Dissociation and pain perception : an experimental investigation

textDissociative symptoms and abnormalities in pain perception have been associated with a range of disorders. We tested whether experimentally induced increases in state dissociation would cause an analgesic response, and whether this effect would be moderated by participants' history of trauma and dissociative experiences. Participants (n=120) were classified based on their histories of traumatic and dissociative experiences: No trauma or dissociation (NN), trauma without dissociation (TN), or trauma with dissociation (TD). All participants were randomized to a dissociation induction condition via audiophotic stimulation or a credible control condition and were compared on prepost changes in subjective pain and pain tolerance in response to a standard cold-pressor test. Unexpectedly, dissociation induction did not lead to greater pain tolerance or reduced self-reported pain. However, increases in state dissociation significantly predicted increased immersion time and decreased subjective pain.Psycholog

The effects of emotional acceptance and suppression upon emotional processing in exposure treatment of claustrophobia

textRecent investigations have suggested that the use of emotion-avoidance or emotion- suppression strategies to cope with anxiety contributes to the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders, and that substituting these strategies with emotional acceptance can lead to effective symptom reduction. We wished to consider whether attempts to suppress the negative emotions associated with exposure therapy would serve to impede emotional processing and symptom reduction, and conversely, whether acceptance of these emotions would augment treatment efficacy. Fifty-nine participants displaying marked claustrophobic fear were assigned to receive 30 minutes of exposure (enclosure in a small chamber) while receiving, A) instructions to accept and allow the experience of unpleasant emotions (ACC), B) instructions to control and suppress the experience of unpleasant emotions (SUP), or C) no instructions regarding emotion regulation (exposure only; EO). Outcome assessments were conducted prior to treatment, immediately following treatment, and at one-month follow-up, and included fear and heart rate reactivity in response to a behavioral approach test. We predicted that ACC participants would display greater reductions in claustrophobic fear than EO participants, and that EO participants would in turn display greater reductions in claustrophobic fear than SUP participants. These hypotheses were not supported. In addition, a detailed analysis of treatment process data was conducted. Peak fear ratings, claustrophobic threat expectancies, self-efficacy, and acceptance of anxiety were collected over the course of the treatment session, and hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used to produce individual growth curves for these variables. Three hypotheses were formulated: 1) ACC participants would display a more rapid improvement in these measures than SUP and EO participants, 2) threat expectancies, self-efficacy and anxiety would mediate reductions in fear over the course of treatment, and 3) mediational pathways would be moderated by treatment condition. Though no support was found for our first process hypothesis, treatment specific mediation was found. Among ACC participants, self-efficacy and suffocation expectancies mediated the session-fear relationship, and among EO participants, entrapment expectancies mediated this relationship. Among SUP participants, no significant mediators were identified.Psycholog

Targeted and all-sky search for nanosecond optical pulses at Harvard-Smithsonian

We have built a system to detect nanosecond pulsed optical signals from a target list of some 10,000 sun-like stars, and have made some 20,000 observations during its two years of operation. A beamsplitter feeds a pair of hybrid avalanche photodetectors at the focal plane of the 1.5m Cassegrain at the Harvard/Smithsonian Oak Ridge Observatory (Agassiz Station), with a coincidence triggering measurement of pulse width and intensity at sub-nanosecond resolution. A flexible web-enabled database, combined with mercifully low background coincidence rates (approximately 1 event per night), makes it easy to sort through far-flung data in search of repeated events from any candidate star. An identical system will soon begin observations, synchronized with ours, at the 0.9m Cassegrain at Princeton University. These will permit unambiguous identification of even a solitary pulse. We are planning an all-sky search for optical pulses, using a dedicated 1.8m f/2.4 spherical glass light bucket and an array of pixelated photomultipliers deployed in a pair of matched focal planes. The sky pixels, 1.5 arcmin square, tessellate a 1.6 by 0.2 degree patch of sky in transit mode, covering the Northern sky in approximately 150 clear nights. Fast custom IC electronics will monitor corresponding pixels for coincident optical pulses of nanosecond timescale, triggering storage of a digitized waveform of the light flash

Search for Nanosecond Optical Pulses from Nearby Solar‐Type Stars

With "Earth 2000" technology we could generate a directed laser pulse that outshines the broadband visible light of the Sun by 4 orders of magnitude. This is a conservative lower bound for the technical capability of a communicating civilization; optical interstellar communication is thus technically plausible. We have built a pair of systems to detect nanosecond pulsed optical signals from a target list that includes some 13,000 Sun-like stars, and we have made some 16,000 observations totaling nearly 2400 hr during five years of operation. A beam splitter-fed pair of hybrid avalanche photodetectors at the 1.5 m Wyeth Telescope at the Harvard/Smithsonian Oak Ridge Observatory (Agassiz Station) triggers on a coincident pulse pair, initiating measurement of pulse width and intensity at subnanosecond resolution. An identical system at the 0.9 m Cassegrain at Princeton's Fitz-Randolph Observatory performs synchronized observations with 0.1 μs event timing, permitting unambiguous identification of even a solitary pulse. Among the 11,600 artifact-free observations at Harvard, the distribution of 274 observed events shows no pattern of repetition, and is consistent with a model with uniform event rate, independent of target. With one possible exception (HIP 107395), no valid event has been seen simultaneously at the two observatories. We describe the search and candidate events and set limits on the prevalence of civilizations transmitting intense optical pulses

Discrete and continuum third quantization of Gravity

We give a brief introduction to matrix models and the group field theory (GFT) formalism as realizations of the idea of a third quantization of gravity, and present in some more detail the idea and basic features of a continuum third quantization formalism in terms of a field theory on the space of connections, building up on the results of loop quantum gravity that allow to make the idea slightly more concrete. We explore to what extent one can rigorously define such a field theory. Concrete examples are given for the simple case of Riemannian GR in 3 spacetime dimensions. We discuss the relation between GFT and this formal continuum third quantized gravity, and what it can teach us about the continuum limit of GFTs.Comment: 21 pages, 5 eps figures; submitted as a contribution to the proceedings of the conference "Quantum Field Theory and Gravity Conference Regensburg 2010" (28 September - 1 October 2010, Regensburg/Bavaria); v2: preprint number include

Winning Peace Frames: Intra-Ethnic Outbidding in Northern Ireland and Cyprus

Ethnic outbidding in divided societies can have dire political consequences, ranging from the derailment of peace processes to inter-ethnic warfare. This article investigates the conditions contributing to successful outbidding within the framework of protracted peace negotiations by using the contrasting cases of Northern Ireland and Cyprus. Evidence demonstrates that successful outbidders are able to exploit the fears of their communities with respect to inter-ethnic compromise while identifying appropriate strategies and opportunities for redressing these grievances. The article demonstrates that the degree of outbidding success over the long term derives from combining diagnostic and prognostic frames linked to credible political and constitutional strategies

Diasporic Security and Jewish Identity

This paper explores the relationship between identity and security through an investigation into Jewish diasporic identity. The paper argues that the convention of treating identity as an objective referent of security is problematic, as the Jewish diaspora experience demonstrates. The paper presents a new way of conceptualizing identity and security by introducing the concept of diasporic security. Diasporic security reflects the geographical experience of being a member of a trans-state community, of having a fluid identity that is shaped by sometimes contradictory discourses emanating from a community that resides both at home and abroad. In introducing the concept of diasporic security, the paper makes use of literature in Diaspora Studies, Security Studies, recent works in contemporary political theory and sociology, and Woody Allen's film, Deconstructing Harry (1997)

Rassenschande, genocide and the reproductive Jewish body: examining the use of rape and sexualized violence against Jewish women during the Holocaust

Rape and sexual violence against Jewish women is a relatively unexplored area of investigation. This article adds to the scant literature on this topic. It asks: how and why did women's reproductive bodies (gender), combined with their status as Jews (race), make them particularly vulnerable during the Holocaust? The law against Rassenschande (racial defilement) prohibited sexual relations between Aryans and non-Aryans. Yet, Jewish women were raped by German men. Providing a more nuanced account than is provided by the dehumanization thesis, this article argues that women were targeted precisely because of their Jewishness and their reproductive capabilities. In addition, this piece proposes that the genocidal attack on women's bodies in the form of rape (subsequently leading to the murder of impregnated women) and sexualized violence (forced abortions and forced sterilizations) must be interpreted as an attack on an essentialized group: woman-as-Jew

Monetary benefits of preventing childhood lead poisoning with lead-safe window replacement

Previous estimates of childhood lead poisoning prevention benefits have quantified the present value of some health benefits, but not the costs of lead paint hazard control or the benefits associated with housing and energy markets. Because older housing with lead paint constitutes the main exposure source today in the U.S., we quantify health benefits, costs, market value benefits, energy savings, and net economic benefits of lead-safe window replacement (which includes paint stabilization and other measures). The benefit per resident child from improved lifetime earnings alone is $21,195 in pre-1940 housing and$8,685 in 1940-59 housing (in 2005 dollars). Annual energy savings are $130 to$486 per housing unit, with or without young resident children, with an associated increase in housing market value of $5,900 to$14,300 per housing unit, depending on home size and number of windows replaced. Net benefits are $4,490 to$5,629 for each housing unit built before 1940, and $491 to$1,629 for each unit built from 1940-1959, depending on home size and number of windows replaced. Lead-safe window replacement in all pre-1960 U.S. housing would yield net benefits of at least $67 billion, which does not include many other benefits. These other benefits, which are shown in this paper, include avoided Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, other medical costs of childhood lead exposure, avoided special education, and reduced crime and juvenile delinquency in later life. In addition, such a window replacement effort would reduce peak demand for electricity, carbon emissions from power plants, and associated long-term costs of climate change

Pan-Cancer Analysis of lncRNA Regulation Supports Their Targeting of Cancer Genes in Each Tumor Context

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are commonly dys-regulated in tumors, but only a handful are known toplay pathophysiological roles in cancer. We inferredlncRNAs that dysregulate cancer pathways, onco-genes, and tumor suppressors (cancer genes) bymodeling their effects on the activity of transcriptionfactors, RNA-binding proteins, and microRNAs in5,185 TCGA tumors and 1,019 ENCODE assays.Our predictions included hundreds of candidateonco- and tumor-suppressor lncRNAs (cancerlncRNAs) whose somatic alterations account for thedysregulation of dozens of cancer genes and path-ways in each of 14 tumor contexts. To demonstrateproof of concept, we showed that perturbations tar-geting OIP5-AS1 (an inferred tumor suppressor) andTUG1 and WT1-AS (inferred onco-lncRNAs) dysre-gulated cancer genes and altered proliferation ofbreast and gynecologic cancer cells. Our analysis in-dicates that, although most lncRNAs are dysregu-lated in a tumor-specific manner, some, includingOIP5-AS1, TUG1, NEAT1, MEG3, and TSIX, synergis-tically dysregulate cancer pathways in multiple tumorcontexts