Agent-based models of human response to natural hazards: systematic review of tsunami evacuation.

This systematic review provides a comprehensive overview of tsunami evacuation models. The review covers scientific studies from the last decade (2012-2021) and is explicitly focused on models using an agent-based approach. The PRISMA methodology was used to analyze 171 selected papers, resulting in over 53 studies included in the detailed full-text analysis. This review is divided into two main parts: (1) a descriptive analysis of the presented models (focused on the modeling tools, validation, and software platform used, etc.), and (2) model analysis (e.g., model purpose, types of agents, input and output data, and modeled area). Special attention was given to the features of these models specifically associated with an agent-based approach. The results lead to the conclusion that the research domain of agent-based tsunami evacuation models is quite narrow and specialized, with a high degree of variability in the model attributes and properties. At the same time, the application of agent-specific methodologies, protocols, organizational paradigms, or standards is sparse. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11069-022-05643-x.

Recommended diagnostic and therapeutic procedures for psychosomatic care.

Psychosomatic medicine has undergone dynamic development in the Czech Republic in recent years. The Society of Psychosomatic Medicine of the Czech Medical Association of J. E. Purkyne was founded in 2014. It develops both the professional side of this field and strives for better integration of psychosomatic care into the Czech health care system. After several years of effort, it succeeded in obtaining approval of the medical procedure code in the field of psychosomatics (909) "psychosomatic intervention". The text of Recommended Diagnostic and Therapeutic Procedures for Psychosomatic Care describes the recommended movement of the psychosomatic patient through the health care system, diagnostic categories in psychosomatic medicine and related differential diagnosis, and basic diagnostic units in psychosomatic medicine.

Otto Kahler and his family: II. Ripening years in Prague.

Otto Kahler (1849-1893), a son of a wound physician at the Provincial Prison, spent his childhood and youth in his native Prague. After graduated from Charles-Ferdinand University (1871, 1872) he became a second-generation physician in an old German-Czech peasant family. He thereafter worked as an intern (from 1873) and assistant (from 1875) with Prof. Joseph Halla at the IInd Medical Clinic of the General Hospital. Shortly before habilitation (1878), in collaboration with Arnold Pick from the Insane Asylum, he began an intense research on pathology and pathological anatomy of the central nervous system (1878-1880) which resulted in discovery of the rule for arrangement of fibres in the posterior funiculi of the spinal cord - the Kahler-Pick law (1880). Then he coedited the weekly Prager medicinische Wochenschrift (1880-1889). After the division of the University according to teaching language the recently appointed extraordinary professor (1882) as well as the whole IInd Medical Clinic belonged to the German Charles-Ferdinand University. His encounter of a case of multiple myeloma in the Prague Merchants´ Hospital in December 1885 attracted his attention to symptomatology of this disease.

The effect of trial repetition and problem size on the consistency of decision making.

Human decision making involving many alternatives is encumbered with inconsistent prioritization. Although inconsistency is assumed to grow with the number of comparisons, it is shown to be reduced by conscious awareness under certain conditions. This study experimentally investigated the effect of repeating a criteria ranking task on inconsistency scores as measured by four different inconsistency coefficients. A total of 107 participants were engaged in a selection task that comprised of ranking from 3 to 10 criteria and was repeated in three trials. Upon completing the first trial, the participants were informed about the inconsistency issues and could improve their ranking in another two trials. The inconsistency score was computed for each set of comparisons and the effect of repeating the selection task on inconsistency concerning the number of criteria was analyzed using the repeated measures ANOVA. The results reveal a significant change in the inconsistency as the task was repeated but the difference depended on the number of criteria. There exists a borderline in the problem size under which the rankings are associated with significantly lower inconsistency, while the rankings with the larger number of criteria were found to have significantly higher inconsistency.

The effect of cognitive training on the subjective perception of well-being in older adults.

BACKGROUND: There is a growing number of studies indicating the major consequences of the subjective perception of well-being on mental health and healthcare use. However, most of the cognitive training research focuses more on the preservation of cognitive function than on the implications of the state of well-being. This secondary analysis of data from a randomised controlled trial investigated the effects of individualised television-based cognitive training on self-rated well-being using the WHO-5 index while considering gender and education as influencing factors. The effects of cognitive training were compared with leisure activities that the elderly could be engaged in to pass time. METHODS: Cognitively healthy participants aged 60 years or above screened using the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and Major Depression Inventory (MDI) were randomly allocated to a cognitive training group or to an active control group in a single-blind controlled two-group design and underwent 24 training sessions. Data acquired from the WHO-5 questionnaire administered before and after intervention were statistically analysed using a mixed design model for repeated measures. The effect of individualised cognitive training was compared with leisure activities while the impact of gender and education was explored using estimated marginal means. RESULTS: A total of 81 participants aged 67.9 ± 5.59 [60-84] without cognitive impairments and absent of depression symptoms underwent the study. Participants with leisure time activities declared significantly higher scores compared to participants with cognitive training M = 73.48 ± 2.88, 95% CI [67.74-79.22] vs M = 64.13 ± 3.034, 95% CI [58.09-70.17] WHO-5 score. Gender and education were found to moderate the effect of cognitive training on well-being when compared to leisure activities. Females engaged in leisure activities in the control group reported higher by M = 9.77 ± 5.4, 95% CI [-0.99-20.54] WHO-5 scores than females with the cognitive training regimen. Participants with high school education declared leisure activities to increase WHO-5 scores by M = 14.59 ± 5.39, 95% CI [3.85-25.34] compared to individualised cognitive training. DISCUSSION: The findings revealed that individualised cognitive training was not directly associated with improvements in well-being. Changes in the control group indicated that involvement in leisure time activities, in which participants were partly free to choose from, represented more favourable stimulation to a self-perceived sense of well-being than individualised cognitive training. Results also supported the fact that gender and education moderated the effect of cognitive training on well-being. Females and participants with high school education were found to be negatively impacted in well-being when performance connected with cognitive training was expected.

A proposal for a computer-based framework of support for public health in the management of biological incidents: the Czech Republic experience.

AIMS: Biological incidents jeopardising public health require decision-making that consists of one dominant feature: complexity. Therefore, public health decision-makers necessitate appropriate support. METHODS: Based on the analogy with business intelligence (BI) principles, the contextual analysis of the environment and available data resources, and conceptual modelling within systems and knowledge engineering, this paper proposes a general framework for computer-based decision support in the case of a biological incident. At the outset, the analysis of potential inputs to the framework is conducted and several resources such as demographic information, strategic documents, environmental characteristics, agent descriptors and surveillance systems are considered. RESULTS: Consequently, three prototypes were developed, tested and evaluated by a group of experts. Their selection was based on the overall framework scheme. Subsequently, an ontology prototype linked with an inference engine, multi-agent-based model focusing on the simulation of an environment, and expert-system prototypes were created. CONCLUSIONS: All prototypes proved to be utilisable support tools for decision-making in the field of public health. Nevertheless, the research revealed further issues and challenges that might be investigated by both public health focused researchers and practitioners.