Utility of Fear Severity and Individual Resilience Scoring as a Surge Capacity, Triage Management Tool during Large-Scale, Bio-event Disasters

Threats of bioterrorism and emerging infectious disease pandemics may result in fear related consequences. Fear based signs and symptoms, if left undetected and untreated, may be extremely debilitating and lead to chronic problems with risk of permanent damage to the brain’s locus coeruleus stress response circuits. The triage management of susceptible, exposed, and infectious victims seeking care must be sensitive and specific enough to identify individuals with excessive levels of fear in order to address the nuances of fear-based symptoms at the initial point of contact. These acute conditions, which include hyper-vigilant fear, are best managed by timely and effective information, rapid evaluation, and possibly medication that uniquely addresses the locus-coeruleus driven noradrenalin overactivation. This article recommends that a fear and resilience (FR) checklist be included as an essential triage tool to identify those most at risk. This checklist has the utility of rapid usage and capacity to respond to limitations brought about by surge capacity requirements. Whereas the utility of such a checklist is evident, predictive validity studies will be required in the future. It is important to note that a unique feature of the FR Checklist is that in addition to identifying individuals who are emotionally, medically, and socially hypo-resilient, it simultaneously identifies individuals who are hyper-resilient who can be asked to volunteer and thus rapidly expand the surge capacity

The Power of Storytelling and Memory in Ung\u27s First They Killed My Father, Haitiwaji\u27s How I Survived a Chinese \u27Reeducation\u27 Camp, and Park\u27s In Order to Live

This thesis studies memoirs by survivors of the Cambodian Genocide (1975-1979), the on-going genocide of the Uyghur Muslims in Chinese reeducation centers, and the prison-state of North Korea. These current or past genocides share the goal of controlling certain groups of people or eliminating those the government cannot control. Fortunately, there are the lucky few who survive these genocides, and some have published memoirs about what they experienced. Loung Ung’s memoir First They Killed My Father shares what her life was like when the Cambodian Genocide occurred when she was just five years old. At this young age, Ung already had to face the hardships of war. From never having enough food to eat to the constant fear of her loved ones being brutally killed, Ung was robbed of a childhood, and her memoir traces her journey from innocence to experience. Gulbahar Haitiwaji’s memoir How I Survived a Chinese ‘Reeducation’ Camp exposes the Uyghur Genocide occurring in China at this moment. Haitiwaji is one of the few Uyghurs to tell the story of what is happening in the Xinjiang region of China. Currently, Uyghurs in Xinjiang are being forced into Chinese reeducation camps with the purpose of completely stripping them of their culture. After a trip to visit her family, Haitiwaji found herself trapped in one of these detention centers and her memoir describes both what she experienced and what it was like to see the place she once called home be destroyed. Similarly, Yeonmi Park’s memoir, In Order to Live, shares her life in and escape from North Korea. Park lived in North Korea until she escaped at the age of thirteen. In North Korea, she had no freedom at all. Every day she was being manipulated by government propaganda and was told the sacrifices she was making were for the betterment of the whole country. However, she was one of the many starving children who was often left to take care of herself. At thirteen she and her mother began their two-year journey to South Korea. However, all of their problems did not suddenly disappear once they left North Korea. Ung, Haitiwaji, and Park faced some of the most traumatic experiences one can imagine, and Ung and Park were only children at the time. Their stories detail what they and their families endured: starvation, torture, and family separation. Though each of these women faced different events at different points in time, what they share is perseverance, bravery, and the will to survive. Memoirs like Ung’s First They Killed My Father, Haitiwaji’s How I Survived a Chinese ‘Reeducation’ Camp, and Park’s In Order to Live emphasize the power of storytelling and give the reader a better understanding of the events being depicted, and how these events affected those lucky enough to survive

Downwind from the Great Tohoku Earthquake: A Call to Global Action

[West J Emerg Med. 2012;13(2):211–212.

The Effect of Climate-Driven Phenological Shifts on Plant-Pollinator Interactions and Plant and Pollinator Reproductive Success

Plants and pollinators are shifting their annual bloom periods and emergence dates (i.e., phenologies) in response to ongoing climate-warming. However, the magnitude of phenological shifts can be species-specific, causing concern that unequal responses will disrupted plantpollinator interactions (i.e., phenological mismatches) and create novel community composition throughout the growing season. The effects of phenological mismatches on plants and pollinators remains unknown, preventing conservation strategies that pinpoint the most vulnerable species. The goal of this study was to investigate the effects of phenological shifts on plants and bees by manipulating plant-bee community composition within mesh-sided enclosures (mesocosms). Plantbee communities were assembled following a factorial design based on phenologies (i.e., spring vs. summer blooming plants and spring vs. summer emerging bees), allowing a comparison of plant-bee interactions and reproductive success within ‘phenologically matched’ communities (e.g., spring blooming plants with spring emerging bees) and ‘phenologically mismatched’ communities (e.g., spring blooming plants with summer emerging bees). Preliminary results suggest that interaction frequency was similar between ‘mismatched’ and ‘matched’ communities, implying that plants and bees can compensate for interactions disrupted by phenological mismatches. Currently, I am processing the reproductive data from both plants (i.e., seed set) and bees (i.e, total offspring) to determine if interaction frequency is indicative of reproductive success

Life History Traits as Mediators of Solitary Bee Responses To Climate-Warming

Climate-warming is uncoupling plant-pollinator interactions by causing species-specific shifts in seasonal flowering periods and pollinator activity times (i.e. phenologies). The mechanisms mediating pollinator responses to warming are poorly understood, preventing conservation professionals from identifying the most at-risk species and limiting our understanding of the potential effects of climate warming on plant-pollinator communities. The goal of this study was to experimentally investigate whether solitary bee (Hymenoptera spp.) overwintering life stages influence phenological responses to climate-warming. Climate-controlled growth chambers where used to manipulate the temperature bees experienced while developing and overwintering. Results suggest that different physiological constraints associated with overwintering in the prepupal life stage compared to the adult life stage may influence how solitary bees respond to climate-warming in predictable ways. Bees that overwinter as adults may be more prone to phenological mismatches in the spring, while bees that overwinter as prepupae may be more prone to phenological mismatches in mid summer. In addition, the phenologies of bees that overwinter as adults may be converging with the phenologies of bees that overwinter as prepupae, causing reduced pollinator abundance during late summer and altering competition among bees for nectar and pollen during early summer. This work demonstrates that life history traits of bees may mediate their responses to climate-warming. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the effects of climate warming on pollinator species, with implications for preserving pollination services in Montana, as well as informing future studies investigating the effects of climate warming on plants and pollinators

Understandings of Education in an African Village: The Impact of Information and Communication Technologies

Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Validation of suitable internal control genes for expression studies in aging.

Quantitative data from experiments of gene expression are often normalized through levels of housekeeping genes transcription by assuming that expression of these genes is highly uniform. This practice is being questioned as it becomes increasingly clear that the level of housekeeping genes expression may vary considerably in certain biological samples. To date, the validation of reference genes in aging has received little attention and suitable reference genes have not yet been defined. Our aim was to evaluate the expression stability of frequently used reference genes in human peripheral blood mononuclear cells with respect to aging. Using quantitative RT-PCR, we carried out an extensive evaluation of five housekeeping genes, i.e. 18s rRNA, ACTB, GAPDH, HPRT1 and GUSB, for stability of expression in samples from donors in the age range 35-74 years. The consistency in the expression stability was quantified on the basis of the coefficient of variation and two algorithms termed geNorm and NormFinder. Our results indicated GUSB be the most suitable transcript and 18s the least for accurate normalization in PBMCs. We also demonstrated that aging is a confounding factor with respect to stability of 18s, HPRT1 and ACTB expression, which were particularly prone to variability in aged donors