Comparing psychology and non-psychology student attitudes toward care seeking

Despite evidence that counselling and other forms of psychotherapy are critical to mental health recovery (Corrigan, 2014), fewer than one third of people living with mental illness seek treatment (Maranzan, 2014). Stigma surrounding mental health deters people from seeking help. Our 2018 study found that York University (Toronto, Canada) students implicitly associate care-seeking activities with negative personal attributes. Exposure, in the form of contact and education about psychological support, reduces stigma and negative biases (O’Brien et al., 2010; Rudman et al., 2001). We hypothesize that students studying psychology should have fewer negative associations toward seeking treatment. Using the implicit associations task (IAT), we assessed whether this is the case. Twenty-nine psychology students and 29 non-psychology students from York University completed the IAT. First, participants classified different activities (e.g., counselling) as being related to care seeking or daily living, and different personality traits (e.g., antisocial) as being positive or negative. Second, they classified these activities and traits into paired categories of either congruent (care-seeking/negative and daily living/positive) or non-congruent (care seeking/positive and daily living/negative) stereotyped associations. The reaction times to classify each item into the congruent and incongruent categories were evaluated. While all students were faster in the congruent associations, the results showed an interaction between areas of study and association pairs. Being exposed to incongruent pairs—i.e., care seeking and positive personality traits—slows down non-psychology more than psychology students. These results suggest that exposure to psychology courses does contribute to reducing negative biases against mental health care

The effects of early life adversity on the development of circuits that support flexible decision-making

AbstractThe effects of early life adversity on the development of circuits that support flexible decision-makingbyAlaina Wren ThomasDoctor of Philosophy in NeuroscienceUniversity of California, BerkeleyProfessor Linda Wilbrecht, ChairA large proportion of children in the United States experience childhood adversity, with over 50% reporting at least one adverse event. Early life adversity is strongly associated with increased risk for developing a number of physical and mental health disorders, yet the pathways linking childhood adversity to disease are not well understood. This dissertation explores how the early environment can influence developing neural circuits, with a particular focus on neural circuits that support flexible goal-directed decision-making. Cognitive development plays a significant role in mental illness and prospects for recovery. Flexible decision-making is a major cognitive function that is impaired across multiple neuropsychiatric disorders including bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, that is also critical in supporting behavioral change. In Chapter 2, I review my own collaborative work as well as work from others to describe the distinct developmental trajectories of sub-circuits that support flexible decision-making. I focus on frontal cortex dendritic spines and axonal boutons on afferents and efferents of the frontal cortex. These studies are motivated by the idea that identifying when these circuits grow and/or mature at the synaptic level will inform us when connections may be more vulnerable to adverse experiences and/or when interventions may have the greatest impact. I present in vivo imaging data that support previous classic findings that dendritic spines on frontal pyramidal neurons show loss of linear spine density, or in other words “prune,” across the adolescent period. However, I also present evidence that some long range frontal afferent and efferent circuits continue to grow and add synapses during the adolescent period, while others are pruning and stabilizing. These data refute the simple assumption that frontal circuits globally prune during adolescence, and raise questions about why some circuits show delayed growth.Next, in Chapter 3, I explore how maternal separation, a mouse model of early life adversity, affects flexible decision-making across the lifespan. I find that this early life manipulation leads to changes in decision-making specifically at a juvenile, but not adult life stage. I hypothesize that changes in decision-making strategies at the juvenile time point, a point of first independence, may serve as a cognitive adaptation to signals that indicate a harsh environment. Finally, in Chapter 4, I investigate how maternal separation and more specifically variations in maternal care, impact the development of four long range axons (two afferents and two efferents of the frontal cortex) that each play a role in flexible decision-making. I focus on changes at the adolescent life stage, based on differences in flexible decision-making at this age discussed in Chapter 3. I find that dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) axons that descend to target the basolateral amygdala (BLA) are specifically sensitive to the maternal separation manipulation and variations in maternal care, while the other three axons investigated show no relationship with early life care. Specifically, I found higher bouton density and smaller bouton size on dmPFC-BLA axons in maternally separated mice compared to controls. Additionally, bouton density on this projection correlated with maternal care measures, suggesting early maternal care (P1-10) may scale the later growth of this pathway (at P35). Variations in maternal care may serve as an indicator about the type of environment offspring are growing up in. These data support the idea that the brain can sample the statistics from the early environment and tune specific circuits to adapt to that environment. Taken together, this thesis provides new insights about the development of circuits that support flexible decision-making. Importantly, I demonstrate how early life adversity impacts specific circuits at the synaptic level. These experiments provide high-resolution data that aims to help inform intervention and treatment strategies to promote healthy child development

Benefits of the state acres for wildlife enhancement practice for bird populations in Kansas

Master of ScienceDivision of BiologyBrett K. SandercockGrassland birds have experienced population declines worldwide from habitat degradation caused by conversion to agriculture and recent intensification of land use, including increased use of fertilizer, fossil fuels, and irrigation. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) includes initiatives targeting wildlife enhancement to mitigate ongoing declines in grassland bird populations. The newest CRP practice, State Acres for Wildlife Enhancement (SAFE), was designed to restore vital habitats for high priority wildlife species throughout the United States. Our objective was to assess the potential benefits of SAFE for upland gamebirds and grassland songbirds in Kansas. We monitored lands enrolled in SAFE to estimate bird density based on field scale and landscape scale characteristics. Our study was conducted in three ecoregions: Smoky Hills (4 counties), Flint Hills (3 counties), and the High Plains (3 counties). We surveyed 121 SAFE fields and 49 CRP fields from 2012 – 2013. Northern Bobwhite density was negatively associated with percent litter within survey fields. Ring-necked Pheasant density differed among ecoregions, and was positively associated with percent bare ground in the High Plains, but negatively associated with field age in the Smoky Hills. Mourning Dove density differed among ecoregions, and was negatively associated with percent forb in the High Plains, and positively associated with percent grassland in the Smoky Hills. In the Flint Hills, Mourning Doves were negatively associated with CRP fields and large fields. Brown-headed Cowbirds were positively associated with percent forbs. Amount of CRP surrounding survey locations was positively associated with bird density through the entire range for Grasshopper Sparrows, Dickcissels, and Lark Buntings, and in the High Plains for Western Meadowlarks. Percent woodland had negative effects on Western Meadowlarks in the Smoky Hills, whereas percent cropland had negative effects on Eastern Meadowlarks statewide. CRP positively affected abundance of four of our species, whereas percent cropland and woodland negatively affected others. Thus, the amount of set-aside lands enrolled in SAFE could be important for grassland bird populations. SAFE and CRP supported equal numbers of Northern Bobwhites and Ring-necked Pheasants, suggesting SAFE provides benefits for target species of upland gamebirds

The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: measurements of the growth of structure and expansion rate at z=0.57 from anisotropic clustering

We analyze the anisotropic clustering of massive galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) Data Release 9 (DR9) sample, which consists of 264,283 galaxies in the redshift range 0.43 < z < 0.7 spanning 3,275 square degrees. Both peculiar velocities and errors in the assumed redshift-distance relation ("Alcock-Paczynski effect") generate correlations between clustering amplitude and orientation with respect to the line-of-sight. Together with the sharp baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) standard ruler, our measurements of the broadband shape of the monopole and quadrupole correlation functions simultaneously constrain the comoving angular diameter distance (2190 +/- 61 Mpc) to z=0.57, the Hubble expansion rate at z=0.57 (92.4 +/- 4.5 km/s/Mpc), and the growth rate of structure at that same redshift (d sigma8/d ln a = 0.43 +/- 0.069). Our analysis provides the best current direct determination of both DA and H in galaxy clustering data using this technique. If we further assume a LCDM expansion history, our growth constraint tightens to d sigma8/d ln a = 0.415 +/- 0.034. In combination with the cosmic microwave background, our measurements of DA, H, and growth all separately require dark energy at z > 0.57, and when combined imply \Omega_{\Lambda} = 0.74 +/- 0.016, independent of the Universe's evolution at z<0.57. In our companion paper (Samushia et al. prep), we explore further cosmological implications of these observations.Comment: 19 pages, 11 figures, submitted to MNRAS, comments welcom

The Power of Education: Comparing Implicit Stigma Toward Mental Health Care in Psychology and Non-Psychology Students

Fewer than a third of people living with mental health problems reach out for professional help, which could be due, in part, to negative stigma toward mental health issues. Typically, stigmatization toward any issue decreases as individuals gain more familiarity and knowledge about them. In this study, we measured whether students studying psychology have less implicit negative bias toward seeking psychological care. We adapted the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to evaluate how psychology and non-psychology students react to stereotypes against seeking out psychological care. Specifically, we measured and compared how easily these students classify words related to personality traits and to activities within stereotyped categories (i.e., care-seeking activities coupled with negative traits such as counselling-antisocial) and within non-stereotyped categories (i.e., care-seeking activities coupled with positive traits such as counselling-sociable). As expected, all students were faster at classifying items within the stereotype-congruent category. However, psychology students were not as affected by the stereotype non-congruent category: pairing positive attributes to care-seeking activities did not slow psychology students as much. These results suggest that exposure to psychology courses contributes to reducing implicit biases against mental health care. It is hoped that the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic will promote awareness about mental health issues, which in turn will decrease negative stigma toward mental health care

The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey of SDSS-III

The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) is designed to measure the scale of baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) in the clustering of matter over a larger volume than the combined efforts of all previous spectroscopic surveys of large scale structure. BOSS uses 1.5 million luminous galaxies as faint as i=19.9 over 10,000 square degrees to measure BAO to redshifts z<0.7. Observations of neutral hydrogen in the Lyman alpha forest in more than 150,000 quasar spectra (g<22) will constrain BAO over the redshift range 2.15<z<3.5. Early results from BOSS include the first detection of the large-scale three-dimensional clustering of the Lyman alpha forest and a strong detection from the Data Release 9 data set of the BAO in the clustering of massive galaxies at an effective redshift z = 0.57. We project that BOSS will yield measurements of the angular diameter distance D_A to an accuracy of 1.0% at redshifts z=0.3 and z=0.57 and measurements of H(z) to 1.8% and 1.7% at the same redshifts. Forecasts for Lyman alpha forest constraints predict a measurement of an overall dilation factor that scales the highly degenerate D_A(z) and H^{-1}(z) parameters to an accuracy of 1.9% at z~2.5 when the survey is complete. Here, we provide an overview of the selection of spectroscopic targets, planning of observations, and analysis of data and data quality of BOSS.Comment: 49 pages, 16 figures, accepted by A

Social determinants of health and disparate disability accumulation in a cohort of Black, Hispanic, and White patients with multiple sclerosis

Background: Black and Hispanic patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) have been shown to accumulate greater multiple sclerosis–associated disability (MSAD) than White patients. Disparities in social determinants of health (SDOH) among these groups have also been reported. Objective: To determine the extent to which associations of race and ethnicity with MSAD may be attributable to differences in SDOH. Methods: Retrospective chart analysis of patients at an academic MS center grouped by self-identified Black (n = 95), Hispanic (n = 93), and White (n = 98) race/ethnicity. Individual patient addresses were geocoded and matched with neighborhood-level area deprivation index (ADI) and social vulnerability index (SVI). Results: Average Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) scores at last-recorded evaluations of White patients (1.7 ± 2.0) were significantly lower than Black (2.8 ± 2.4, p = 0.001) and Hispanic (2.6 ± 2.6, p = 0.020) patients. Neither Black race nor Hispanic ethnicity was significantly associated with EDSS in multivariable linear regression models that included individual-level SDOH indicators and either ADI or SVI. Conclusion: Black race and Hispanic ethnicity are not significantly associated with EDSS in models that include individual and neighborhood-level SDOH indicators. Further research should elucidate mechanisms by which structural inequities affect MS disease course

Passive Tick Surveillance at The University of Maine Cooperative Extension Tick Lab: A 6 Year Retrospective

Introduction: Maine has experienced a rise in tick-borne diseases over the past several decades, reflecting broader trends in the northeastern United States. Ixodes scapularis is now found statewide and is the primary vector of Borrelia burgdorferi, Anaplasma phagocytophilum, Babesia microti, Borrelia miyamotoi, and Powassan virus. Other emerging tick species pose additional threats. Methods: The University of Maine Cooperative Extension Tick Lab conducts a public tick-testing program. Ticks submitted by the public between 2019 and 2024 were microscopically identified and tested with multiplex quantitative polymerase chain reaction and reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction panels for known and emerging pathogens, including B. burgdorferi, A. phagocytophilum, B. microti, B. miyamotoi, Rickettsia rickettsii, Francisella tularensis, Ehrlichia spp., Powassan virus, and Heartland virus. Results: A total of 22 151 ticks were submitted from 466 municipalities. Ixodes scapularis was the most commonly submitted tick species, followed by Dermacentor variabilis. Midcoastal counties exhibited both high submission rates and elevated pathogen prevalence. B. burgdorferi was most frequently detected, followed by A. phagocytophilum and B. microti. Powassan virus and B. miyamotoi were detected at low rates. Discussion: Our study confirms the important role I. scapularis plays in Maine’s tick-borne disease landscape and highlights the need for surveillance of emerging tick species and their associated pathogens. We also note geographic clusters of tick submissions and elevated pathogen prevalence from Maine’s midcoastal region. Conclusions: This passive surveillance initiative highlights Maine’s evolving tick-borne disease risks. Ongoing monitoring, improved diagnostic techniques, and community engagement will be important for guiding public health responses and mitigating the burden of emerging and established tick-borne threats

The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey of SDSS-III

The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) is designed to measure the scale of baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) in the clustering of matter over a larger volume than the combined efforts of all previous spectroscopic surveys of large-scale structure. BOSS uses 1.5 million luminous galaxies as faint as i = 19.9 over 10,000 deg(2) to measure BAO to redshifts z < 0.7. Observations of neutral hydrogen in the Ly alpha forest in more than 150,000 quasar spectra (g < 22) will constrain BAO over the redshift range 2.15 < z < 3.5. Early results from BOSS include the first detection of the large-scale three-dimensional clustering of the Ly alpha forest and a strong detection from the Data Release 9 data set of the BAO in the clustering of massive galaxies at an effective redshift z = 0.57. We project that BOSS will yield measurements of the angular diameter distance d(A) to an accuracy of 1.0% at redshifts z = 0.3 and z = 0.57 and measurements of H(z) to 1.8% and 1.7% at the same redshifts. Forecasts for Ly alpha forest constraints predict a measurement of an overall dilation factor that scales the highly degenerate D-A(z) and H-1(z) parameters to an accuracy of 1.9% at z similar to 2.5 when the survey is complete. Here, we provide an overview of the selection of spectroscopic targets, planning of observations, and analysis of data and data quality of BOSS

Systematic Investigation of Iridium-Based Bimetallic Thin Film Catalysts for the Oxygen Evolution Reaction in Acidic Media.

Multimetallic Ir-based systems offer significant opportunities for enhanced oxygen evolution electrocatalysis by modifying the electronic and geometric properties of the active catalyst. Herein, a systematic investigation of bimetallic Ir-based thin films was performed to identify activity and stability trends across material systems for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in acidic media. Electron beam evaporation was used to co-deposit metallic films of Ir, IrSn2, IrCr, IrTi, and IrNi. The electrocatalytic activity of the electrochemically oxidized alloys was found to increase in the following order: IrTi < IrSn2 < Ir ∼ IrNi < IrCr. The IrCr system demonstrates two times the catalytic activity of Ir at 1.65 V versus RHE. Density functional theory calculations suggest that this enhancement is due to Cr active sites that have improved oxygen binding energetics compared to those of pure Ir oxide. This work identifies IrCr as a promising new catalyst system that facilitates reduced precious metal loadings for acid-based OER catalysis