Zinc is an essential nutrient having a complex biological role, including neuropsychological aspects. The study aimed to compare zinc level and psychic features in two pupils groups from different socioeconomic backgrounds. It also ascertains the relationship between zinc levels and aspects of intellectual development (attention, memory, intelligence) and personality features (psychoticism, neu...

Psychological stress affects human health, and chronic stress leads to life-threatening diseases, such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Psychological stress coping mechanisms involve the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and downstream cAMP response element binding protein (CREB), which are targets of the adverse effects of stress paradigms. Fourty-seven adult male Sprag...

Color is an inseparable element of our lives and is a part of everything we perceive. Colour has a strong impact on our decision making process. Therefore there is a direct connection between the colour and psychological functions. Kansei is a Japanese concept, which abstracts the subjective internal process in the brain, which is activated by external stimuli. Furthermore, Kansei is a function...

BACKGROUND Surrogacy was prohibited in the Netherlands until 1994, at which time the Dutch law was changed from the general prohibition of surrogacy to the prohibition of commercial surrogacy. This paper describes the results from the first and only Dutch Centre for Non-commercial IVF Surrogacy between 1997 and 2004. METHODS A prospective study was conducted of all intended parents, and surro...

BACKGROUND Little is known about the impact of life-threatening obstetric complications ('near miss') on women's mental health in low- and middle-income countries. AIMS To examine the relationships between near miss and postpartum psychological distress in the Republic of Benin. METHOD One-year prospective cohort using epidemiological and ethnographic techniques in a population of women del...

Studies of the “human dimension” of landscapes have become increasingly important in landscape also as a “place” with its meanings and contributions to societal identity. In this chapter, we present some of the key theories of landscape experience and empirical research related to those theories. They are grouped around three concepts: First, we survey theories dealing with landscapes perceived...

The loss of facial expression and the disfigurement of facial paralysis have serious implications for a patient’s physical and psychological well being [1]. Numerous aetiologies of facial paralysis exist but once nerve recovery has been static for two years, interventional surgery is required to improve the situation [2]. Facial paralysis is often treated as an aesthetic problem but can also ha...

A key element of cultures of honor is that men in these cultures are prepared to protect with violence the reputation for strength and toughness. Such cultures are likely to develop where (1) a man’s resources can be thieved in full by other men and (2) the governing body is weak and thus cannot prevent or punish theft. Historically a herding culture operating outside of formal government, the ...

We present a new approach for adding Bernoulli beam reinforcements to Kirchhoff plates. The plate is discretised using a continuous/discontinuous finite element method based on standard continuous piecewise polynomial finite element spaces. The beams are discretised by the CutFEM technique of letting the basis functions of the plate represent also the beams which are allowed to pass through the...

The Buddhist construct of mindfulness is a central element of mindfulness-based interventions and derives from a systematic phenomenological programme developed over several millennia to investigate subjective experience. Enthusiasm for ‘mindfulness’ in Western psychological and other science has resulted in proliferation of definitions, operationalizations and self-report inventories that purp...