When Church Teachings and Policy Commitments Collide: Perspectives on Catholics in the U.S. House of Representatives

This article investigates the influence of religious values on domestic social policy-making, with a particular focus on Catholics. We analyze roll call votes in the 109th Congress and find that Catholic identification is associated with support for Catholic Social Teaching, but both younger Catholics and Republican Catholics are found less supportive. In followup interviews with a small sample of Catholic Republicans, we find that they justify voting contrary to Church teaching by seeing its application to domestic social issues as less authoritative than Church moral teachings on issues like abortion

Risk profiles for adolescent internalizing problems

Objective: Internalizing problems are commonly diagnosed during adolescence, and are associated with distress, impairment, and negative mental health outcomes in adulthood. Thus, there is a critical need to characterize adolescents who are at the highest risk for escalating to clinical levels of internalizing problems while extending current literature and incorporating both biological and environmental predictors. This study aimed to characterized risk profiles for fourteen-year-old adolescents who developed clinical levels of internalizing (High Internalizing [HI]) problems by age nineteen, using brain, genetic, personality, cognitive, life history, psychopathology, and demographic measures. The study also examined whether there were functional and structural brain differences in three groups of adolescents on select regions of interest (ROIs) on the Faces Task, Stop Signal Task, and Modified Incentive Delay Task. Method: Participants were 91 adolescents who met clinical criteria for at least one Anxiety and/or Depressive Disorder by age 19 and 1,244 controls who varied in symptom level but did not reach clinically-diagnostic criteria. Ten-fold cross-validated logistic regression using elastic net regularization was used to identify risk profiles associated with high levels of internalizing symptomatology. To examine group differences in regions of interest on three fMRI tasks and in gray matter volume, ANCOVAs were conducted. The three groups were: 1) adolescents who never met HI criteria (Controls), 2) those who met HI criteria in middle adolescence (Middle Onset), and 3) those who met HI criteria in late adolescence (Late Onset). Results: Logistic regression identified 13 variables from personality, psychopathology, life events, and functional brain variables to predict High Internalizing symptoms (mean AUC 0.78, p\u3c.0001). ANCOVAs showed there were several ROIs that demonstrated main effects of Time, and one main effect of Group during response inhibition in the left inferior frontal gyrus, triangular part (pars triangularis), with participants in the Middle Onset group showing increased activation levels compared with the Control group. There were no other significant main effects of Group or Time x Group interactions. Conclusions: These findings give insight into personality, psychopathological, and brain-related factors that are associated with high levels of internalizing symptoms, highlighting the importance of including biological variables in conjunction with psychosocial variables when examining risk factors for internalizing problems. Results also suggest an association between activation in frontal cortex and parietal lobe regions during response inhibition and higher internalizing symptoms in late adolescence. Between-group activation and volumetric ROI comparisons generally yielded main effects of time, confirming prior evidence that activation levels and GMV continue to change over the course of adolescence

William Caxton\u27s Paris and Vienne and Blanchardyn and Eglantine

William Caxton’s Paris and Vienne and Blanchardyn and Eglantine are English versions of romances well-known in medieval and early Renaissance Europe, but outside the modern canon of early English literature. Like many of his publications, they are translations of prose works circulating at the court of Burgundy, but unlike his other romances, they do not belong to the matters of the Nine Worthies. They are independent narratives of love and adventure presenting two differing but complementary accounts of chivalry and courtly love. Following fifteenth-century fashions, they treat conventional materials with a degree of realism and imbue characters with subjectivity. Blanchardyn, published at the behest of Margaret, mother of Henry VII, is militaristic and attentive to governance, and notable for its affective narration and sophisticated style. Paris features a linear plot, lively characters, and employs generic motifs to explore issues of social mobility, family dynamics, and female autonomy.https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/mip_teamsmets/1002/thumbnail.jp

Health and Hygiene

Although we do not like to dwell upon the event which may call for medical attention we must recognize the fact that there are times when a knowledge of first aid and adequate equipment are very valuable assets

Polyunsaturated fatty acids in tumour-induced cachexia

A transplantable murine colon adenocarcinoma (MAC16) was utilised as a model of human cancer cachexia. This tumour has been found to produce extensive weight loss, characterised by depletion of host body protein and lipid stores at a small tumour burden. This weight loss has been found to be associated with production by the tumour of a lipolytic factor, activity of which was inhibited in vitro by the polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA). EPA has also been shown to possess anti-tumour and anti-cachectic activity in vivo, leading to the hypothesis that fatty acids mobilised by the lipolytic factor supply a growth requirement of the MAC16 tumour. In this study mobilisation and sequestration of fatty acids by the tumour was found to be non-specific, although a relationship between weight loss and arachidonic acid (AA) concentration was found in both tumour-bearing mice, and human cancer patients. The anti-tumour effect of EPA, which was found to be associated with an increase in cell loss, but not its anti-cachectic activity, was reversed by the administration of the PUFAs oleic acid (OA) and linoleic acid (LA). LA was also found to be capable of stimulating tumour growth. Inhibition of either the cyclooxygenase or lipoxygenase pathways was found to result in reduction of tumour growth, leading to the implication of one of the metabolites of LA or AA in tumour growth and cachexia. The ethyl ester of EPA was found to be inactive against the growth and cachexia of the MAC16 tumour, due to its retarded uptake compared with the free acid. The anti-proliferative agent 5-fluorouracil was found to cause tumour growth inhibition, and when given in combination with EPA, reduced the phase of tumour regrowth observed after 4 to 5 days of treatment with EPA