Beyond Goldwater-Nichols

This report culminated almost two years of effort at CSIS, which began by developing an approach for both revisiting the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 and for addressing issues that were beyond the scope of that landmark legislation

Family Communication Patterns and Adolescent Emotional Well-being : Cross Classification of Mother-child and Father-child Interactions

The family as a social unit is the earliest and most fundamental socialization influence and is an important contributor to children's development. Studies of family communication patterns (FCP) have emphasized two particular dimensions--a family's conversation orientation and their conformity orientation. However, many studies of FCP and its related outcomes have relied on self-report measures and deductive methods to classify families. The current study uses an empirical, inductive approach in an attempt to identify FCP in a community-based sample of two-parent families with a target child (N = 262 families). Data from video recorded family interactions were coded using the Iowa Family Interaction Rating Scales (IFIRS) and analyzed using latent cross-classification, an extension of latent profile analysis. Four FCP groups were identified including two parent-matching groups and two parent-mismatched groups. FCP group was unrelated to adolescent depression, anxiety, and self-esteem. Implications for future FCP research as discussed

Sleep disturbance at pre-deployment is a significant predictor of post-deployment re-experiencing symptoms.

Background: Insomnia is common in service members and associated with many mental and physical health problems. Recently, longitudinal data have been used to assess the impact of disturbed sleep on mental health outcomes. These studies have consistently shown relationships between sleep disturbance and development of mental illness. Objective: The present study examined the longitudinal relationship between sleep disturbance and PTSD symptomatology in a cohort of Marines and Navy Corpsmen deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan (n = 2,404) assessed prior to deployment, as well as at -3 and 6 months post-deployment. Additionally, we aimed to investigate the extent to which these relationships are moderated by combat-stress severity, and to what extent these findings are replicated in a second, separate cohort of Marines and Navy corpsmen (n = 938) assessed with identical measures prior to deployment and within 3 months of return. Method: The present study employed latent variable path models to examine the relationships between pre-deployment sleep disturbance and post-deployment re-experiencing symptoms. Initial cross-lagged path models were conducted on discovery and replication samples to validate the hypothesized predictive relationships. Follow up moderation path models were then conducted to include the effect of combat-stress severity on these relationships. Results: Initial cross-lagged models supported a significant relationship between pre-deployment sleep disturbance and future re-experiencing PTSD symptoms at all time points. Initial moderation models showed a small moderator effect of combat-stress severity, though the main predictive relationship between pre-deployment sleep disturbance and PTSD symptoms remained significant. The moderator effect was not significant in the replication sample. Conclusions: The results of this study support pre-deployment sleep disturbance as a risk factor for development of post-deployment PTSD symptoms. Interventions aimed at normalizing sleep may be important in preventive measures for PTSD

Transcriptomic and proteomic analyses of Desulfovibrio vulgaris biofilms: carbon and energy flow contribute to the distinct biofilm growth state.

BackgroundDesulfovibrio vulgaris Hildenborough is a sulfate-reducing bacterium (SRB) that is intensively studied in the context of metal corrosion and heavy-metal bioremediation, and SRB populations are commonly observed in pipe and subsurface environments as surface-associated populations. In order to elucidate physiological changes associated with biofilm growth at both the transcript and protein level, transcriptomic and proteomic analyses were done on mature biofilm cells and compared to both batch and reactor planktonic populations. The biofilms were cultivated with lactate and sulfate in a continuously fed biofilm reactor, and compared to both batch and reactor planktonic populations.ResultsThe functional genomic analysis demonstrated that biofilm cells were different compared to planktonic cells, and the majority of altered abundances for genes and proteins were annotated as hypothetical (unknown function), energy conservation, amino acid metabolism, and signal transduction. Genes and proteins that showed similar trends in detected levels were particularly involved in energy conservation such as increases in an annotated ech hydrogenase, formate dehydrogenase, pyruvate:ferredoxin oxidoreductase, and rnf oxidoreductase, and the biofilm cells had elevated formate dehydrogenase activity. Several other hydrogenases and formate dehydrogenases also showed an increased protein level, while decreased transcript and protein levels were observed for putative coo hydrogenase as well as a lactate permease and hyp hydrogenases for biofilm cells. Genes annotated for amino acid synthesis and nitrogen utilization were also predominant changers within the biofilm state. Ribosomal transcripts and proteins were notably decreased within the biofilm cells compared to exponential-phase cells but were not as low as levels observed in planktonic, stationary-phase cells. Several putative, extracellular proteins (DVU1012, 1545) were also detected in the extracellular fraction from biofilm cells.ConclusionsEven though both the planktonic and biofilm cells were oxidizing lactate and reducing sulfate, the biofilm cells were physiologically distinct compared to planktonic growth states due to altered abundances of genes/proteins involved in carbon/energy flow and extracellular structures. In addition, average expression values for multiple rRNA transcripts and respiratory activity measurements indicated that biofilm cells were metabolically more similar to exponential-phase cells although biofilm cells are structured differently. The characterization of physiological advantages and constraints of the biofilm growth state for sulfate-reducing bacteria will provide insight into bioremediation applications as well as microbially-induced metal corrosion

In defense of the personal/impersonal distinction in moral psychology research: Cross-cultural validation of the dual process model of moral judgment

The dual process model of moral judgment (DPM; Greene et al., 2004) argues that such judgments are influenced by both emotion-laden intuition and controlled reasoning. These influences are associated with distinct neural circuitries and different response tendencies. After reanalyzing data from an earlier study, McGuire et al. (2009) questioned the level of support for the dual process model and asserted that the distinction between emotion evoking moral dilemmas (personal dilemmas) and those that do not trigger such intuitions (impersonal dilemmas) is spurious. Using similar reanalysis methods on data reported by Moore, Clark, and Kane (2008), we show that the personal/impersonal distinction is reliable. Furthermore, new data show that this distinction is fundamental to moral judgment across widely different cultures (U.S. and China) and supports claims made by the DPM

Quantum-enhanced metrology with the single-mode coherent states of an optical cavity inside a quantum feedback loop

In this paper, we use the nonlinear generator of dynamics of the individual quantum trajectories of an optical cavity inside an instantaneous quantum feedback loop to measure the phase shift between two pathways of light with a precision above the standard quantum limit. The feedback laser provides a reference frame and constantly increases the dependence of the state of the resonator on the unknown phase. Since our quantum metrology scheme can be implemented with current technology and does not require highly efficient single photon detectors, it should be of practical interest until highly entangled many-photon states become more readily available

Social Desirability and the Celebrity Attitude Scale

The possibility of social desirability bias has often been neglected in the construction and evaluation of attitudinal scales and personality inventories in psychology and related disciplines. The present study aimed to explore the potential influence of such biases on respondents’ self-reported celebrity worship. Specifically, we had a student sample (n = 187) complete a) measures of two different forms of social desirability bias (externally-oriented “Impression management” vs. internally-oriented “self-deceptive positivity”) and b) the Celebrity Attitude Scale (CAS). Results showed that neither measure correlated significantly with the CAS. Furthermore, neither gender nor delivery mode (online vs. paper-and-pencil) mediated the non-significant relationships. Our results add to the confidence researchers might have in using this tool to measure attitudes toward one’s favorite celebrity. Other results are generally consistent with previous studies using the CAS

Negotiating the inhuman: Bakhtin, materiality and the instrumentalization of climate change

The article argues that the work of literary theorist Mikhail M. Bakhtin presents a starting point for thinking about the instrumentalization of climate change. Bakhtin’s conceptualization of human–world relationships, encapsulated in the concept of ‘cosmic terror’, places a strong focus on our perception of the ‘inhuman’. Suggesting a link between the perceived alienness and instability of the world and in the exploitation of the resulting fear of change by political and religious forces, Bakhtin asserts that the latter can only be resisted if our desire for a false stability in the world is overcome. The key to this overcoming of fear, for him, lies in recognizing and confronting the worldly relations of the human body. This consciousness represents the beginning of one’s ‘deautomatization’ from following established patterns of reactions to predicted or real changes. In the vein of several theorists and artists of his time who explored similar ‘deautomatization’ strategies – examples include Shklovsky’s ‘ostranenie’, Brecht’s ‘Verfremdung’, Artaud’s emotional ‘cruelty’ and Bataille’s ‘base materialism’ – Bakhtin proposes a more playful and widely accessible experimentation to deconstruct our ‘habitual picture of the world’. Experimentation is envisioned to take place across the material and the textual to increase possibilities for action. Through engaging with Bakhtin’s ideas, this article seeks to draw attention to relations between the imagination of the world and political agency, and the need to include these relations in our own experiments with creating climate change awareness