Description:
Short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy (STPP) is a widely practised form of psychological intervention. Given that the Roth and Fonagy (1996) review concluded that there was a lack of confirming evidence for STPP, the current review is focused on studies published between 1996 and 2006 that evaluate the efficacy of STPP. As a result of a systematic literature review, 18 studies were found that met inclusion criteria consistent with those used by Roth and Fonagy (1996) for selection of studies, patient groupings and definition of therapeutic method. In general these studies add to an increasing body of evidence suggesting that STPP can be an effective psychological treatment for individuals experiencing mental health problems. Specifically, for depression STPP can be equal in effects to other psychological treatments and is significantly better than no treatment in the short term. Furthermore, emerging process data indicate that there is a significant relationship between the use of specific psychodynamic therapeutic techniques and the alleviation of depressive symptoms. Increasing evidence has emerged to support STPP as a treatment for generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder and some personality disorders. There remains limited evidence for the use of STPP treatment for patients with anxiety disorders that relate more to stress. Very limited and inconclusive evidence currently exists to support STPP as a treatment for bipolar disorder, eating disorders and drug dependency. Future research needs to include broader assessment measures, long-term follow up, studies that maintain an identifiable focus, and research that includes a focus on psychotherapy process variables as they interact with outcomes.
Description:
The study investigated the self-concepts and possible selves of pathological gamblers. Six female egm users were recruited from a Victorian problem gambling counselling service. Three participants were currently gambling and three were not gambling. They were interviewed in-depth and using thematic analysis four dominant themes were identified. (1) Self-concepts tended to be consistent across all participants, (2) having a past self as being the dominant characteristics of possible selves coincided with greater possible selves clarity, (3) non-gambler's had more elaborate and specific plans for how to create change than did gambler's, and (4) non-gambler's had more plans to become possible selves which address goals of intrinsic meaning, rather than having a general goal to 'not gamble'. The findings are discussed in terms of implications for the cognitive theory of possible selves and suggestions for further research to investigate the utility of the constructs as a basis for a treatment modality.
Description:
Nondeterministic conformational search techniques, such as Genetic Algorithms (GAs) are promising for solving protein structure prediction (PSP) problem. The crossover operator of a GA can underpin the formation of potential conformations by exchanging and sharing potential sub-conformations, which is promising for solving PSP. However, the usual nature of an optimum PSP conformation being compact can produce many invalid conformations (by having non-self-avoiding-walk) using crossover. While a crossover-based converging conformation suffers from limited pathways, combining it with depth-first search (DFS) can partially reveal potential pathways. DFS generates random conformations increasingly quickly with increasing length of the protein sequences compared to random-move-only-based conformation generation. Random conformations are frequently applied for maintaining diversity as well as for initialization in many GA variations.
Description:
Nondeterministic conformational search techniques, such as Genetic Algorithms (GAs) are promising for solving protein structure prediction (PSP) problem. The crossover operator of a GA can underpin the formation of potential conformations by exchanging and sharing potential sub-conformations, which is promising for solving PSP. However, the usual nature of an optimum PSP conformation being compact can produce many invalid conformations (by having non-self-avoiding-walk) using crossover. While a crossover-based converging conformation suffers from limited pathways, combining it with depth-first search (DFS) can partially reveal potential pathways. DFS generates random conformations increasingly quickly with increasing length of the protein sequences compared to random-move-only-based conformation generation. Random conformations are frequently applied for maintaining diversity as well as for initialization in many GA variations.
Description:
This paper presents the impact of twins and the measures for their removal from the population of genetic algorithm (GA) when applied to effective conformational searching. It is conclusively shown that a twin removal strategy for a GA provides considerably enhanced performance when investigating solutions to complex ab initio protein structure prediction (PSP) problems in low-resolution model. Without twin removal, GA crossover and mutation operations can become ineffectual as generations lose their ability to produce significant differences, which can lead to the solution stalling. The paper relaxes the definition of chromosomal twins in the removal strategy to not only encompass identical, but also highly correlated chromosomes within the GA population, with empirical results consistently exhibiting significant improvements solving PSP problems.