Impact of Social Contact on Predator-Induced Fear Responses in Young Male Chicks

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is thought to involve unusually strong associative memories between the intense fear felt during a traumatic experience and other environmental cues present at the time of the trauma. Our study uses an animal model to investigate social contact, one of the factors that can impact fear responses, to learn more about possible risk factors or interventions that may be relevant to humans who may experience PTSD. Freezing, or the cessation of movement, is a common fear response observed in laboratory animals in the presence of a perceived threat. We tested whether or not the degree of fear expressed by a social companion impacted the level of fear demonstrated by young male chicks. We initially predicted that the presence of a companion would reduce the fear demonstrated by a chick in response to an audiovisual predator stimulus, known as social buffering of fear. Previous results in our lab actually demonstrated the opposite effect. Chicks that experienced predator stimuli in the presence of another chick remained immobile longer than those who experienced the predator alone. It seemed as though chicks were mirroring the fear expressed by their companion. The current study was aimed at investigating whether social transmission of fear is, in fact, occurring between chicks. In order to more carefully control the fear response of companion chicks, we created two different videos to serve as the “companion” stimuli in this experiment. In one, a control chick walked around naturally, and in another, the chick demonstrated fear that was timed to the onset of the predator stimulus. After three daily habituation sessions to the testing apparatus and video screen, 48 Cornish Cross chicks were exposed to one of four conditions: no predator stimulus and a non-fearful video companion, no predator stimulus and a fearful companion, predator stimulus and a non-fearful companion, or predator stimulus and a fearful companion. One chick from each home cage was randomly assigned to each condition. Half of the chicks were exposed to the predator stimuli and half were not. In each group, half were paired with a fearful companion video and half were paired with a non-fearful companion video. Activity of each chick was recorded and quantified by behavioral analysis software (Smart 3.0, Panlab). Statistical analysis revealed a significant main effect of the predator stimulus, F(1, 89) = 28.11,

Modern Crosses: How Christian Women Navigate Gender, Religion, and Assisted Reproductive Technologies

The increasing use of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) has raised moral and ethical questions, around the creation of embryos that are discarded or otherwise do not survive the IVF process, as well as around the large-scale freezing of embryos in storage facilities. While conservative Protestants and the Catholic Church have been vocal about protecting the embryo in their opposition to abortion and stem cell research, their positions regarding ARTs diverge. Protestant denominations generally support the use of IVF and have largely remained silent about ethical or moral concerns. Catholicism, on the other hand, is the most restrictive religion in its position on ARTs. This dissertation examines how devout Catholic and evangelical Protestant women struggling with infertility navigate gender, technology, and religion when they encounter ARTs that threaten what they consider to be sacred. Drawing on interviews with 75 Catholic and Protestant women, I found that these two groups of women, who are often considered to have uniform positions regarding the moral status of the embryo as life, actually have distinct views on how life should be created and the circumstances under which embryo loss is permissible or not. For evangelicals, ARTs were collaborative co-creators with God and within the bounds of nature. For devout Catholics, the technology disrupted the natural order by supplanting God's role in life's creation. Religious schemas provided devout Catholic women with different cultural resources that help them to avoid using ARTs while still reckoning with the ideal of biological parenthood. They drew on religion to find value and meaning in their suffering, move beyond biological motherhood, and achieve a moral femininity. While religion increased the burden of xi reproduction for devout women, it also provided the cultural resources to resist the financial, emotional, and physical difficulties experienced by women who use ARTs. For evangelical women, a deep opposition to abortion on the grounds that it destroys life and a belief in the personhood of the embryo coexisted with a reluctant acceptance of embryo loss under certain circumstances when using ARTs. In their moral reasoning, evangelical women enacted culturally valued forms of femininity that prepared them to envision themselves as mothers and enabled the achievement of attachments and kin relations that the women longed for, and were also invoked to explain why embryo loss was morally permissible in IVF treatments. By drawing on cultural ideals of femininity, the women constructed themselves as deserving of motherhood. These personal negotiations shed light on larger debates about when and why embryo loss becomes a moral issue. I argue that the fertility clinic and its largely white, middle-class clientele are shielded from the moral condemnation that abortion clinics face, because in the former, the loss of embryos occurs in a space where women are striving to become mothers. This study suggests that the fertility clinic and the abortion clinic occupy different spaces within the moral hierarchies of the stratified system of reproduction. This study contributes to our understanding of how religious sensibilities mediate one‘s relationship with ARTs in diverse ways.PHDSociologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/140975/1/dczar_1.pdfDescription of dczar_1.pdf : Restricted to UM users only

Hybrid Artificial Boundary Conditions for the Application of Blunt-Body Aerodynamic Noise Prediction

A hybrid artificial boundary condition (HABC) that combines the volume-based acoustic damping layer (ADL) and the local face-based characteristic boundary condition (CBC) is presented to enhance the absorption of acoustic waves near the computational boundaries. This method is applied to the prediction of aerodynamic noise from a circular cylinder immersed in uniform compressible viscous flow. Different ADLs are designed to assess their effectiveness whereby the effect of the mesh-stretch direction on wave absorption in the ADL is analysed. Large eddy simulation (LES) and FW-H acoustic analogy method are implemented to predict the far-field noise, and the sensitivities of each approach to the HABC are compared. In the LES computed propagation field of the fluctuation pressure and the frequency-domain results, the spurious reflections at edges are found to be significantly eliminated by the HABC through the effective dissipation of incident waves along the wave-front direction in the ADL. Thereby, the LES results are found to be in a good agreement with the acoustic pressure predicted using FW-H method, which is observed to be just affected slightly by reflected waves

Conscience reconsidered: The moral work of navigating participation in abortion care on labor and delivery

How do caregivers make decisions about participating in morally contested care, such as abortion? Debates about conscience in the delivery of health care generally assume that participation decisions stem from religious beliefs and moral values. Few studies have examined this question in the context of everyday practice. Drawing on 50 interviews with the staff of a labor and delivery unit offering abortion care including nurses, maternal fetal medicine specialists, obstetrics and gynecology residents, and anesthesiologists we show that respondents have varied definitions of "participation" in abortion care and that participation decisions are driven by an array of factors beyond personal beliefs. We present a conceptual model of "moral work" that shows conscience to be an emerging, iterative process influenced not only by beliefs religious and non-religious but also by personal and work experiences and social and institutional contexts. Our study brings new insights into understanding conscience and participation in contested care.</p

Sepsis

We are examining the effectiveness of sepsis screening at triage. Sepsis requires critical thinking to identify and treat appropriately, but it is also imperative for patient outcomes to do so in a timely manner. It has not been answered because the icon is new to the department and has not been fully investigated. One would correlate utilization of the sepsis icon with diagnosis of sepsis and time to antibiotics and fluid. In Adult patients coming into ED triage, will early identification of sepsis at initial triage assessment utilizing a sepsis icon on the First Net system verses no icon utilized improve the 3 hour septic bundle compliance for better patient outcomes? We will compare data from prior to the sepsis icon roll out to date after. The key impact to our research is to decrease mortality related to sepsis.https://scholarlycommons.libraryinfo.bhs.org/nursing_artof_innovation/1005/thumbnail.jp

Patient–physician communication about early stage prostate cancer: analysis of overall visit structure

BackgroundWe know little about patient-physician communication during visits to discuss diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer.ObjectiveTo examine the overall visit structure and how patients and physicians transition between communication activities during visits in which patients received new prostate cancer diagnoses.ParticipantsForty veterans and 18 urologists at one VA medical centre.MethodsWe coded 40 transcripts to identify major communication activities during visits and used empiric discourse analysis to analyse transitions between activities.ResultsWe identified five communication activities that occurred in the following typical sequence: 'diagnosis delivery', 'risk classification', 'options talk', 'decision talk' and 'next steps'. The first two activities were typically brief and involved minimal patient participation. Options talk was typically the longest activity; physicians explicitly announced the beginning of options talk and framed it as their professional responsibility. Some patients were unsure of the purpose of visit and/or who should make treatment decisions.ConclusionVisits to deliver the diagnosis of early stage prostate cancer follow a regular sequence of communication activities. Physicians focus on discussing treatment options and devote comparatively little time and attention to discussing the new cancer diagnosis. Towards the goal of promoting patient-centred communication, physicians should consider eliciting patient reactions after diagnosis delivery and explaining the decision-making process before describing treatment options

Neuronal Control of Metabolism, Department Jens Brüning, Max Planck Institute for Metabolism Research, Managing Director: Jens Brüning, Max Planck Society

We report the deployment of spiral acquisition for high-resolution structural imaging at 7T. Long spiral readouts are rendered manageable by an expanded signal model including static off-resonance and B0 dynamics along with k-space trajectories and coil sensitivity maps. Image reconstruction is accomplished by inversion of the signal model using an extension of the iterative non-Cartesian SENSE algorithm. Spiral readouts up to 25 ms are shown to permit whole-brain 2D imaging at 0.5 mm in-plane resolution in less than a minute. A range of options is explored, including proton-density and T2* contrast, acceleration by parallel imaging, different readout orientations, and the extraction of phase images. Results are shown to exhibit competitive image quality along with high geometric consistency

Evaluation of a quality improvement intervention to reduce anastomotic leak following right colectomy (EAGLE): pragmatic, batched stepped-wedge, cluster-randomized trial in 64 countries

Background Anastomotic leak affects 8 per cent of patients after right colectomy with a 10-fold increased risk of postoperative death. The EAGLE study aimed to develop and test whether an international, standardized quality improvement intervention could reduce anastomotic leaks. Methods The internationally intended protocol, iteratively co-developed by a multistage Delphi process, comprised an online educational module introducing risk stratification, an intraoperative checklist, and harmonized surgical techniques. Clusters (hospital teams) were randomized to one of three arms with varied sequences of intervention/data collection by a derived stepped-wedge batch design (at least 18 hospital teams per batch). Patients were blinded to the study allocation. Low- and middle-income country enrolment was encouraged. The primary outcome (assessed by intention to treat) was anastomotic leak rate, and subgroup analyses by module completion (at least 80 per cent of surgeons, high engagement; less than 50 per cent, low engagement) were preplanned. Results A total 355 hospital teams registered, with 332 from 64 countries (39.2 per cent low and middle income) included in the final analysis. The online modules were completed by half of the surgeons (2143 of 4411). The primary analysis included 3039 of the 3268 patients recruited (206 patients had no anastomosis and 23 were lost to follow-up), with anastomotic leaks arising before and after the intervention in 10.1 and 9.6 per cent respectively (adjusted OR 0.87, 95 per cent c.i. 0.59 to 1.30; P = 0.498). The proportion of surgeons completing the educational modules was an influence: the leak rate decreased from 12.2 per cent (61 of 500) before intervention to 5.1 per cent (24 of 473) after intervention in high-engagement centres (adjusted OR 0.36, 0.20 to 0.64; P &lt; 0.001), but this was not observed in low-engagement hospitals (8.3 per cent (59 of 714) and 13.8 per cent (61 of 443) respectively; adjusted OR 2.09, 1.31 to 3.31). Conclusion Completion of globally available digital training by engaged teams can alter anastomotic leak rates. Registration number: NCT04270721 (http://www.clinicaltrials.gov)