Forest valuation and risk

This paper aims to illustrate ways in which sources of risk can affect the valuation of a commercial plantation estate. Deterministic and stochastic analyses of a hypothetical commercial plantation estate are compared. Both are built on a long-term harvest schedule of wood flows that typifies current planning and valuation practices for large commercial plantation estates. The stochastic analyses incorporate typical systematic risks, including those associated with harvest yields, costs, prices and fire. Deterministic valuation using a market discount rate that includes a risk premium underestimates the expected value of the combined asset. Applying such a discount rate to a stochastic valuation would double count risk. Stochastic analysis forces owners to focus on a risk-free discount rate reflecting their time preference for net income flows over time, rather than using a valuer’s current discount rate. Stochastic analyses of valuations enable better assessment of the sensitivity of valuations to the impact of fire frequency, climate change, product prices in the immediate future and land prices, as illustrated in this study.     

Contemporary Psychotherapy Research: Implications for Substance Misuse Treatment and Research

This article provides an overview of the major findings of psychotherapy research and discusses the possible implications of these findings for substance user treatment researchers and practitioners. While the centrality of relationship for human change processes was historically understood, twentieth century research tended to see relationship and person variables as secondary to operationalized “mechanisms of action” unique to particular psychotherapies. Interestingly, recent meta-analytic investigations have uncovered the weakness of randomized controlled trials (RCT) comparison investigations that have, until recently, represented the “gold standard” for the field. There has been a resurgent interest in the “common factors” that appear to be important across many effective psychotherapies. In addition, psychiatric anthropologists have contributed important information about the problems of client noncompliance with mental health treatment that parallel quantitative investigations. Substance misuse researchers have also found that client characteristics, especially clients' readiness to engage treatment, are important to investigate. The importance of the “therapeutic alliance” and the characteristics of clients and clinicians have become central areas for study, rather than variables to be controlled or excluded. Emphasis on these factors may represent the future for research in psychotherapy and substance user treatment, especially if researchers and community practitioners can join together to overcome methodological feasibility and dissemination problems that plague effectiveness research. However, the continued attractiveness of comparative studies and treatment efficacy studies may represent longstanding epistemological assumptions and responses to economic incentives that will be difficult to challenge.     

A comparative neurological approach to emotional expressions in primate vocalizations

Different approaches from different research domains have crystallized debate over primate emotional processing and vocalizations in recent decades. On one side, researchers disagree about whether emotional states or processes in animals truly compare to those in humans. On the other, a long-held assumption is that primate vocalizations are innate communicative signals over which nonhuman primates have limited control and a mirror of the emotional state of the individuals producing them, despite growing evidence of intentional production for some vocalizations. Our goal is to connect both sides of the discussion in deciphering how the emotional content of primate calls compares with emotional vocal signals in humans. We focus particularly on neural bases of primate emotions and vocalizations to identify cerebral structures underlying emotion, vocal production, and comprehension in primates, and discuss whether particular structures or neuronal networks solely evolved for specific functions in the human brain. Finally, we propose a model to classify emotional vocalizations in primates according to four dimensions (learning, control, emotional, meaning) to allow comparing calls across species.     

The new imaging findings: “Passing spine” without kissing

Case-control studies by examining the lumbar spine computed tomography (CT) findings focusing on the spinous processes.“Passing spine” was defined as a lumbar degenerative change observed on CT images. In contrast, kissing spine, which is also an image finding, has been acknowledged as an established clinical condition. Therefore, we compared the passing spine group and the kissing spine group to investigate whether the 2 groups belong to a similar disease group; this would help explain the clinical and imaging characteristics of patients with passing spine.Previous studies have described the gradual increase in the height and thickness of the lumbar vertebral spinous processes that can occur in individuals aged >40 years, and reported that this progressive degeneration can lead to a condition termed “kissing spine.”We examined the CT imaging of 373 patients with lumbar spinal disease and divided patients into 2 groups, the kissing spine (K) group and the passing spine (P) group, and compared the clinical (age, sex, presence/absence of lower extremity pain) and imaging data (localization of kissing or passing spine, intervertebral disc height at the level of kissing or passing spine, lumbar lordosis (LL) angle, presence/absence of vacuum phenomenon (VP) in the intervertebral discs and spondylolisthesis at the level of kissing or passing spine between the 2 groups.Compared with patients with kissing spine, patients with passing spine had an increased incidence of lower extremity pain, lower intervertebral disc height at the level of passing spine, relatively static LL, and VP commonly observed in the intervertebral discs at the level of passing spine.Because the clinical and imaging characteristics of patients with passing spine are different from those of patients with kissing spine, passing spine might be a pathological condition distinct from kissing spine.     

Sleep‐related attentional bias in poor versus good sleepers is independent of affective valence

Contradictory evidence exists relating to the presence of an attention bias to sleep‐related stimuli in poor sleepers/insomnia using the emotional Stroop task (EST). These inconsistencies may be due to methodological issues related to the affective valence of the sleep‐related stimuli. Thus, individuals may attend differentially to sleep‐related stimuli not because of their ‘sleep’ properties, but their negativity. The current study addresses this by controlling the affective valence of sleep‐related words. A total of 107 participants [mean age = 33.22 years, standard deviation (SD) = 12.31 years; 61.7% female] were recruited during an evening event at the Newcastle Science Festival. Participants completed the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and a computerized EST containing 20 non‐affective sleep‐related, 20 neutral and 20 negatively valenced threat words. Good and poor sleepers were categorized using the PSQI. There were no significant differences between groups on response latency to sleep‐related words (t₍₁₀₅₎ = –0.30, P = 0.76). However, the interaction between good versus poor sleepers and word‐type on response latency was significant (F_(2,210) = 3.06, P < 0.05). Poor sleepers took longer to respond to sleep‐related words (mean = 723.35, SD = 172.55) compared to threat words (mean = 694.63, SD = 162.17) than good sleepers (mean = 713.20, SD = 166.32; and mean = 716.65, SD = 181.14). The results demonstrate the presence of an attention bias towards sleep‐related stimuli compared to threat stimuli in poor sleepers. Accordingly, poor sleepers may be consumed by stimuli relevant to their specific difficulties, as well as being more highly attuned to negative cues that signal anxious states. Thus, the present research suggests that there are two opposing forces at play: one which facilitates performance (non‐specific threats) and one which hinders performance (personally relevant threats).