Dangerous Behavior Research Articles

Educational and Personal Opportunity Costs of Medical Student Preparation for the United States Medical Licensing Examination Step 1 Exam: A Single-Center Study.

PurposeTo assess the degree to which medical students choose to disengage from their regular preclinical curriculum and extracurricular activities in order to focus on United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step 1 exam preparation, as well as learner-perceived effects of Step 1 preparation on their physical, social, and mental health.MethodOnline survey of medical students who have taken the USMLE Step 1 exam at a single large Midwestern academic medical center.ResultsThe response rate was 54%. Students often reported absenteeism from a variety of preclinical curricular activities, including lectures (44%) and didactics focusing on medical ethics (37%), clinical skills (28%), and encounters with actual and standardized patients (9%) in order to study for USMLE Step 1. Many students also forewent extracurricular opportunities including research (53%), elective patient care opportunities (45%), community service (39%), and healthcare advocacy experiences (38%) in order to study for USMLE Step 1. Majorities of students identified Step 1 preparation as a cause of burnout (79%) or significant anxiety or depression (61%), for which nearly a third sought mental healthcare; students also reported Step 1 preparation as a cause of engaging in dangerous behaviors such as illicit prescription stimulant use as well as driving or providing patient care while impaired by fatigue. In narrative comments, students frequently described Step 1 to be a barrier to their development into effective clinicians, the traditional medical school curriculum to be a barrier to performance on Step 1, or both.ConclusionsMedical students often prioritize Step 1 exam preparation over engaging with the standard preclinical curriculum, extracurricular opportunities, and activities to promote wellbeing. These findings have implications for the emphasis residency program directors place on single high-stakes standardized exams in the resident recruitment process.

Driver Behavior Soft-Sensor Based on Neurofuzzy Systems and Weighted Projection on Principal Components

This work has as main objective the development of a soft-sensor to classify, in real time, the behaviors of drivers when they are at the controls of a vehicle. Efficient classification of drivers’ behavior while driving, using only the measurements of the sensors already incorporated in the vehicles and without the need to add extra hardware (smart phones, cameras, etc.), is a challenge. The main advantage of using only the data center signals of modern vehicles is economical. The classification of the driving behavior and the warning to the driver of dangerous behaviors without the need to add extra hardware (and their software) to the vehicle, would allow the direct integration of these classifiers into the current vehicles without incurring a greater cost in the manufacture of the vehicles and therefore be an added value. In this work, the classification is obtained based only on speed, acceleration and inertial measurements which are already present in many modern vehicles. The proposed algorithm is based on a structure made by several Neurofuzzy systems with the combination of projected data in components of various Principal Component Analysis. A comparison with several types of classical classifying algorithms has been made.

Does the Use of Cell Phones and Headphones at the Signalised Pedestrian Crossings Increase the Risk of Accident?

Reduction of the number of fatalities among pedestrians remains a topical issue in Poland. For many years, this percentage has remained at around 30% of all those who were killed on the road. At the same time, there is an increase in the use of electronic devices by pedestrians and cyclists that may affect their perception when crossing the road. This can lead to traffic accidents. In order to investigate the problem, field studies were carried out and their results are presented in the article. Pilot studies on pedestrian and cyclist behaviour were carried out at three pedestrian crossings with traffic lights in Gdansk. Attention was paid to whether pedestrians and cyclists use headphones when crossing the road, whether they are talking on the phone or writing SMS. The results of the research indicate that currently in Gdańsk about 10% of unprotected traffic users use a telephone and 5% use headphones at pedestrian crossings. Most of them are young people, 70–90% of all users. Women prefer using headphones more than men. Pedestrians exhibited dangerous behaviour involving entering the road at a red light regardless of the use of telephones and headphones. Therefore, as part of the studies described, it cannot be clearly stated whether the use of telephones and headphones increases the risk of being the victim of an accident. Due to the lack of separate statistics with accidents involving mobile phones and headsets, it was not possible to analyse statistical data in this respect. At the same time, research confirmed traffic disruptions at the crossings, caused by telephone users, as indicated in literature.

Deep learning-based video surveillance system managed by low cost hardware and panoramic cameras

The design of automated video surveillance systems often involves the detection of agents which exhibit anomalous or dangerous behavior in the scene under analysis. Models aimed to enhance the video pattern recognition abilities of the system are commonly integrated in order to increase its performance. Deep learning neural networks are found among the most popular models employed for this purpose. Nevertheless, the large computational demands of deep networks mean that exhaustive scans of the full video frame make the system perform rather poorly in terms of execution speed when implemented on low cost devices, due to the excessive computational load generated by the examination of multiple image windows. This work presents a video surveillance system aimed to detect moving objects with abnormal behavior for a panoramic 360∘ surveillance camera. The block of the video frame to be analyzed is determined on the basis of a probabilistic mixture distribution comprised by two mixture components. The first component is a uniform distribution, which is in charge of a blind window selection, while the second component is a mixture of kernel distributions. The kernel distributions generate windows within the video frame in the vicinity of the areas where anomalies were previously found. This contributes to obtain candidate windows for analysis which are close to the most relevant regions of the video frame, according to the past recorded activity. A Raspberry Pi microcontroller based board is employed to implement the system. This enables the design and implementation of a system with a low cost, which is nevertheless capable of performing the video analysis with a high video frame processing rate.

Psychometric Properties of the Inventory of Statements About Self-Injury (ISAS) in Iranian Opioid and Alcohol Abusers

Background: Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is one of the most dangerous behaviors linked to substance abuse. The Inventory of Statements About Self-Injury (ISAS) has been developed to better understanding the factors associated with the onset and maintenance of NSSI behaviors. Objectives: The ISAS was translated into the Persian language to study its psychometric properties in Iranian population of opioid and alcohol abusers. Methods: This is a psychometric study investigating opioid and alcohol abusers in Iran, including those residing in addiction rehabilitation camps, prisons, hospitals, and addiction treatment clinics dispensing methadone in 2017. The sample size of this study was 470. The subjects completed the Inventory of Statements About Self-Injury, Barrat Impulsiveness Scale (BIS), and the Distress Tolerance Scale (DTS). Results: The test-retest results were estimated for two weeks using the Intra-class Correlation Coefficient (ICC). The absolute reliability was determined to be 2.62%. There was a significant correlation between convergent and divergent instruments. The results of the exploratory factor analysis on 235 individuals in the sample showed all subscales of the inventory measure a single factor in the Iranian population. The total Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for this subscale was 0.93. Also, the results of confirmatory factor analyses on the rest of the sample (235), after applying the AMOS software suggestions to improve the model, showed this inventory was a good indicator for this population (χ2 = 131.69; P < 0.001; df = 56; χ2/df = 2.35; CFI = 0.97; RMSEA = 0.76; GFI = 0.92). Conclusions: The Persian version of the Inventory of Statements About Self-Injury has high validity and reliability among the opioid and alcohol-abusing population in Iran.

Parental self-medication with antibiotics for children promotes antibiotic over-prescribing in clinical settings in China

BackgroundSelf-medication with antibiotics (SMA) is one of the most dangerous inappropriate antibiotic use behaviors. This study aims to investigate the impact of parental SMA for children before a consultation on their doctor’s subsequent antibiotic prescribing behavior, including intravenous (IV) antibiotic use in the clinical setting of China.MethodsA cross-sectional survey was conducted between June 2017 and April 2018 in three provinces of China. A total of 9526 parents with children aged 0–13 years were investigated. Data from 1275 parents who had self-medicated their children and then visited a doctor in the past month were extracted and analyzed.ResultsOne-third (410) of the studied children had parental SMA before the consultation and 83.9% of them were subsequently prescribed antibiotics by doctors. Children with parental SMA were more likely to be prescribed antibiotics (aOR = 7.79, 95% CI [5.74–10.58]), including IV antibiotics (aOR = 3.05, 95% CI [2.27–4.11]), and both oral and IV antibiotics (aOR = 3.42, 95% CI [2.42–4.84]), than children without parental SMA. Parents with SMA behaviors were more likely to request antibiotics (aOR = 4.05, 95% CI [2.59–6.31]) including IV antibiotics (aOR = 2.58, 95% CI [1.40–4.76]), and be fulfilled by doctors (aOR = 3.22, 95% CI [1.20–8.63]).ConclusionsTailored health education for parents is required in both community and clinical settings to discourage parental SMA for children. The doctors should not prescribe unnecessary antibiotics to reinforce parents’ SMA behaviors. We recommend expanding the current IV antibiotics ban in outpatient settings of China to cover outpatient pediatrics.

Data sharing during COVID-19 pandemic: what to take away

ABSTRACT Introduction In light of the viral outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 that monopolized the focus of the scientific community and general public alike for the past 6 months, one of the greatest contributors in the battle against this pandemic was the international sharing of information. Whether regarding the viral genome, incubation periods, method of transmission, symptoms, dangerous behaviors, age groups at risk, all information was valuable, all data was shared as soon as possible. Areas covered Considering that the most severely impacted group of patients are already suffering from other conditions, accessing the impact that metabolic associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD), obesity, and diabetes has on patients by sharing information between different healthcare facilities is of vital importance. However, the value behind open information sharing would remain significant even without a viral outbreak and should there be a more efficient infrastructure in place, the global exchange of data can become more practical and less arduous. Expert opinion Since the sharing of data by individual researchers is often motivated by personal benefits, this observed international collaboration is conditional at best, and the widespread misinformation during this pandemic could be an indication of a certain lack of consensus within the scientific community itself.

Nurses' knowledge and attitudes regarding physical restraint in Turkish intensive care units.

Physical restraint is still widely used despite studies supporting a reduction in its use. The development of guidelines to reduce the use of PR first requires the identification of factors related to the use of alternative methods. This study aimed to determine factors associated with the use of alternatives to physical restraint (PR) in intensive care units. This was a cross-sectional descriptive study. Data were collected from adult intensive care units of three hospitals in Turkey using the Physical Restraint Knowledge, Attitude and Practice Scale and a questionnaire including open-ended questions. Overall, 202 nurses (80% response rate) completed the questionnaire. Nurses' knowledge, attitude, and practice scores regarding PR were 6.89 ± 1.79, 29.85 ± 4.93, and 36.76 ± 3.36, respectively. PR was reported to be necessary for patients at risk of self-harm, with dangerous behaviours, and who were trying to remove their catheters. Most nurses (64.9%) stated that they needed a written doctor's order. Analysis of free-text responses showed that patient disorientation (because of delirium, sedation, or agitation), nurses' workload, and lack of training regarding restraint were the primary reasons why nurses could not use alternatives. The main alternatives suggested by nurses were categorized as sedation, communication, and environmental regulation. Logistic regression analysis identified training (P=.009), working unit (P=.001), and nurses' practice score to use PR (P=.004) as independent risk factors for not using alternative methods of PR. The results of this study revealed a moderate level of knowledge, attitude, and practice among nurses regarding the use of PR. Thus, education of nurses about the prevention of delirium and alternatives to PR according to the characteristics of their units is required. Clinical guidelines and in-service training need to be developed to increase the use of alternatives to PR and delirium management.

Age and road safety performance: Focusing on elderly and young drivers

The existing literature on young and elderly drivers indicates that they have the highest crash risks compared to other age groups of drivers. This study improves our understanding of the risk factors contributing to young and elderly drivers' elevated crash risk by examining self-report data from the E-Survey of Road User's Safety Attitudes (ESRA). The primary objective of this study is to compare the attitudes and behaviours of young, elderly, and middle-age drivers in Canada, the United States, and Europe. The main focus is on the practice of driving while distracted by mobile phones and driving while fatigued, as these are two dangerous behaviours that demonstrate the impact age may have. The analyses consistently showed that there are differences in the responses attributable to age. In all regions, drivers aged 18–21 years consistently reported higher rates of distracted and fatigued driving and higher rates of perceived social and personal acceptability of these behaviours than drivers aged 35–54 years. Elderly drivers aged 65+ years reported even lower rates of these behaviours and acceptability. Young drivers were also the least likely to believe that distraction and fatigue are frequent causes of road crashes, while elderly drivers were the most likely to believe this. This pattern with respect to age repeats in the support for policy measures as well; young drivers are least likely to support zero tolerance policies for mobile phone use when driving, while elderly drivers are the most likely to support this measure. Multivariate logistic regression modeling confirmed that elderly drivers were the least likely to engage in the use of mobile phones while driving or driving while fatigued. Statistically significant results showed that the middle-age group was less likely than young drivers to read a text message/email or check social media while driving and driving while fatigued.

ІНФОРМАЦІЙНА ТЕХНОЛОГІЯ ВИЯВЛЕННЯ МЕТАМОРФНИХ ВІРУСІВ НА ОСНОВІ АНАЛІЗУ ПОВЕДІНКИ ДОДАТКІВ У КОРПОРАТИВНІЙ МЕРЕЖІ

The problem of cybercrime is one of the greatest threats to the modern information world. Among a wide range of different types of malware, the leading place is occupied by viral programs that use mutations of their own software code, ie polymorphic and metamorphic viruses. The purpose of transforming your own code is for attackers to try to make their previous malware different (in terms of syntax, not in terms of semantics) with each new infection. According to a study conducted by Webroot in 2018, about 94% of all malware performs mutations in their software code. In addition, the problem of the prevalence of mutated software is complicated by the availability of free access to metamorphic generators, which allows you to import into malware metamorphic component. Therefore, the relevance of the development of new methods and information technologies focused on the detection of polymorphic and metamorphic software leaves no doubt. The paper proposed the information technology for detecting metamorphic viruses based on the analysis of the behavior of applications in the corporate network. The detection process is based on the analysis of API calls that describe the potentially dangerous behavior of the software application. After establishing the fact of suspicious behavior of the application, the disassembled code of the functional blocks of the suspicious application is compared with the code of the functional blocks of its modified version. Modified emulators are installed on network hosts to create a modified version of the software application. In order to increase the overall efficiency of detection of metamorphic viruses, information technology involves searching a match between the functional blocks of the metamorphic virus and its modified version. A fuzzy inference system is used to form a conclusion about the similarity of a suspicious program to a metamorphic virus. In case of insufficient manifestation of harmful behavior and in order to increase the level of reliability for the detection of metamorphic virus, other network hosts are involved.

Various vaccination policies: how to protect our children best!

Abstract It is an interesting debate whether young (and incapacitated) children shouldn't be protected from the irresponsible behavior of their parents. In many European countries it is a legal obligation to use special seats when transporting a young child in a car. And if you don't, you will be fined. This measure exists in order to protect children from dangerous behavior of adults. In fact, it is hard to understand why we find it so difficult to apply the same attitude regarding parents who put their children deliberately at risk when not vaccinating their children. They not only put their own children at risk but also children who are too young or too vulnerable to be vaccinated. The degree of vaccination differs largely between the European countries. In some countries we see a good and safe degree of vaccination, in other countries it's extremely low. In the latter situation, especially vulnerable children are at risk of contracting potentially lethal infections. As a result, there is a wide range of options that health care professionals, politicians and policymakers are discussing about. In many European countries we see a lively discussion about the issue of mandatory vaccination. It is a political and often emotional debate. The question is: does mandatory vaccination help? And what exactly does it imply? In this presentation the advantages and disadvantages of the various mandatory policies will be discussed along with the question how changes in vaccine legislation may influence vaccine acceptance.

Factors Associated with Freeway Accident Occurrence Involving Commercial Vehicles Using Dangerous Driving Behaviors and Random Parameters

Factors Associated with Freeway Accident Occurrence Involving Commercial Vehicles Using Dangerous Driving Behaviors and Random Parameters

Dangerous Behaviors in a Patient with Mania: The Dilemma for Action where Mental Health Act is Lacking

Dangerous Behaviors in a Patient with Mania: The Dilemma for Action where Mental Health Act is Lacking

The Impact of Impulsivity and Emotional Dysregulation on Comorbid Bipolar Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder.

The symptomatic overlap between borderline personality disorder (BPD) and bipolar disorder (BD) is a topic of scientific and academic debates. Emotional dysregulation and impulsivity are common features of both disorders. Several studies have shown that both BPD and BD lie on a spectrum; others have suggested that they are separate entities that coexist. BPD is characterized by impulsive and dangerous behaviors such as driving recklessly, inappropriate sexual behavior, eating disorders, and substance abuse. BD, during a manic episode, is known for their impulsive and risk-taking behavior like hypersexuality, excessive spending, and substance abuse. The current literature review aims to provide an overview of the impact of impulsivity and emotional dysregulation on comorbid bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder. Our study results showed that patients with comorbid BPD and BD struggle with impulsive actions and have difficulty controlling their emotions. They are also highly susceptible to anxiety disorders like obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and somatoform disorders. Patients with comorbid BPD and BD struggle with severe psychosocial morbidity and an increased risk of suicide. In patients with only one disease, misdiagnosis is a common phenomenon due to the overlapping symptoms of BPD and BD.

Robust Parking Block Segmentation from a Surveillance Camera Perspective

Parking block regions host dangerous behaviors that can be detected from a surveillance camera perspective. However, these regions are often occluded, subject to ground bumpiness or steep slopes, and thus they are hard to segment. Firstly, the paper proposes a pyramidal solution that takes advantage of satellite views of the same scene, based on a deep Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). Training a CNN from the surveillance camera perspective is rather impossible due to the combinatory explosion generated by multiple point-of-views. However, CNNs showed great promise on previous works over satellite images. Secondly, even though there are many datasets for occupancy detection in parking lots, none of them were designed to tackle the parking block segmentation problem directly. Given the lack of a suitable dataset, we also propose APKLOT, a dataset of roughly 7000 polygons for segmenting parking blocks from the satellite perspective and from the camera perspective. Moreover, our method achieves more than 50% intersection over union (IoU) in all the testing sets, that is, at both the satellite view and the camera view.

Real-Time Suspicious Human Action Recognition from Surveillance Videos for Resource-Constrained Devices

Recent developments in computer vision are seen as a vital advancement in video surveillance. The goal of this research is to build a deep learning model that is capable of analyzing and classifying the video from running CCTV streams to detect criminal actions and identify suspects on the scene. In particular, we focus on the detection of dangerous human behaviors in surveillance videos. This work provides a low cost embedded solution that can be integrated with the existing CCTV cameras. This integration can reduce the cost of transmitting the data to any centralized server, which may have various privacy implications and takes much inference time. We also benchmark our models performance with the existing real-world dataset in terms of accuracy and resource constraints. Using the concept of Multiple Instance Learning on the histogram of the optical flow of the videos combined with the pose estimation of the persons on scene, we provide a lightweight model which has 13 times lesser inference time than the existing very deep models. Focusing on one important thing, this research will expand to which state-of-the-art deep neural networks will “see” violence in photographs and videos, and recognize criminal behavior using characteristics such as gestures, gait, and unethical behavior. This helps enforcement agencies to unravel crime cases faster and also to scale back crimes by identifying the suspects in the surveillance videos.

Exposure to personal and community violence and associated drug use outcomes in African American young adults

Background Exposure to violence (ETV) during one’s life has been associated with increased risk for substance abuse. Adolescent ETV is also related to substance abuse into adulthood, and has been shown to have a cumulative effect. This study adds to the understanding of how ETV relates to a range of substance use outcomes by specifying how different types of violence affects substance use behaviors in African American young adults, and examines how this exposure is moderated by other life stressors, and health and social experiences. Method Factor analysis was conducted to identify unique types of ETV in 638 African American men and women ages 18-25. The resulting factors represent 1) childhood ETV and 2) community ETV as adults. These were regressed upon substance abuse outcomes. Results 78% of the respondents were exposed to some form of violence during their childhood. Lower childhood ETV were significantly associated with a lower risk of engaging in dangerous substance use behaviors. Adult experiences of community violence had more significant predictors of drug use than childhood ETV. Witnessing gunfire or an assault, witnessing or being a victim of sexual assault, and carrying a weapon were consistent risk factors for dangerous drug behaviors, although specific drug use behaviors differed across genders. Conclusions ETV served as an independent explanatory factor for specific drug use behaviors at different stages of life. Future research is needed to understand how these factors put respondents at risk for drug use behaviors or make them less likely to engage in dangerous use patterns.

Extreme risk protection orders in King County, Washington: the epidemiology of dangerous behaviors and an intervention response

BackgroundExtreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) laws are a promising gun violence prevention strategy. ERPO laws allow specific categories of people (law enforcement in all states, family in most) to petition a court to request that an individual be temporarily prohibited from purchasing and possessing firearms because that individual is behaving dangerously and at risk of violence, either to themselves or others. In 2017 Washington State’s ERPO law took effect. King County developed a comprehensive approach to implementing the ERPO law. The early experience of King County offers important insight into how early adopters of these laws are incorporating EPROs into their approach to gun violence prevention.MethodsWe systematically reviewed, abstracted and coded data from every ERPO petition filed in King County in 2017 and 2018, and all ERPO court records associated with those petitions. We conducted descriptive analyses of the coded data.ResultsSeventy-five ERPO petitions were filed in King County during the study period. Judges granted a temporary ERPO in all 75 cases; 65 (87%) of these cases resulted in a one-year ERPO. Law enforcement initiated 73 (97%) of these petitions, and family members filed the remaining two. The 75 petitions filed described respondents’ risk as to “themselves only” in 30 cases (40%), to “others only” in 20 cases (27%) and “to themselves and others” in 25 cases (33%). Five cases where the threat was to “others only” met a definition of mass shooting threat. For 95% of the temporary ERPOs issued, the courts’ reasoning for issuing ERPOs included either current violence or brandishing a firearm. Court records for the 75 cases detail firearms removed and/or include receipts for removed firearms in 61 cases (81%) either as part of ERPO precipitating events (n = 13, 17%) or in conjunction with ERPO service (n = 48, 64%).ConclusionsThese findings suggest that Washington’s ERPO law is being applied when someone is threatening violence to self or others, or brandishing a gun and at least one other risk factor is present. The early experience of King County provides insight into how this law is being implemented in one jurisdiction and how courts are evaluating such cases.

The practice of self-medication in children by their mothers in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo

Self-medication is a common practice in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). There are few studies on mothers’ practice of self-medication in children in DRC. Trying to draw an inventory of this practice, we carried out a survey of self-medication of children under 12 years of age by their mothers (n = 392) in Lubumbashi, DRC. The main objective was to assess frequency of self-medication and the secondary purposes were to describe habits, dangerous behaviors and common mistakes. The results speak for themselves: 96% of the mothers self-medicate their children; 95.7% do not know the exact dosage of the drug used; 97.17% do not check the expiry date; over 91% of the mothers use antimalarials, 41.3% antipyretics/analgesics and 26.3% antibiotics. Healthcare practitioners should involve household members in focused awareness on self-medication and its negative implications in order to encourage them to serve as change agents against the practice by mothers.

Pre-service Teachers Perception, Knowledge and Attitudes toward Stigmatization of Mentally Ill Patients in Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile- Ife, Osun State, Nigeria

The study investigated the pre- service teachers’ perception, knowledge and attitudes towards stigmatization of mentally ill patient in Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile- Ife, Osun State, Nigeria. It further examined the perceived causes of stigmatization, effect of stigmatization on mentally ill- patients as well as the measure that can be adopted to reduce and eliminate stigmatization of mentally ill patients in our society. It further investigated the influence of gender on pre- service teachers’ perception and attitude towards stigmatization of mentally ill patients on one hand and the influence of gender on pre- service teachers’ knowledge of mental illness on the other. The study adopted the descriptive survey research design. The population consisted of all pre- service teachers in the Faculty of Education. The sample comprised 400 pre- service teachers randomly selected across four departments in the faculty. Data for the study were collected using a questionnaire titled “Questionnaire on Pre- service Teachers Perception, Knowledge and Attitudes towards Stigmatization of Mentally Ill- Patients”. Data collected were analysed using frequency counts, percentages, Relative Significance Index and chi- square statistical method of analysis. The results showed the major causes of stigmatization with their respective Relative Significance Index (RSI) values as perceived dangerous and unpredictable behaviour of mentally ill patients (RSI=0.75); lack of recognition of mental illness as other illness (RSI=0.71); inability to live independently (RSI=0.71). It is concluded that the perception of pre-service teachers towards stigmatization of mentally ill patients as well as adequate knowledge of mental illness did not reflect on their attitude towards the phenomenon.