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Introduction: First aiders are commonly exposed to different forms of traumatic event (TE) during their duties, such as Chronic Indirect Vicarious Exposure which refers to an indirect exposure to aversive details of the trauma (APA, 2013). If the psychopathological impact of TE is well documented, the mental health of first aiders remains neglected. Therefore, our main objectives are (i) to study the link between exposure to traumatic events and psychopathological outcomes and (ii) to quantify the rates of mental health disorders among first aiders. Method: Our sample comprised of 53 volunteer first aiders (21 females and 32 males) with an average age of 32.4 years (SD = 13.6 years). Traumatic event exposure and mental health were assessed through a set of validated questionnaires completed online. Results: Rates of mental health outcomes were higher than within the general population. Females showed higher scores of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than males. PTSD scores were significantly correlated with all mental issues scores, apart from tobacco use and eating disorders scores. There was a significant correlation between the number of traumatic events and the years of experience. Exposure to traumatic events only correlated with nicotine dependency. No other correlation reaches statistical significance. Discussion: The scores of all mental health outcomes were high; a surprising result, as volunteer first aiders are thought to be recruited for their strong dispositional cognitive and emotional abilities. The high levels of post-traumatic stress disorder and burnout, along with the prevalent anxiety and depression, highlight the need for greater psychosocial support. Resilience training and peer support would be useful interventions in this group.

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OBJECTIVE: Although there is a growing number of studies on psychiatric comorbidities of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), controversy remains about the strength of associations between some disorders. We present a series of systematic reviews and meta-analyses examining four psychiatric disorders frequently associated with OCD-depression, bipolar disorder, substance abuse disorder and psychosis. METHODS: Three electronic databases were searched up to May 2017; PsycINFO, Medline, and Web of Science. Meta-analyses using random effects models were conducted. RESULTS: The meta-analyses found strong associations between all comorbidities and OCD, particularly for depression. In addition, a series of systematic reviews were conducted giving information about the characteristics of these psychiatric associations. CONCLUSION: It is probable that these disorders share common etiological factors, and thus trans-diagnostic processes must be addressed when offering treatment. Clinical implications of these findings are discussed with suggestions for further research in the area.

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Carrier screening, a well-established clinical initiative, has been slow to take advantage of the new possibilities offered by high-throughput next generation sequencing technologies. There is evidence of significant benefit in expanding carrier screening to include multiple autosomal recessive conditions and offering a 'universal' carrier screen that could be used for a pan-ethnic population. However, the challenges of implementing such a programme and the difficulties of demonstrating efficacy worthy of public health investment are significant barriers. In order for such a programme to be successful, it would need to be applicable and acceptable to the population, which may be ethnically and culturally diverse. There are significant practical and ethical implications associated with determining which variants, genes and conditions to include whilst maintaining adequate sensitivity and accuracy. Although preconception screening would maximise the potential benefits from universal carrier screening, the resource implications of different modes of delivery need to be carefully evaluated and balanced against maximising reproductive autonomy and ensuring equity of access. Currently, although a number of existing initiatives are increasing access to carrier screening, there is insufficient evidence to inform the development of a publicly funded, expanded, universal carrier screening programme that would justify investment over other healthcare interventions.

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Imaging subsurface rock formations or geological objects like oil and gas reservoirs, mineral deposits, cavities or even magmatic plumbing systems under active volcanoes has been for many years a major quest of geoscientists. Since these subsurface objects cannot be observed directly, different indirect methods have been developed. These methods are all based on variations of certain physical properties of the subsurface materials that can be detected from the ground surface or from boreholes. To determine the density distribution, a new imaging technique using cosmic-ray muon detectors deployed in a borehole has been developed and a first prototype of a borehole muon detector successfully tested. In addition to providing a static image of the subsurface density in three dimensions (or three-dimensional tomography), borehole muography can also inform on the variations of density with time, which recently became of major importance with the injection of large volumes of fluids, mainly water and CO2, in porous subsurface reservoirs (e.g. aquifer storage and recovery, wastewater disposal, enhanced oil recovery and carbon sequestration). This raises several concerns about the risk of leakage and the mechanical integrity of the reservoirs. Determining the field scale induced displacement of fluids by geophysical methods like muography is thus a priority.This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue 'Cosmic-ray muography'.

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BACKGROUND: This study focuses on achievement emotions in a context of foreign language acquisition in a French-speaking population. AIMS: Firstly, the reliability and construct validity of the Achievement Emotion Questionnaire were examined; the second aim was to compare the effectiveness of two teaching approaches, classical and task-based learning and teaching (TBLT) on students' emotions over time. SAMPLE: This study involves 299 participants. METHODS: Achievement Emotions were rated with a self-administrated questionnaire at the beginning of the academic year and at its end. RESULTS: To verify the psychometric aim, a series of confirmatory factor analyses were computed and showed that the original multifactorial structure proposed by Pekrun et al. (2010) had the best fit. For the second aim, the results showed that all of the achievement emotions reduced in intensity over the school year (apart from boredom) and this reduction is higher for the anxiety level of pupils in 6th grade with TBLT. CONCLUSIONS: Implications for further research and educational practice are discussed.

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OBJECTIVE: Hospice and palliative care providers need ways to measure and improve care processes. We tested feasibility, usability, reliability, and validity of Prepare, Embrace, Attend, Communicate, Empower (PEACE) quality measures for palliative care. METHODS: Trained research nurses abstracted data from medical records to generate quality measures for a random sample of 460 seriously ill patients without, and 102 patients with, specialty palliative care (SPC) services. RESULTS: Patient age ranged from 16 to 99 years, 50% were women, and 24% were African American. Of 34 PEACE quality measures, 17 were feasible for hospital palliative care. Inter-rater reliability was high (κ>0.80) for all but two quality measures. Face validity was endorsed by clinical service leaders, and construct validity was established by higher scores for patients receiving SPC. Comprehensive palliative care assessment was completed for only 10% of seriously ill hospitalized patients, compared with 56% of patients with SPC (p<0.001). Patients with moderate or severe pain were more likely to have a clinical assessment with SPC (67% versus 42%, p=0.002). Patients with SPC more often received attention for their emotional and spiritual needs (64% versus 40%, p<0.001) and documentation of preferences for life-sustaining treatments (91% versus 59%, p>0.001). Usability was endorsed by service leaders, who initiated two practice improvement projects. CONCLUSION: PEACE quality measures are feasible and reliable, and may be useful to examine and improve the quality of palliative care for seriously ill hospitalized patients as well as for patients in hospice. Research is needed to test measures for actionability and responsiveness to intervention.

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OBJECTIVE AND MOTIVATION: Time-of-flight (TOF) tomography used by a clinical ultrasound tomography device can efficiently and reliably produce sound-speed images of the breast for cancer diagnosis. Accurate picking of TOFs of transmitted ultrasound signals is extremely important to ensure high-resolution and high-quality ultrasound sound-speed tomograms. Since manually picking is time-consuming for large datasets, we developed an improved automatic TOF picker based on the Akaike information criterion (AIC), as described in this paper. METHODS: We make use of an approach termed multi-model inference (model averaging), based on the calculated AIC values, to improve the accuracy of TOF picks. By using multi-model inference, our picking method incorporates all the information near the TOF of ultrasound signals. Median filtering and reciprocal pair comparison are also incorporated in our AIC picker to effectively remove outliers. RESULTS: We validate our AIC picker using synthetic ultrasound waveforms, and demonstrate that our automatic TOF picker can accurately pick TOFs in the presence of random noise with absolute amplitudes up to 80% of the maximum absolute signal amplitude. We apply the new method to 1160 in vivo breast ultrasound waveforms, and compare the picked TOFs with manual picks and amplitude threshold picks. The mean value and standard deviation between our TOF picker and manual picking are 0.4 micros and 0.29 micros, while for amplitude threshold picker the values are 1.02 micros and 0.9 micros, respectively. Tomograms for in vivo breast data with high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) ( approximately 25 dB) and low SNR ( approximately 18 dB) clearly demonstrate that our AIC picker is much less sensitive to the SNRs of the data, compared to the amplitude threshold picker. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: The picking routine developed here is aimed at determining reliable quantitative values, necessary for adding diagnostic information to our clinical ultrasound tomography device--CURE. It has been successfully adopted into CURE, and allows us to generate such values reliably. We demonstrate that in vivo sound-speed tomograms with our TOF picks significantly improve the reconstruction accuracy and reduce image artifacts.

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