Seeing What Is Said: Teaching Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince Through Its Images

ABSTRACTThis multidisciplinary pedagogy offers eight allegorical images in support of a visually contextual reading of The Prince. Responding to the pedagogical problem of students treating the text as an ahistorical manual for action addressed to them, our approach resituates The Prince in its visual cultural context. This allows us to specify Machiavelli’s innovations as a theorist in terms of the importance of plurality and particularity in regard to political action. An online supplemental appendix provides access to databases and additional resources. Exploring Machiavelli’s politicized moral concepts of prudence, parsimony, liberality, fortune, and impetuosity using these images, we show his masterful invocation and redeployment of the cultural codes of his time. In presenting a visual history of concepts, we hope to move students beyond common contemporary ideological biases and literal readings and to alert them to the complex stories and relationships evident in the visual history of civic humanism.

Abortion metrics: a scoping review of abortion measures and indicators

Consensus is lacking on the most appropriate indicators to document progress in safe abortion at programmatic and country level. We conducted a scoping review to provide an extensive summary of abortion indicators used over 10 years (2008–2018) to inform the debate on how progress in the provision and access to abortion care can be best captured. Documents were identified in PubMed and Popline and supplemented by materials identified on major non-governmental organisation websites. We screened 1999 abstracts and seven additional relevant documents. Ultimately, we extracted information on 792 indicators from 142 documents. Using a conceptual framework developed inductively, we grouped indicators into seven domains (social and policy context, abortion access and availability, abortion prevalence and incidence, abortion care, abortion outcomes, abortion impact and characteristics of women) and 40 subdomains. Indicators of access and availability and of the provision of abortion care were the most common. Indicators of outcomes were fewer and focused on physical health, with few measures of psychological well-being and no measures of quality of life or functioning. Similarly, there were few indicators attempting to measure the context, including beliefs and social attitudes at the population level. Most indicators used special studies either in facilities or at population level. The list of indicators (in online supplemental appendix) is an extensive resource for the design of monitoring and evaluation plans of abortion programmes. The large number indicators, many specific to one source only and with similar concepts measured in a multitude of ways, suggest the need for standardisation.

International Assessment of DSM-5 and ICD-11 Personality Disorder Traits: Toward a Common Nosology in DSM-5.1

Introduction: The DSM-5 Alternative Model of Personality Disorders (AMPD) and the ICD-11 Classification of Personality Disorders (PD) are largely commensurate, and when combined, they delineate six trait domains: Negative Affectivity, Detachment, Antagonism/Dissociality, Disinhibition, Anankastia, and Psychoticism. Objective: The present study evaluated the international validity of abrief 36-item patient-report measure that portrays all six domains simultaneously including 18 primary subfacets. Methods: We developed and employed a modified version of the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 – Brief Form Plus (PID5BF+). A total number of 16,327 individuals were included, of which 2,347 were patients. The expected 6-factor structure of facets was initially investigated insamples from Denmark (n = 584), Germany (n = 1,271), and the U.S. (n = 605), and was subsequently replicated in both patient- and community samples from Italy, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Poland, Czech Republic, U.S., and Brazil. Associations with interview-rated DSM-5 PD categories were also investigated. Results: Findings generally supported the empirical soundness andinternational robustness of the six domains including meaningful associations with familiar interviewratedPD types. Conclusions: The modified PID5BF+ may be employed internationally by clinicians and researchers for brief and reliable assessment of the six combined DSM-5 and ICD-11 domains, including 18 primary subfacets. This six-domain framework may inform a future nosology for DSM-5.1 that is more reasonably aligned with the authoritative ICD-11 codes than the current DSM-5 AMPD model. The 36-item modified PID5BF+ scoring key is provided in supplemental Appendix A.

Advances in Machine Learning for the Behavioral Sciences

The areas of machine learning and knowledge discovery in databases have considerably matured in recent years. In this article, we briefly review recent developments as well as classical algorithms that stood the test of time. Our goal is to provide a general introduction into different tasks such as learning from tabular data, behavioral data, or textual data, with a particular focus on actual and potential applications in behavioral sciences. The supplemental appendix to the article also provides practical guidance for using the methods by pointing the reader to proven software implementations. The focus is on R, but we also cover some libraries in other programming languages as well as systems with easy-to-use graphical interfaces.

Improving the Scientific Rigor of Nutritional Recommendations for Adults with Diabetes: A Comprehensive Review of the American Diabetes Association Guidelines Recommended Eating Patterns

Over half of adult Americans now have diabetes or prediabetes and worse, this epidemic is now world-wide and shows no signs of slowing, with rates of both diabetes and diabetes-related health complications still rising. When advising patients with diabetes on food choices, many providers rely on nutrition guidelines provided by the American Diabetes Association (ADA), and these guidelines influence other recommendations across the globe. Given the alarming trends in diabetes, it is paramount to review the treatment guidelines to ensure they are based on rigorous and accepted scientific methods. Our review included the evidence cited by the ADA in support of its claims and recommendations for eating patterns to combat diabetes (see Description of Eating Patterns, Supplemental Appendix), as presented in the most current edition of the annual ADA’s Standards of Medical Care in Diabetes (2018 Standards). Our review also includes sources cited in the latest edition of the ADA’s Nutrition Therapy Recommendations for Adults with Diabetes (2014 Recommendations),  which also informed the 2018 Standards.  In October 2018 low carbohydrate was named as a recommended eating pattern by the ADA and European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD)5but only citations from the 2014 and early 2018 ADA documents were reviewed.

Psychodynamic Therapy Techniques

Psychodynamic therapy is one of the most popular orientations practiced in the world today. The past few decades of research have also provided evidence for its clinical efficacy. However, gaining competence in this approach generally requires years of training and mastery of a large and complex literature. This easily accessible text focuses specifically on the techniques needed for contemporary psychodynamic practice. Written for the intermediate-beginner, it first teaches readers how to think and respond to patients in a consistent psychodynamic manner. Other early chapters focus on the characteristics of “good” interventions and ways to assess their clinical impacts. Next, the book provides straightforward guidance on how to question, clarify, confront, and interpret patient material. These “classic” techniques are then supplemented with six sets of supportive interventions helpful for lower-functioning patients or those in acute crisis. Finally, the procedures required to effectively resolve alliance ruptures are described along with suggestions for using these events to enact clinical gains. In addition to clear, step-by-step instructions on how to prepare techniques (e.g., interpretations), the author provides numerous clinical vignettes. Further, a supplemental appendix conveniently gathers the psychodynamic therapy models and treatment manuals that have been used in empirical studies. These may be helpful for researchers and other readers interested in pursuing more advanced training. Grounded in both sophisticated clinical theory and up-to-date research findings, this book effectively demystifies psychodynamic therapy techniques and helps practitioners more effectively apply them to a wide range of patients and problems.