Publications by authors named "Bufka L"

Survival and cause-specific mortality rates are vital for evidence-based population forecasting and conservation, particularly for large carnivores, whose populations are often vulnerable to human-caused mortalities. It is therefore important to know the relationship between anthropogenic and natural mortality causes to evaluate whether they are additive or compensatory. Further, the relation between survival and environmental covariates could reveal whether specific landscape characteristics influence demographic performance.

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The estimation of foraging parameters is fundamental for understanding predator ecology. Predation and feeding can vary with multiple factors, such as prey availability, presence of kleptoparasites and human disturbance. However, our knowledge is mostly limited to local scales, which prevents studying effects of environmental factors across larger ecological gradients.

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Rehabilitation of injured or immature individuals has become an increasingly used conservation and management tool. However, scientific evaluation of rehabilitations is rare, raising concern about post-release welfare as well as the cost-effectiveness of spending scarce financial resources. Over the past 20 years, events of juvenile Eurasian lynx presumably orphaned have been observed in many European lynx populations.

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A science-based approach to understanding health and disease emerged gradually over the past two centuries, while the modern evidence-based approach to health care emerged only about a half-century ago. The evidence-based approach to practice in health service psychology (HSP) gained significant traction after the American Psychological Association (APA) adopted it as policy in 2005, and in 2021, APA approved the first comprehensive set of guidelines for practicing HSP in an evidence-based manner. Several authors of this 2021 set of guidelines along with an additional subject matter expert wrote the current article.

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Background: Audience segmentation is an analysis technique that can identify meaningful subgroups within a population to inform the tailoring of dissemination strategies. We have conducted an empirical clustering audience segmentation study of licensed psychologists using survey data about the sources of knowledge they report most often consulting to guide their clinical decision-making. We identify meaningful subgroups within the population and inform the tailoring of dissemination strategies for evidence-based practice (EBP) materials.

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The ecology and evolution of reproductive timing and synchrony have been a topic of great interest in evolutionary ecology for decades. Originally motivated by questions related to behavioral and reproductive adaptation to environmental conditions, the topic has acquired new relevance in the face of climate change. However, there has been relatively little research on reproductive phenology in mammalian carnivores.

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Large carnivores promote crucial ecosystem processes but are increasingly threatened by human persecution and habitat destruction. Successful conservation of this guild requires information on long-term population dynamics obtained through demographic surveys. We used camera traps to monitor Eurasian lynx between 2009 and 2018 in a strictly protected area in the Bohemian Forest Ecosystem, located in the core of the distribution of the Bohemian-Bavarian-Austrian lynx population.

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Despite strong evidence for the efficacy of PTSD treatments, most affected individuals are not receiving these treatments, in part because they may not know that evidence-based treatments exist. The American Psychological Association published a website to disseminate information about their Clinical Practice Guideline for treating PTSD. In Study 1, Google Optimize was used in a field study to examine whether altering the subheadings to three of the website pages would increase site visitor engagement.

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The public health impact of psychological science is maximized when it is disseminated clearly and compellingly to audiences who can act on it. Dissemination research can generate knowledge to help achieve this, but dissemination is understudied in the field of implementation science. As a consequence, the designs of dissemination strategies are typically driven by anecdote, not evidence, and are often ineffective.

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The COVID-19 global pandemic highlights the necessity for a population health approach to identify and implement strategies across systems to improve behavioral health. Adopting a population health approach helps to address the needs of the total population, including at-risk subgroups, through multiple levels of intervention and to promote the public's behavioral health and psychological well-being.

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The greatest threat to the protected Eurasian lynx () in Central Europe is human-induced mortality. As the availability of lynx prey often peaks in human-modified areas, lynx have to balance successful prey hunting with the risk of encounters with humans. We hypothesized that lynx minimize this risk by adjusting habitat choices to the phases of the day and over seasons.

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Prey selection is a key factor shaping animal populations and evolutionary dynamics. An optimal forager should target prey that offers the highest benefits in terms of energy content at the lowest costs. Predators are therefore expected to select for prey of optimal size.

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Objective: Technology continuously advances with new innovations and the evolution of existing devices, requiring health service providers to adapt and keep up with these changes in order to provide optimal services to their patients. Expertise limited to a single technological modality or device will quickly become outdated as new revisions, updates, and alternatives are released into the marketplace.

Methods: This article presents several of the critical concerns and issues practitioners must consider when evaluating their current and future uses of technology within their provision of outpatient or private practice services, particularly as it relates to direct care.

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In Central Europe, protected areas are too small to ensure survival of populations of large carnivores. In the surrounding areas, these species are often persecuted due to competition with game hunters. Therefore, understanding how predation intensity varies spatio-temporally across areas with different levels of protection is fundamental.

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The conservation of large carnivores is a formidable challenge for biodiversity conservation. Using a data set on the past and current status of brown bears (Ursus arctos), Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx), gray wolves (Canis lupus), and wolverines (Gulo gulo) in European countries, we show that roughly one-third of mainland Europe hosts at least one large carnivore species, with stable or increasing abundance in most cases in 21st-century records. The reasons for this overall conservation success include protective legislation, supportive public opinion, and a variety of practices making coexistence between large carnivores and people possible.

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Article Synopsis
  • The activity patterns of the Eurasian lynx were studied across various latitudes to understand the influence of light and other factors on their behavior.
  • The research included monitoring 38 lynx using GPS collars, revealing that their activity levels are not significantly affected by daylight duration, with a consistent bimodal activity pattern observed.
  • Findings indicated that individual traits, like age and sex, and the activity of their main prey (roe deer) significantly impacted lynx behavior, especially at different latitudes and light conditions.
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Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) are intended to improve mental, behavioral, and physical health by promoting clinical practices that are based on the best available evidence. The American Psychological Association (APA) is committed to generating patient-focused CPGs that are scientifically sound, clinically useful, and informative for psychologists, other health professionals, training programs, policy makers, and the public. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) 2011 standards for generating CPGs represent current best practices in the field.

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Assessment in mental health research has evolved from focusing on symptoms and diagnosis to addressing a broad range of change, including psychosocial functioning. This is consistent with developments in the areas of psychosocial rehabilitation and the increase in recovery-oriented intervention models for mental disorders. We reviewed the status of assessment in mental health research, providing an overview of symptom and diagnostic assessment that is the cornerstone of most mental health research assessment.

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This study reports on selected findings from a survey conducted by the American Psychological Association Practice Organization, which assessed the number of hours per month that practicing psychologists estimated they spent treating trauma survivors and their interest in additional clinical training on trauma-related issues and topics. Respondents reported 14.3 mean number of hours spent working with trauma survivors over the past month.

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It remains uncertain whether generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and major depressive disorder (MDD) represent two separate diagnostic entities. The goal of this study was to examine whether comorbid MDD distinguishes individuals with GAD on a psychophysiological level during an experimentally-induced worrying procedure. Participants included 39 individuals with GAD, 14 of whom met the criteria for MDD.

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Purpose: Three systematic programmes to train health professionals to use the World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) are described, along with efforts to evaluate their effectiveness.

Methods: The first programme was a randomized study comparing the effects of a 2-hour instructor-led programme and a self-directed learning module on ICF-related knowledge, attitudes, and coding skills among occupational therapy graduate students. The second programme was a series of intensive 3.

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Two current congressional bills mandate parity for benefits for mental disorders with benefits for medical/surgical conditions in private insurance when mental health benefits are provided; the bills differ in regard to benefit levels and access to out-of-network coverage. This study assessed clinicians' and beneficiaries' participation in managed care networks in the national capital area under the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) parity program. Approximately one-third of the clinicians studied participated in FEHB networks, and only 44 percent of FEHB patients received care from network clinicians.

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