Explore the vast range of titles available.

Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ: Baer, Smith, Hopkins, Krietemeyer & Toney, 2006) though is a widely used measure for assessing the trait mindfulness, its five factor structure has been questioned and a four factor model (without observe dimension) has been advocated in several studies. The validity of the initially proposed five factor and the alternative four factor models of the FFMQ was tested in the present study using the Hindi version of this measure (FFMQ-H) on a sample of 300 non-meditators (163 males & 137 females). Findings of the confirmatory factor analyses revealed that the original five factor of the FFMQ do not provide a good fit to the data even after allowing the five dimensions and some of the error terms to correlate. The test of the alternative four factor model (without the observe dimension) yielded a better fit compared to five factor model. The model was further revised by dropping three items (33,4 & 10) having poor psychometric properties and/or poor loading which resulted in considerable improvement in the model fit. The final 28 item Hindi version of the FFMQ (without observe dimension) and its four factors demonstrated satisfactory reliability (alpha coefficient for the whole scale was .85 & for the four factors it ranged from .61 to .81). The findings suggest that the FFMQ-H can be used to reliably measure the trait mindfulness among Hindi speaking Indians and the trait mindfulness can be better summarized by four factors without the observe dimension that may be redundant for assessing it among non-meditators.

The present study examined the role of childhood parental emotional abuse and neglect in the formation and development of fear of intimacy in the context of romantic relationships and depressive symptoms among a sample of young adults. A total of 275 participants (120 males & 155 females) having the age range from 18 years to 25 years were administered Computer Assisted Maltreatment Inventory-Psychological Abuse Subscale, Multidimensional Neglectful Behaviour-Form A 20 (Adolescent & Adult Recall Version), Fear of Intimacy Scale and Beck Depression Inventory II. The results of the study showed a significant relationship of childhood parental emotional abuse and neglect with fear of intimacy and depressive symptoms. The results also suggested significant gender differences in fear of intimacy among young adults. Childhood parental emotional abuse and neglect were significantly predicted fear of intimacy and depressive symptoms. The results, thus, indicate that childhood parental emotional abuse and neglect play a critical role in the development of fear of intimacy in the context of romantic relationships and depressive symptoms among young adults. Therefore, it may be argued that maltreatment occurring during the childhood may have enduring adverse influences on adult psychological health.

The link between mindfulness and better emotion regulation (ER) has been well documented, but the mechanism through which it improves ER is still unclear. It is likely that the emotion regulatory effects of mindfulness might be occurring indirectly through other affective aspects (e.g., range & differentiation of emotional experiences). The said possibility was tested on a sample of 211 adults, using self-report measures of mindfulness, the use of ER strategies (reappraisal & suppression) and range and differentiation of emotional experience. Analyses revealed that mindfulness and its dimensions correlated negatively with the use of suppression and positively with reappraisal as well as range and differentiation of emotional experiences. The hypothesis that mindfulness influences ER indirectly through altering the range and differentiation of emotions is supported by the findings of structural equation modeling. Findings revealed that mindfulness was indirectly linked with enhanced use of reappraisal through improved emotional differentiation and reduced use of suppression through enhancement of both the range and differentiation of emotional experiences. Further, mindfulness was found to have a significant direct effect on suppression but not on reappraisal. These findings imply that mindfulness exerts its emotion regulatory effect indirectly by enhancing the range and differentiation of emotional experiences but it may also have some direct effect on some aspects of ER such as reduced emotional suppression.

Studies have shown that cognitive styles do not remain static, but they change over a period of time. Both boys and girls become more field independent with increase in their age. The present study examines the development of field dependent-field independent cognitive style and related cognitive functioning of school children. A sample of 220 school children (111 boys and 109 girls) of 7-12 years was selected randomly from four schools of Varanasi city and divided into three groups, i e., 7-8 (group-1), 9-10 (group-2), and 11-12 (group-3) years. Each child was given Story-Pictorial Embedded Figures Test (SPEFT), Figure Identification Task and Face Identification Task. Results revealed that the elder children were more Field Independent than younger children. More specifically, children of the second age group (9-10 years) scored significantly higher on SPEFT than the first age group (7-8 years). Similarly children of the third age group (11-12 years) scored higher on SPEFT than the first and second groups. However, the difference was significant only between the first and the third groups. Similar developmental trend has also been observed with regard to children's performance on Figure Identification and Face Identification tasks. Further, FI children scored higher on both Face and Figure Identification tasks as compared to their FD counterparts. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

Work, in addition to providing financial rewards, has a pronounced role in ensuring workers’ healthiness and well-being. Based on their employment type, workers pervasively get exposed to varying occupational hazards at the workplace that not only affect them but also tax the entire occupational hygiene. Tremendous changes (such as the prominence of precarious contracts, contingent workforces, globalization, work intensification, etc.) underwent by the world of work in recent decades have intensified the already prevalent hazardous psychosocial factors in the work environment, thereby professing fresh challenges to the organizations’ occupational wellness. Prominently arising out of the work design, context, organization, and management, these factors are considerable contributors to employee’s counterproductive physiological and/or psychological health outcomes. However, the promotion of psychological capital among employees, that incorporates resilience amongst its prime components, can be an expedient protective factor against these counterproductive outcomes. Enhanced resilience improves health, well-being, and life quality, along with bearing a positive association with industrious work outcomes such as greater job satisfaction, better performance and productivity levels, etc. When weighed against the standard workplace hazard and risk management approaches, positive interventions exhibit superior receptivity at contemporary workplaces. The concept of positive organizational behavior (POB) is of growing interest among positive psychology, management, and health researchers as an object of study of occupational health. This chapter reviews the salient contemporary psychosocial hazards pervading across workplaces and introduces the POB concept of psychological resilience, as a means to address an array of detrimental outcomes resulting from these hazards. The role that fostering worker resilience has in improving workplace health has been highlighted. Also, an overview of the interventions and strategies to be adopted for building up a resilient industrial workforce has been provided.

The Ganges River holds a vital status within India as a cornerstone of the nation's ecological and socio-economic fabric. Flowing through diverse terrains like the Himalayas, Gangetic plains, and coastal regions, it fosters an incredibly rich biodiversity, supporting a myriad of life forms ranging from microorganisms to mammals. Beyond its ecological significance, the river sustains the livelihoods of millions, contributing significantly to the economy of northern India. However, rampant human development over recent decades has posed grave threats to its well-being. Pollution from sewage and industrial waste has tainted its waters with heavy metals, posing risks of bioaccumulation and magnification within aquatic life. Infrastructure projects like dams and bridges disrupt natural habitats and impede the migration of aquatic species, further jeopardising the river's ecological balance. Despite these challenges, there have been glimmers of hope, particularly noted during the COVID-19 lockdown when industrial activities ceased, offering the river a temporary reprieve. Moving forward, effective measures are imperative, including reducing industrial and domestic effluent discharge, scrutinising sources of heavy metal contamination, and prioritising the restoration of the river's natural flow. Preserving the Ganges’ ecological integrity is paramount, necessitating concerted efforts to ensure its health and vitality for future generations.

Neonatal sepsis is a major cause of death in India, which needs hospital management but many families cannot access hospitals. The World Health Organization and the Government of India developed a guideline to manage possible serious bacterial infection (PSBI) when a referral is not feasible. We implemented this guideline to achieve high coverage of treatment of PSBI with low mortality. The implementation research study was conducted in over 50 villages of Palwal district, Haryana during August 2017-March 2019 and covered a population of 199143. Policy dialogue with central, state and district health authorities was held before initiation of the study. A baseline assessment of the barriers in the implementation of the PSBI intervention was conducted. The intervention was implemented in the program setting. The research team collected data throughout and also co-participated in the implementation of the intervention for the first six months to identify bottlenecks in the health system and at the community level. RE-AIM framework was utilized to document implementation strategies of PSBI management guideline. Implementation strategies by the district technical support unit (TSU) included: (i) empower mothers and families through social mobilization to improve care-seeking of sick young infants 0-59 days of age, (ii) build capacity through training and build confidence through technical support of health staff at primary health centers (PHC), community health centers (CHC) and sub-centers to manage young infants with PSBI signs and (iii) improve performance of accredited social health activists (ASHAs). A total of 370 young infants with signs of PSBI were identified and managed in 5270 live births. Treatment coverage was 70% assuming that 10% of live births would have PSBI within the first two months of life. Mothers identified 87.6% (324/370) of PSBI cases. PHCs and CHCs became functional and managed 150 (40%) sick young infants with PSBI. Twenty four young infants (7-59days) who had only fast breathing were treated with oral amoxicillin without a referral. Referral to a hospital was refused by 126 (84%); 119 had clinical severe infection (CSI), one 0-6 days old had fast breathing and six had critical illness (CI). Of 119 CSI cases managed on outpatient injection gentamicin and oral amoxicillin, 116 (96.7%) recovered, 55 (45.8%) received all seven gentamicin injections and only one died. All 7-59 day old infants with fast breathing recovered, 23 on outpatient oral amoxicillin treatment; and 19 (79%) received all doses. Of 65 infants managed at either district or tertiary hospital, two (3.1%) died, rest recovered. Private providers managed 155 (41.9%) PSBI cases, all except one recovered, but sub-classification and treatment were unknown. Sub-centers could not be activated to manage PSBI. The study demonstrated resolution of implementation bottlenecks with existing resources, activated PHCs and CHCs to manage CSI and fast breathers (7-59 day old) on an outpatient basis with low mortality when a referral was not feasible. TSU was instrumental in these achievements. We established the effectiveness of oral amoxicillin alone in 7-59 days old fast breathers and recommend a review of the current national policy.

Multimodal interaction enables multiple modes for users to interact with the system. Whereas the multimodal interaction with IoT applications depends on multimedia systems’ input/output which may limit their scalability and expressiveness. Furthermore, multimodal interaction with IoT applications could also be limited by input/output integration, security, privacy, and portability issues. This special issue focuses on recent state-of-the-art advances in multimodal interaction and IoT applications that could address these challenges. We aim at bringing together the latest industrial and academic progress, research, and development efforts within the rapidly maturing multimodal interaction and IoT applications. This article summarizes the research contribution of the accepted papers (27.94% acceptance rate) along with possible future directions emanating from these papers.

Chest X-ray imaging is a critical diagnostic tool for identifying pulmonary diseases. However, manual interpretation of these images is time-consuming and error-prone. Automated systems utilizing convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have shown promise in improving the accuracy and efficiency of chest X-ray image classification. While previous work has mainly focused on using feature maps from the final convolution layer, there is a need to explore the benefits of leveraging additional layers for improved disease classification. Extracting robust features from limited medical image datasets remains a critical challenge. In this paper, we propose a novel deep learning-based multilayer multimodal fusion model that emphasizes extracting features from different layers and fusing them. Our disease detection model considers the discriminatory information captured by each layer. Furthermore, we propose the fusion of different-sized feature maps (FDSFM) module to effectively merge feature maps from diverse layers. The proposed model achieves a significantly higher accuracy of 97.21% and 99.60% for both three-class and two-class classifications, respectively. The proposed multilayer multimodal fusion model, along with the FDSFM module, holds promise for accurate disease classification and can also be extended to other disease classifications in chest X-ray images.