Ultrasound-Guided Regional Analgesia for Post-Cesarean Pain

Pain management after a surgical intervention is one of the fundamental pillars for optimal patient recovery. In obstetric patients, this management may affect the mother and the newborn. The gold standard for analgesic management is the use of intrathecal morphine due to its long-lasting effect; however, adverse effects related to the use of opioids are evidenced, whether administered intrathecally or systemically in case of contraindication to the neuraxial approach or if a long-acting opioid is not available. Cesarean sections have been associated with moderate-to-severe postoperative pain. Multimodal analgesic management seeks to minimize the undesirable effects on the mother-newborn binomial in order to increase maternal satisfaction. The most studied regional blocks for this surgery are the transversus abdominis plane block and the ilioinguinal-iliohypogastric block, which shows contradictory evidence at the time of evaluate pain where there is no significant difference compared with intrathecal morphine, but there were fewer side effects with the TAP block group when assessing pruritus, nausea, and vomiting. Quadratus lumborum and erectus spinae plane block demonstrate its usefulness with better pain management compared with TAP block regardless of them having a higher level of complexity due to the visceral pain control; but there is no evidence with methodologic quality enough that demonstrates better outcomes compared with intrathecal morphine.

Are Older Adults’ Difficulties on Emotion Recognition and Theory of Mind Tasks Due to a Decline in General Cognitive Ability?

Older adults have both worse general cognition and worse social cognition. A frequent suggestion is that worse social cognition is due to worse general cognition. However, previous studies have often provided contradictory evidence. The current study examined this issue with a more extensive battery of tasks for both forms of cognition. We gave 47 young and 40 older adults three tasks to assess general cognition (processing speed, working memory, fluid intelligence) and three tasks to assess their social cognition (emotion and theory-of-mind). Older adults did worse on all tasks and there were correlations between general and social cognition. Although working memory and fluid intelligence were unique predictors of performance on the Emotion Photos task and the Eyes task, Age Group was a unique predictor on all three social cognitiaon tasks. Thus, there were relations between the two forms of cognition but older adults continued to do worse than young adults even after accounting for general cognition. We argue that this pattern of results is due to some overlap in brain areas mediating general and social cognition, but also independence, and with a differential rate of decline in brain areas dedicated to general cognition versus social cognition.

A new method of conflicting evidence management based on non-extensive entropy and Lance distance in uncertain scenarios

Handing uncertain information is one of the research focuses currently. For the sake of great ability of handing uncertain information, Dempster-Shafer evidence theory (D-S theory) has been widely used in various fields of uncertain information processing. However, when highly contradictory evidence appears, the results of the classical Dempster combination rules (DCR) can be counterintuitive. Aiming at this defect, by considering the relationship between the evidence and its own characteristics, the proposed method is a new method of conflicting evidence management based on non-extensive entropy and Lance distance in uncertain scenarios. Firstly, the Lance distance function is used to measure the degree of discrepancy and conflict between evidences, and the credibility of evidence is expressed by matrix. Introducing non-extensive entropy to measure the amount of information about evidence and express the uncertainty of evidence. Secondly, the discount coefficient of the final fusion evidence is measured by considering the credibility and uncertainty of the evidence, and the original evidence is modified by the discount coefficient. Then, the final result is obtained by evidence fusion with DCR. Finally, two numerical examples are provided to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed method, and the utility of our work is demonstrated through an application of the active lane change to avoid obstacles to the autonomous driving of new energy vehicles. The proposed method has a better identification accuracy, reaching 0.9811.

Infotainment as a hybrid of information and entertainment: a conceptual analysis

PurposeTo elaborate the nature of infotainment as a mediating concept between information and entertainment by analysing how the concept of infotainment is approached in diverse domains such as communication research.Design/methodology/approachConceptual analysis was conducted by focussing on 41 key studies on the topic. First, it was examined how researchers have approached the relationships between informational and entertaining elements of infotainment. Thereafter, attention was directed to the ways in which people make use of infotainment. The conceptual analysis is based on the comparison of the similarities and differences between the characterizations of the above issues.FindingsEarly studies characterized infotainment in terms of soft news which is distinct from hard news offering factual information. Later investigations offer a more nuanced picture by approaching infotainment as phenomenon with diverse dimensions depicting the topics, focus and presentation style. Studies on the use of infotainment offer contradictory evidence of the extent to which infotaining programmes can increase people's interest in social, political and health issues, for example.Research limitations/implicationsAs the study concentrates on the analysis of an individual concept, that is, infotainment, the findings cannot be generalized to concern the ways in which informational and entertaining phenomena are related as a whole.Originality/valueBy elaborating the conceptual nature of infotainment, the study contributes to information behaviour research by refining the picture of the relationships between information and entertainment.

Fraud Beliefs Following the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election: A Belief Systems Analysis

Beliefs that the 2020 Presidential election was fraudulent are prevalent across the U.S. despite substantial contradictory evidence. We surveyed 1642 Americans during the U.S. Presidential vote count on November 4-5, assessing fraud beliefs and presenting hypothetical election outcomes before key states were decided. Participants’ fraud beliefs increased when their preferred candidate lost and decreased when he won, and this effect scaled with preference strength. A Bayesian model accounts for this bias as reflecting a rational attribution process operating on biased prior beliefs about the true election winner and beneficiary of fraud. Our findings suggest that a systems approach targeting multiple beliefs simultaneously may be more fruitful in combating false beliefs than direct “debunking” attempts.

TWO RESEARCH PARADIGMS, WITH OR WITHOUT „GOD HYPOTHESIS”: C.S. LEWIS AND RICHARD DAWKINS

In this present paper we try to learn something about how to cope with analytical investigation of reality, by comparing the ideas of two iconic Oxford figures. On the one hand, the renowned atheist Richard Dawkins, and the Christian apologist C.S. Lewis, on the other. It is more than interesting to know how two great thinkers of the 20th century can raise and answer to questions of life, such as Reasoned belief, the so-called „God hypothesis” or concerning our place and purpose in this world. Both Dawkins and Lewis see intellectual reflection on the big questions as natural and significant. Both insist that their beliefs – atheism and Christianity respectively – demand and deserve intellectual seriousness and are capable of being developed into larger systems. Lewis’s apologetic approach generally takes the form of identifying a common human observation or experience, and then showing how it fits, naturally and plausibly, within a Christian way of looking at things. For Dawkins, there is no room for faith in science, precisely because the evidence compels us to draw certain valid conclusions. He proposes an absolute dichotomy between ‘blind faith’ and the ‘overwhelming scientific evidence. Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator, God, almost certainly does not exist, and that belief in a personal god qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence. An inevitable conclusion is that both Dawkins and Lewis are men of faith, in that both hold committed positions that cannot be proved right, but which they clearly regard as justified and reasonable. We must learn to live with a degree of rational uncertainty about our deepest beliefs and values.

The wrongful imprisonment of the Guildford Four: Who bears the blame?

<p>This paper discusses the wrongful imprisonment of the Guildford Four, and the reasons why this miscarriage of justice occurred. Contrary to popular opinion that the injustice arose due to police malpractice, this paper will conclude that the blame lies primarily with the judiciary for failing to reverse the 1975 decision even in the face of what seemed to be insurmountable contradictory evidence. This paper analyses the role each branch of government played, as well as discussing the role of public perceptions and societal fears of the time.</p>

The wrongful imprisonment of the Guildford Four: Who bears the blame?

<p>This paper discusses the wrongful imprisonment of the Guildford Four, and the reasons why this miscarriage of justice occurred. Contrary to popular opinion that the injustice arose due to police malpractice, this paper will conclude that the blame lies primarily with the judiciary for failing to reverse the 1975 decision even in the face of what seemed to be insurmountable contradictory evidence. This paper analyses the role each branch of government played, as well as discussing the role of public perceptions and societal fears of the time.</p>

Extended Goal Recognition: Lessons from Magic

The “science of magic” has lately emerged as a new field of study, providing valuable insights into the nature of human perception and cognition. While most of us think of magic as being all about deception and perceptual “tricks”, the craft—as documented by psychologists and professional magicians—provides a rare practical demonstration and understanding of goal recognition. For the purposes of human-aware planning, goal recognition involves predicting what a human observer is most likely to understand from a sequence of actions. Magicians perform sequences of actions with keen awareness of what an audience will understand from them and—in order to subvert it—the ability to predict precisely what an observer’s expectation is most likely to be. Magicians can do this without needing to know any personal details about their audience and without making any significant modification to their routine from one performance to the next. That is, the actions they perform are reliably interpreted by any human observer in such a way that particular (albeit erroneous) goals are predicted every time. This is achievable because people’s perception, cognition and sense-making are predictably fallible. Moreover, in the context of magic, the principles underlying human fallibility are not only well-articulated but empirically proven. In recent work we demonstrated how aspects of human cognition could be incorporated into a standard model of goal recognition, showing that—even though phenomena may be “fully observable” in that nothing prevents them from being observed—not all are noticed, not all are encoded or remembered, and few are remembered indefinitely. In the current article, we revisit those findings from a different angle. We first explore established principles from the science of magic, then recontextualise and build on our model of extended goal recognition in the context of those principles. While our extensions relate primarily to observations, this work extends and explains the definitions, showing how incidental (and apparently incidental) behaviours may significantly influence human memory and belief. We conclude by discussing additional ways in which magic can inform models of goal recognition and the light that this sheds on the persistence of conspiracy theories in the face of compelling contradictory evidence.

Why and when beliefs change: A multi-attribute value-based decision problem

Why people do or do not change their beliefs has been a long-standing puzzle. Sometimes people hold onto false beliefs despite ample contradictory evidence; sometimes they change their beliefs without sufficient reason. Here, we propose that the utility of a belief is derived from the potential outcomes of holding it. Outcomes can be internal (e.g., positive/negative feelings) or external (e.g., material gain/loss), and only some are dependent on belief accuracy. Belief change can then be understood as an economic transaction, in which the multidimensional utility of the old belief is compared against that of the new belief. Change will occur when potential outcomes alter across attributes, for example due to changing environments, or when certain outcomes are made more or less salient.