The Working Women\u27s Forum: Organizing for credit and change

This issue of SEEDs tells the story of how the Working Women\u27s Forum came into being in Madras, India and how it has brought together more than 13,000 poor, urban women around the issue of credit. It also describes how the Forum has not only provided its members with access to funds, but has expanded to include support services such as child care, education, health, and family planning and how the sense of strength and purpose that has grown up among the members is helping them to tackle the political and social problems that affect their lives

Rapid modulation of sensory processing induced by stimulus conflict

Humans are constantly confronted with environmental stimuli that conflict with task goals and can interfere with successful behavior. Prevailing theories propose the existence of cognitive control mechanisms that can suppress the processing of conflicting input and enhance that of the relevant input. However, the temporal cascade of brain processes invoked in response to conflicting stimuli remains poorly understood. By examining evoked electrical brain responses in a novel, hemifield-specific, visual-flanker task, we demonstrate that task-irrelevant conflicting stimulus input is quickly detected in higher level executive regions while simultaneously inducing rapid, recurrent modulation of sensory processing in the visual cortex. Importantly, however, both of these effects are larger for individuals with greater incongruency-related RT slowing. The combination of neural activation patterns and behavioral interference effects suggest that this initial sensory modulation induced by conflicting stimulus inputs reflects performance-degrading attentional distraction because of their incompatibility rather than any rapid task-enhancing cognitive control mechanisms. The present findings thus provide neural evidence for a model in which attentional distraction is the key initial trigger for the temporal cascade of processes by which the human brain responds to conflicting stimulus input in the environment

The Digital Museum in the Life of the User

This panel will explore the fascinating issue of the “digital museum in the life of the user.” As online museums, digital museum collections, and enhanced gallery devices become more common, it is important that we improve our understanding of how museum visitors make use of digital museum resources, online and in house. This panel, therefore, will discuss approaches to and the need for a better understanding of the users and usage of digital museums

Developing non-craft employment for women in Bangladesh

Too often when development planners or practitioners plan income-generating schemes for women they consider only handicrafts. While in some situations craft production may provide a secure source of income for women, in many cases it results in poor returns and proves more complicated an undertaking than expected. The Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) is one agency that has developed a successful program of non-craft employment opportunities for women. Some 10,000 poor women have been engaged by BRAC in viable economic schemes: 9,000 in non-craft production. This issue of SEEDS reviews BRAC\u27s experience in developing non-craft employment opportunities and participatory associations for rural women

The role of stimulus salience and attentional capture across the neural hierarchy in a stop-signal task

Inhibitory motor control is a core function of cognitive control. Evidence from diverse experimental approaches has linked this function to a mostly right-lateralized network of cortical and subcortical areas, wherein a signal from the frontal cortex to the basal ganglia is believed to trigger motor-response cancellation. Recently, however, it has been recognized that in the context of typical motor-control paradigms those processes related to actual response inhibition and those related to the attentional processing of the relevant stimuli are highly interrelated and thus difficult to distinguish. Here, we used fMRI and a modified Stop-signal task to specifically examine the role of perceptual and attentional processes triggered by the different stimuli in such tasks, thus seeking to further distinguish other cognitive processes that may precede or otherwise accompany the implementation of response inhibition. In order to establish which brain areas respond to sensory stimulation differences by rare Stop-stimuli, as well as to the associated attentional capture that these may trigger irrespective of their task-relevance, we compared brain activity evoked by Stop-trials to that evoked by Go-trials in task blocks where Stop-stimuli were to be ignored. In addition, region-of-interest analyses comparing the responses to these task-irrelevant Stop-trials, with those to typical relevant Stop-trials, identified separable activity profiles as a function of the task-relevance of the Stop-signal. While occipital areas were mostly blind to the task-relevance of Stop-stimuli, activity in temporo-parietal areas dissociated between task-irrelevant and task-relevant ones. Activity profiles in frontal areas, in turn, were activated mainly by task-relevant Stop-trials, presumably reflecting a combination of triggered top-down attentional influences and inhibitory motor-control processes

Postintubation Tracheal Ruptures - A case report -

Tracheobronchial ruptures (TBR) rarely complicate surgical procedures under general anesthesia. Seemingly uneventful intubations can result in injury to the trachea, which often manifests as hemoptysis and subcutaneous emphysema. We present 2 patients with postintubation TBR who were treated surgically and discuss considerations in the management of this potentially lethal injury

Quality Health Information On the Internet: Developing a Diabetes Pathfinder For the Chinese Population

A Web-based bilingual diabetes information pathfinder was created to help the Chinese population access quality health information on the Internet as part of a collaborative outreach project in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. A survey was conducted to identify the demographics, Internet usage, health information needs, and preferences for training sessions of the Chinese population. Breast cancer, diabetes, and hepatitis B were the top three diseases of interest. The process of developing the pathfinder is described from start to finish, and it can serve as a model for the development of others. Pathfinder training sessions also were held. Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

Sex-Biased Gene Flow Among Elk in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem

We quantified patterns of population genetic structure to help understand gene flow among elk populations across the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. We sequenced 596 base pairs of the mitochondrial control region of 380 elk from eight populations. Analysis revealed high mitochondrial DNA variation within populations, averaging 13.0 haplotypes with high mean gene diversity (0.85). The genetic differentiation among populations for mitochondrial DNA was relatively high (FST = 0.161; P = 0.001) compared to genetic differentiation for nuclear microsatellite data (FST = 0.002; P = 0.332), which suggested relatively low female gene flow among populations. The estimated ratio of male to female gene flow (mm/mf = 46) was among the highest we have seen reported for large mammals. Genetic distance (for mitochondrial DNA pairwise FST) was not significantly correlated with geographic (Euclidean) distance between populations (Mantel’s r = 0.274, P = 0.168). Large mitochondrial DNA genetic distances (e.g., FST . 0.2) between some of the geographically closest populations (,65 km) suggested behavioral factors and/or landscape features might shape female gene flow patterns. Given the strong sex-biased gene flow, future research and conservation efforts should consider the sexes separately when modeling corridors of gene flow or predicting spread of maternally transmitted diseases. The growing availability of genetic data to compare male vs. female gene flow provides many exciting opportunities to explore the magnitude, causes, and implications of sex-biased gene flow likely to occur in many species

The Dual Origin of the Terrestrial Atmosphere

The origin of the terrestrial atmosphere is one of the most puzzling enigmas in the planetary sciences. It is suggested here that two sources contributed to its formation, fractionated nebular gases and accreted cometary volatiles. During terrestrial growth, a transient gas envelope was fractionated from nebular composition. This transient atmosphere was mixed with cometary material. The fractionation stage resulted in a high Xe/Kr ratio, with xenon being more isotopically fractionated than krypton. Comets delivered volatiles having low Xe/Kr ratios and solar isotopic compositions. The resulting atmosphere had a near-solar Xe/Kr ratio, almost unfractionated krypton delivered by comets, and fractionated xenon inherited from the fractionation episode. The dual origin therefore provides an elegant solution to the long-standing "missing xenon" paradox. It is demonstrated that such a model could explain the isotopic and elemental abundances of Ne, Ar, Kr, and Xe in the terrestrial atmosphere.Comment: Icarus, in press, 31 pages, 6 tables, and 6 figure

Cortical and subcortical coordination of visual spatial attention revealed by simultaneous EEG-fMRI recording

Visual spatial attention has been studied in humans with both electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) individually. However, due to the intrinsic limitations of each of these methods used alone, our understanding of the systems-level mechanisms underlying attentional control remains limited. Here, we examined trial-to-trial covariations of concurrently recorded EEG and fMRI in a cued visual spatial attention task in humans, which allowed delineation of both the generators and modulators of the cue-triggered event-related oscillatory brain activity underlying attentional control function. The fMRI activity in visual cortical regions contralateral to the cued direction of attention covaried positively with occipital gamma-band EEG, consistent with activation of cortical regions representing attended locations in space. In contrast, fMRI activity in ipsilateral visual cortical regions covaried inversely with occipital alpha-band oscillations, consistent with attention-related suppression of the irrelevant hemispace. Moreover, the pulvinar nucleus of the thalamus covaried with both of these spatially specific, attention-related, oscillatory EEG modulations. Because the pulvinar's neuroanatomical geometry makes it unlikely to be a direct generator of the scalp-recorded EEG, these covariational patterns appear to reflect the pulvinar's role as a regulatory control structure, sending spatially specific signals to modulate visual cortex excitability proactively. Together, these combined EEG/fMRI results illuminate the dynamically interacting cortical and subcortical processes underlying spatial attention, providing important insight not realizable using either method alone