Domestic Violence in the National Football League

This study was conducted to examine the relationship that existed between domestic violence incidents involving National Football League (NFL) players and the popularity of the league. With more media coverage on players’ off the field exploits there was potential that players committing crimes as heinous as domestic violence was having an impact on how fans consumed the NFL’s products. This was initially sparked by the widely publicized incident featuring former Baltimore Ravens running back, Ray Rice. As the league struggled to figure out on how to best handle player discipline for domestic violence the public opinion of the NFL diminished. Fan behavior was the measurable component for NFL popularity and was examined by looking at metrics such as television viewership and game attendance. Domestic violence incidents were totaled from an NFL player arrest database. The incidents were examined for physical violence and any resulting player releases. By compiling secondary data describing fan behavior and comparing it to total domestic violence incidents among NFL players it could be seen that fan behavior was generally unchanged by NFL players committing domestic violence. The study provided a look into the impact of players off field behavior on the business of the NFL. What was found was there was not conclusive evidence that a relationship between domestic violence in the NFL and the league’s popularity exists. Despite predictions that fan behavior display a noticeable change in relation to domestic violence incidents in the NFL, the data did not reflect such a finding, and statistical tests did not reflect a significant relationship. For the NFL, it may reveal that behavior of their fans, such as attending games or consuming NFL products from home, may not be hampered by the off the field follies of the league’s players. However, having already weathered a storm of criticism regarding the league’s policies and demeanor towards domestic violence, understanding how people respond to such incidents could prove critical for the NFL long term

Do rising rates of antidepressant prescription translate into lower rates of suicide?/?

Professor James Coyne discusses his recent research into the the correlation between the growing use of prescription antidepressants and decreasing suicide rates, with evidence drawn from 29 countries

Improving Coping Research: Raze the Slum before Any More Building!

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/67019/2/10.1177_135910539700200203.pd

"There are too many, but never enough": qualitative case study investigating routine coding of clinical information in depression.

We sought to understand how clinical information relating to the management of depression is routinely coded in different clinical settings and the perspectives of and implications for different stakeholders with a view to understanding how these may be aligned

Use of near infrared correlation spectroscopy for quantitation of surface iron, absorbed water and stored electronic energy in a suite of Mars soil analog materials

A number of questions concerning the surface mineralogy and the history of water on Mars remain unresolved using the Viking analyses and Earth-based telescopic data. Identification and quantitation of iron-bearing clays on Mars would elucidate these outstanding issues. Near infrared correlation analysis, a method typically applied to qualitative and quantitative analysis of individual constituents of multicomponent mixtures, is adapted here to selection of distinctive features of a small, highly homologous series of Fe/Ca-exchanged montmorillonites and several kalinites. Independently determined measures of surface iron, relative humidity and stored electronic energy were used as constituent data for linear regression of the constituent vs. reflectance data throughout the spectral region 0.68 to 2.5 micrometers. High correlations were found in appropriate regions for all three constituents, though that with stored energy is still considered tenuous. Quantitation was improved using 1st and 2nd derivative spectra. High resolution data over a broad spectral range would be required to quantitatively identify iron-bearing clays by remotely sensed reflectance

Gonadal hormones, but not sex, affect the acquisition and maintenance of a Go/No-Go odor discrimination task in mice

In mice, olfaction is crucial for identifying social odors (pheromones) that signal the presence of suitable mates. We used a custom-built olfactometer and a thirst-motivated olfactory discrimination Go/No-Go (GNG) task to ask whether discrimination of volatile odors is sexually dimorphic and modulated in mice by adult sex hormones. Males and females gonadectomized prior to training failed to learn even the initial phase of the task, which involved nose poking at a port in one location obtaining water at an adjacent port. Gonadally intact males and females readily learned to seek water when male urine (S+) was present but not when female urine (S−) was present; they also learned the task when non-social odorants (amyl acetate, S+; peppermint, S−) were used. When mice were gonadectomized after training the ability of both sexes to discriminate urinary as well as non-social odors was reduced; however, after receiving testosterone propionate (castrated males) or estradiol benzoate (ovariectomized females), task performance was restored to pre-gonadectomy levels. There were no overall sex differences in performance across gonadal conditions in tests with either set of odors; however, ovariectomized females performed more poorly than castrated males in tests with non-social odors. Our results show that circulating sex hormones enable mice of both sexes to learn a GNG task and that gonadectomy reduces, while hormone replacement restores, their ability to discriminate between odors irrespective of the saliency of the odors used. Thus, gonadal hormones were essential for both learning and maintenance of task performance across sex and odor type.We thank David Giese for help in programming the apparatus used in GNG testing and Alberto Cruz-Martin for comments on an early version of the manuscript. This work was supported by NIDCD grant DC008962 to JAC. (DC008962 - NIDCD grant)Accepted manuscrip

Parents' Sense of “Entitlement” in Adoptive and Nonadoptive Families

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72242/1/j.1545-5300.1996.00441.x.pd

Are we witnessing the decline effect in the Type D personality literature? What can be learned?

After an unbroken series of positive, but underpowered studies seemed to demonstrate Type D personality predicting mortality in cardiovascular disease patients, initial claims now appear at least exaggerated and probably false. Larger studies with consistently null findings are accumulating. Conceptual, methodological, and statistical issues can be raised concerning the construction of Type D personality as a categorical variable, whether Type D is sufficiently distinct from other negative affect variables, and if it could be plausibly assumed to predict mortality independent of depressive symptoms and known biomedical factors, including disease severity. The existing literature concerning negative affect and health suggests a low likelihood of discovering a new negative affect variable that independently predicts mortality better than its many rivals. The apparent decline effect in the Type D literature is discussed in terms of the need to reduce the persistence of false positive findings in the psychosomatic medicine literature, even while preserving a context allowing risk-taking and discovery. Recommendations include greater transparency concerning research design and analytic strategy; insistence on replication with larger samples before accepting "discoveries" from small samples; reduced confirmatory bias; and availability of all relevant data. Such changes would take time to implement, face practical difficulties, and run counter to established practices. An interim solution is for readers to maintain a sense of pre-discovery probabilities, to be sensitized to the pervasiveness of the decline effect, and to be skeptical of claims based on findings reaching significance in small-scale studies that have not been independently replicated. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN PARTNERS' EXPRESSED EMOTION AND DEPRESSION:MEDIATED BY PATIENTS' DYSFUNCTIONAL ATTITUDES?

The respective roles of expressed emotion and dysfunctional cognitive processes are well documented in depression, but their interplay has seldom been given attention. We examined the patients' and partners' expressed emotion (EE) and dysfunctional attitudes in predicting depressive symptoms in a sample of N = 63 couples with one clinically-depressed partner (37 females and 26 males). Partners' EE played a more important role for patients' dysfunctional attitudes and their depressive symptoms; nondepressed partners' dysfunctional attitudes and depressive symptoms were unaffected by patients' EE. In contrasting two models that predict self-reported and clinician-rated depression, we found more support for dysfunctional attitudes serving as a mediator rather than a moderator for the association between partners' EE and patients' depressive symptoms. Partners' criticism may play a role worthy of more attention in depressed patients' dysfunctional attitudes and maintenance of their depres