Preventing post-disaster PTSD: Watch for autonomic signs

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Stressful Experiences in Children and Adolescents: Initial Report from the PSEI-NCPV Honolulu Study

As part of a federal study of the biology of stress and resilience, a comprehensive, structured stress-history interview (PSEI-NCPV) was administered to 307 participants recruited in Honolulu. A moderate correlation between childhood stress and current depression was found. A relatively high rate of "severe bullying/hazing," and a high mean stress-intensity reating for "blood-drawing induced anxiety" call for further research

The human fear-circuitry and fear-induced fainting in healthy individuals The paleolithic-threat hypothesis

The Paleolithic-Threat hypothesis reviewed here posits that habitual efferent fainting can be traced back to fear-induced allelic polymorphisms that were selected into some genomes of anatomically, mitochondrially, and neurally modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) in the Mid-Paleolithic because of the survival advantage they conferred during periods of inescapable threat. We posit that during Mid-Paleolithic warfare an encounter with “a stranger holding a sharp object” was consistently associated with threat to life. A heritable hard- wired or firm-wired (prepotentiated) predisposition to abruptly increase vagal tone and collapse flaccidly rather than freeze or attempt to flee or fight in response to an approaching sharp object, a minor injury, or the sight of blood, polymorphism for the hemodynamically “paradoxical” flaccid- immobility in response to these stimuli may have increased some non-combatants’ chances of survival. This is consistent with the unusual age and sex pattern of fear-induced fainting. The Paleolithic-Threat hypothesis also predicts a link to various hypo-androgenic states (e.g. low dehydroxyepiandrosterone-sulfate. We offer five predictions testable via epidemiological, clinical, and ethological/primatological methods. The Paleolithic-Threat hypothesis has implications for research in the aftermath of man-made disasters, such as terrorism against civilians, a traumatic event in which this hypothesis predicts epidemics of fear-induced faintin

Reevaluating the Management of Chronic Temporomandibular Pain Are We Treating PTSD with Debridement and Lavage?

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Developing a Research Agenda: Collaborative and Impactful Research for Adventist Ministry and Education in Australia and New Zealand

Adventist human-subject research ought to have a positive impact and to address real-world challenges. This presentation reports on a current qualitative study which aims to develop a research agenda for collaborative and impactful research for the Adventist ministry and education in Australia and New Zealand

Clinical Researach Histomarkers for Objectively Estimating Premorbid Vagal Tone Chronology in Gulf War Veterans' Illness and in Acute Stres Reaction

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Climate change, precipitation and impacts on an estuarine refuge from disease

© The Author(s), 2011. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in PLoS One 6 (2011): e18849, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0018849.Oysters play important roles in estuarine ecosystems but have suffered recently due to overfishing, pollution, and habitat loss. A tradeoff between growth rate and disease prevalence as a function of salinity makes the estuarine salinity transition of special concern for oyster survival and restoration. Estuarine salinity varies with discharge, so increases or decreases in precipitation with climate change may shift regions of low salinity and disease refuge away from optimal oyster bottom habitat, negatively impacting reproduction and survival. Temperature is an additional factor for oyster survival, and recent temperature increases have increased vulnerability to disease in higher salinity regions. We examined growth, reproduction, and survival of oysters in the New York Harbor-Hudson River region, focusing on a low-salinity refuge in the estuary. Observations were during two years when rainfall was above average and comparable to projected future increases in precipitation in the region and a past period of about 15 years with high precipitation. We found a clear tradeoff between oyster growth and vulnerability to disease. Oysters survived well when exposed to intermediate salinities during two summers (2008, 2010) with moderate discharge conditions. However, increased precipitation and discharge in 2009 reduced salinities in the region with suitable benthic habitat, greatly increasing oyster mortality. To evaluate the estuarine conditions over longer periods, we applied a numerical model of the Hudson to simulate salinities over the past century. Model results suggest that much of the region with suitable benthic habitat that historically had been a low salinity refuge region may be vulnerable to higher mortality under projected increases in precipitation and discharge. Predicted increases in precipitation in the northeastern United States due to climate change may lower salinities past important thresholds for oyster survival in estuarine regions with appropriate substrate, potentially disrupting metapopulation dynamics and impeding oyster restoration efforts, especially in the Hudson estuary where a large basin constitutes an excellent refuge from disease.Funding was provided by the Hudson River Foundation, grant number 00607A, and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (MOU 2008)

Appointing Women to Boards: Is There a Cultural Bias?

Companies that are serious about corporate governance and business ethics are turning their attention to gender diversity at the most senior levels of business (Institute of Business Ethics, Business Ethics Briefing 21:1, 2011). Board gender diversity has been the subject of several studies carried out by international organizations such as Catalyst (Increasing gender diversity on boards: Current index of formal approaches, 2012), the World Economic Forum (Hausmann et al., The global gender gap report, 2010), and the European Board Diversity Analysis (Is it getting easier to find women on European boards? 2010). They all lead to reports confirming the overall relatively low proportion of women on boards and the slow pace at which more women are being appointed. Furthermore, the proportion of women on corporate boards varies much across countries. Based on institutional theory, this study hypothesizes and tests whether this variation can be attributed to differences in cultural settings across countries. Our analysis of the representation of women on boards for 32 countries during 2010 reveals that two cultural characteristics are indeed associated with the observed differences. We use the cultural dimensions proposed by Hofstede (Culture’s consequences: International differences in work-related values, 1980) to measure this construct. Results show that countries which have the greatest tolerance for inequalities in the distribution of power and those that tend to value the role of men generally exhibit lower representations of women on boards

Social Motility in African Trypanosomes

African trypanosomes are devastating human and animal pathogens that cause significant human mortality and limit economic development in sub-Saharan Africa. Studies of trypanosome biology generally consider these protozoan parasites as individual cells in suspension cultures or in animal models of infection. Here we report that the procyclic form of the African trypanosome Trypanosoma brucei engages in social behavior when cultivated on semisolid agarose surfaces. This behavior is characterized by trypanosomes assembling into multicellular communities that engage in polarized migrations across the agarose surface and cooperate to divert their movements in response to external signals. These cooperative movements are flagellum-mediated, since they do not occur in trypanin knockdown parasites that lack normal flagellum motility. We term this behavior social motility based on features shared with social motility and other types of surface-induced social behavior in bacteria. Social motility represents a novel and unexpected aspect of trypanosome biology and offers new paradigms for considering host-parasite interactions

Changes in Russian managerial values: a test of the convergence hypothesis?

This paper considers how Russian managerial values are developing in the context of the sweeping economic, political and social changes associated with the transition of Russia to a market economy. By replicating earlier research (Holt et al., 1994; Ralston et al., 1997), it was possible to overcome the weaknesses of previous cross-sectional studies by tracking changes in Russian managers' values over time. The paper concludes that some convergence between the values of Russian and US managers can be observed, but that the form of this convergence is not uniform. In addition, the way in which Russian managers act upon these values in the context of their own national context means that considerable divergence in managerial behaviour is still evident. Implications for international human resource management are discussed