Enabling extracorporeal ultrasound imaging with the da Vinci robot for transoral robotic surgery: a feasibility study.

Purpose: Transoral robotic surgery (TORS) is a challenging procedure due to its small workspace and complex anatomy. Ultrasound (US) image guidance has the potential to improve surgical outcomes, but an appropriate method for US probe manipulation has not been defined. This study evaluates using an additional robotic (4th) arm on the da Vinci Surgical System to perform extracorporeal US scanning for image guidance in TORS.

Recurrent involuntary memories and mind wandering are related but distinct.

Spontaneous thought is common in daily life, and includes recurrent involuntary autobiographical memories (IAMs; memories retrieved unintentionally and repetitively) and mind wandering (MW). Both recurrent IAMs and MW are often unintentional or unconstrained, and both predict symptoms of mental health disorders. However, not all MW is unintentional, and not all IAMs are unconstrained.

Specific topics, specific symptoms: linking the content of recurrent involuntary memories to mental health using computational text analysis.

Researchers debate whether recurrent involuntary autobiographical memories (IAMs; memories of one's personal past retrieved unintentionally and repetitively) are pathological or ordinary. While some argue that these memories contribute to clinical disorders, recurrent IAMs are also common in everyday life. Here, we examined how the content of recurrent IAMs might distinguish between those that are maladaptive (related to worse mental health) versus benign (unrelated to mental health).

Disentangling boredom from depression using the phenomenology and content of involuntary autobiographical memories.

Recurrent involuntary autobiographical memories (IAMs) are memories retrieved unintentionally and repetitively. We examined whether the phenomenology and content of recurrent IAMs could differentiate boredom and depression, both of which are characterized by affective dysregulation and spontaneous thought. Participants (n = 2484) described their most frequent IAM and rated its phenomenological properties (e.

Understanding autobiographical memory content using computational text analysis.

Although research on autobiographical memory (AM) continues to grow, there remain few methods to analyze AM content. Past approaches are typically manual, and prohibitively time- and labour-intensive. These methodological limitations are concerning because content may provide insights into the nature and functions of AM.

Recurrent involuntary memories are modulated by age and linked to mental health.

Recurrent involuntary autobiographical memories (IAMs), or memories that spring to mind unintentionally and repetitively, are common among younger and older adults. Since older adults show enhanced emotion regulation, we investigated whether their recurrent IAMs were more positive than younger adults'. Additionally, we examined whether recurrent IAMs reflected mental health in both age groups.

Divided attention at encoding or retrieval interferes with emotionally enhanced memory for words.

Emotional information is typically better remembered than neutral information. We asked whether emotional, compared to neutral, words were less vulnerable to the detrimental effects of divided attention. In two experiments, undergraduate students intentionally encoded words of intermixed valence (neutral, negative, or positive) and arousal (neutral, high, or low).

The influence of social anxiety-provoking contexts on context reinstatement effects.

The context reinstatement (CR) effect is the finding that target stimuli are better remembered when presented in the same context as during initial encoding, compared with a different context. It remains unclear, however, whether emotional features of the context affect this memory benefit. In two experiments, we investigated whether the anxiety-provoking nature of a context scene might influence the CR effect.

The Effect of the Medicaid Expansion on Dropout Rates.

Background: This study investigates how the Medicaid Expansion of the Affordable Care Act affected state high school dropout rates.

Methods: This study relies on a differences-in-differences estimation strategy that is common in program evaluation, especially in education. This method replicates in a regression framework a classic pre-test post-test comparison group quasi-experimental design.

Recurrent involuntary autobiographical memories: characteristics and links to mental health status.

Memories of events from one's personal past that come to mind unintentionally and effortlessly are termed involuntary autobiographical memories (IAMs). Recurrent IAMs are known as relevant to many disorders within clinical literature. However, less is known about their links with mental health status in the general population.

Altered working memory capacity for social threat words in high versus low social anxiety.

Differences in working memory capacity (WMC) have been suggested in individuals with high levels of social anxiety (SA). Specifically, these individuals may preferentially maintain socially threatening material in working memory. We adapted the digit span task to a series of word span tasks.

Social anxiety enhances recognition of task-irrelevant threat words.

Past research is mixed regarding the conditions under which memory biases emerge in individuals with high levels of social anxiety. The current study examined whether high social anxiety would be associated with a memory bias for threatening, but task-irrelevant information, or whether it creates a memory bias for both threatening as well as neutral distractors. 60 undergraduate students were recruited, half classified as having high social anxiety and half as having low social anxiety according to the Social Phobia Inventory.

From mother to child: the effects of prenatal maternal passive smoking on academic outcomes in the United States.

This is the first study in the United States to examine the effect of prenatal maternal passive smoking on student learning outcomes. We use a national sample of children in combination with ordinary least squares regression and matching methods to examine this effect. We find evidence that prenatal maternal exposure to secondhand smoke leads to lower academic performance in language/literacy and mathematics in the later years of elementary school, particularly for mothers who did not actively smoke while pregnant.

Dollars for lives: the effect of highway capital investments on traffic fatalities.

Introduction: This study examines the effect of highway capital investments on highway fatalities.

Methods: We used state-level data from the 48 contiguous states in the United States from 1968 through 2010 to estimate the effects on highway fatalities of capital expenditures and highway capital stock. We estimated these effects by controlling for a set of control variables together with state and year dummy variables and state-specific linear time trends.