based on Android

Parents' concerns in terms of monitoring the presence and monitoring of children's activities become one of the problems that are often faced. Training children to prepare themselves to face this sometimes dangerous world, first develop a sense of security in themselves. The objectives of this research are to generate a system or application to track the whereabouts of children through smartphones that can be used by both parents of the child and to design devices that can be used practically and children can be traced to the presence of wireless media by their parents. Improved supervision of children is needed without reducing the freedom of children to learn and explore their environment. One alternative that allows tracking the presence, location, and accuracy is quite good is to use a Geo Positioning System (GPS). This GPS is packaged in a flexible form so that it can help make it easier for parents to supervise their children in the range of areas that are still accessible to them and find the child's position when separated from their parents. The system can send the location information of children who are lost or lost on smartphone applications used by parents.

Biomechanically distinct filter-feeding behaviors distinguish sei whales as a functional intermediate and ecologically flexible species

ABSTRACT With their ability to facultatively switch between filter-feeding modes, sei whales represent a functional and ecological intermediate in the transition between intermittent and continuous filter feeding. Morphologically resembling their lunge-feeding, rorqual relatives, sei whales have convergently evolved the ability to skim prey near the surface of the water, like the more distantly related balaenids. Because of their intermediate nature, understanding how sei whales switch between feeding behaviors may shed light on the rapid evolution and flexibility of filter-feeding strategies. We deployed multi-sensor bio-logging tags on two sei whales and measured the kinematics of feeding behaviors in this poorly understood and endangered species. To forage at the surface, sei whales used a unique combination of surface lunges and skim-feeding behaviors. The surface lunges were slow and stereotyped, and were unlike lunges performed by other rorqual species. The skim-feeding events featured a different filtration mechanism from the lunges and were kinematically different from the continuous filter feeding used by balaenids. While foraging below the surface, sei whales used faster and more variable lunges. The morphological characteristics that allow sei whales to effectively perform different feeding behaviors suggest that sei whales rapidly evolved their functionally intermediate and ecologically flexible form to compete with larger and more efficient rorqual species.