Health behavior during periods of stressful uncertainty: associations with emotions, cognitions, and expectation management.

Objective: The present study examined how cognitions and emotions characteristic of awaiting uncertain news influenced healthy (diet/exercise) and unhealthy (alcohol use) behaviors in three samples of people awaiting important news.Design: Study 1 examined voting-eligible citizens during the month prior to learning the results of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Study 2 examined the experience of law graduates across four months while they awaited the results of their bar exam (i.e., the licensing exam they need to pass to practice law). Study 3 examined current or recent PhD students searching for a job on the academic job market.Results: Though the findings were somewhat mixed across studies, they generally suggest a relationship between positive emotions and health-promoting behaviors and between worry and alcohol use, with less consistent relationships between outcome expectations and health behaviors.Conclusion: Taken together, these results offer a promising set of initial findings to understand health behavior in the context of awaiting uncertain news and provide a foundation for future investigations on the topic

Bracing Later and Coping Better: Benefits of Mindfulness During a Stressful Waiting Period.

People frequently await uncertain news, yet research reveals that the strategies people naturally use to cope with uncertainty are largely ineffective. We tested the role of mindfulness for improving the experience of a stressful waiting period. Law graduates awaiting their bar exam results either reported their trait mindfulness (Study 1; N = 150) or were instructed to practice mindfulness meditation (Study 2; N = 90). As hypothesized, participants who were naturally more mindful or who practiced mindfulness managed their expectations more effectively by bracing for the worst later in the waiting period and perceived themselves as coping better. Additionally, participants who were low in dispositional optimism and high in intolerance of uncertainty benefited most from mindfulness (relative to control) meditation. These findings point to a simple and effective way to wait better, particularly for those most vulnerable to distress

Outcomes of Physicians' Communication Goals During Patient Interactions.

During healthcare visits, physicians may set communication goals such as providing their patient with information about treatment; however, no recommendations exist regarding which goals physicians should prioritize during their often-brief interactions with patients. Two studies examined five communication goals (providing information, reducing distress, increasing patient satisfaction, increasing patient adherence, and encouraging hope) in the context of physician-patient interactions and their relationship with patient and physician outcomes. In Study 1, audio-recordings of physician-patient interactions were coded by research assistants for goal-related content. In Study 2, patients reported their physician's use of each goal during the interaction. In both studies, patients and physicians reported visit outcomes. Within-study meta-analyses suggested that the goal of reducing distress, but not the other goals, was consistently related to improved outcomes in Study 1. All goals were related to improved outcomes in Study 2. We then computed sample-size-weighted meta-analytic effects of each goal on each outcome across both studies. These results suggested that all of the goals had similar-sized positive relationships with patient and physician outcomes across studies. These findings suggest that physicians should generally approach consultations with communication goals in mind, but prioritizing efforts to reduce distress may be particularly beneficial

Exploring Environmental Justice through Listening: An Environmental Design Case Study in Camden, NJ

This learning module is designed to introduce humanities questions into environmental engineering, planning, technology, and science courses. This module simulates cooperative and interdisciplinary environmental problem solving in an urban, industrial neighborhood which faced environmental injustice in the past. Using a neighborhood case study, students consider the historical context, five different stakeholder perspectives, and environmental justice dimensions of this community as integral to their technical design proposals related to one or more of the following topics: urban park development, waste and stormwater management, brownfield redevelopment and living shorelines. Through exposing students to research data obtained through humanities methods, such as environmental history, community planning, and oral history, this learning module tasks students with twinning social and technical objectives in environmental design and engineering solutions. Active listening activities using audio files are assigned to meaningfully engage students with the lived experiences and perspectives of environmental professionals, government agencies, and community members in the past and present as part of proposing sustainable (future) solutions.https://rdw.rowan.edu/oer/1012/thumbnail.jp

Agricultural Landowners\u27 Lack of Preference for Internet Extension

Extension providers need to improve the communication of watershed conservation practices. In order to determine landowners\u27 communication preference a survey was mailed to a random sample of landowners from four selected watersheds in Michigan. Four hundred three landowners from four agricultural watersheds completed the survey. A majority (77%) expressed support for written communication media, while a minority (19%) supported the Internet. Younger, more educated, more affluent landowners with home Internet access expressed more support for using the Internet. Results suggest that Extension staff need to provide more Internet training and experiences if the Internet is to contribute to watershed conservation

Environments Past: Nostalgia in Environmental Policy and Governance

A variety of factors shape environmental policy & governance (EPG) processes, from perceptions of physical ecology and profit motives to social justice and landscape aesthetics concerns. Many scholars have examined the role of values in EPG, and demonstrated that attempts to incorporate (especially) nonmarket values into EPG are loaded with both practical and conceptual challenges. Nevertheless, it is clear that nonmarket values of all types play a crucial role in shaping EPG outcomes. In this paper, we explore the role of nostalgia as a factor in EPG. We examine literatures on environmental values, governance, and affect in light of their relationships to environmental policymaking, first as a means to decide whether or not nostalgia can be rightly described as an ‘environmental value.’ We suggest that, from a philosophical perspective, nostalgia is by itself environmentally neutral, and is not usefully described as a ‘value’. However, as an emotional state that longs to preserve or recover something of the past – whether fading or no longer present – that is fondly remembered, nostalgia does represent a potentially strong ‘motivator’ for EPG decisions. Despite this somewhat ambivalent assessment of nostalgia-as-environmental-value, we argue that nostalgia and nostalgic longing to return to the ‘better’ or ‘cleaner’ environments can lead to potentially significant impacts on ecosystems and landscapes, both positive and negative depending on what it is that people want to preserve or restore. Thus we conclude that we neglect understanding the role of nostalgia in EPG at our peril: first, because preservationist goals have always been an important part of environmental responsibility and second, because many people will be swayed regarding environmental action through a mobilization of nostalgia by political leaders and interest groups alike. We end our article with suggestion of avenues for further empirical investigation

Spontaneous self-affirmation is associated with psychological well-being: evidence from a US national adult survey sample

Emerging evidence suggests that individuals spontaneously self-affirm, by reflecting on values and strengths, in response to daily threats. We examined the prevalence and demographic and well-being correlates of spontaneous self-affirmation in the general population. Participants (n = 3185) completed the cross-sectional, nationally representative 2013 Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS 4, Cycle 3), and answered questions about spontaneous self-affirmation, demographic factors, well-being, and affect. The majority of the population reported spontaneously self-affirming. Black and Hispanic respondents reported engaging in more spontaneous self-affirmation. Engaging in spontaneous self-affirmation was related to greater happiness, hopefulness, optimism, subjective health, and personal health efficacy, and less anger and sadness

Cranberry Polyphenols in Esophageal Cancer Inhibition: New Insights

Esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC) is a cancer characterized by rapidly rising incidence and poor survival, resulting in the need for new prevention and treatment options. We utilized two cranberry polyphenol extracts, one proanthocyanidin enriched (C-PAC) and a combination of anthocyanins, flavonoids, and glycosides (AFG) to assess inhibitory mechanisms utilizing premalignant Barrett’s esophagus (BE) and EAC derived cell lines. We employed reverse phase protein arrays (RPPA) and Western blots to examine cancer-associated pathways and specific signaling cascades modulated by C-PAC or AFG. Viability results show that C-PAC is more potent than AFG at inducing cell death in BE and EAC cell lines. Based on the RPPA results, C-PAC significantly modulated 37 and 69 proteins in JH-EsoAd1 (JHAD1) and OE19 EAC cells, respectively. AFG treatment significantly altered 49 proteins in both JHAD1 and OE19 cells. Bioinformatic analysis of RPPA results revealed many previously unidentified pathways as modulated by cranberry polyphenols including NOTCH signaling, immune response, and epithelial to mesenchymal transition. Collectively, these results provide new insight regarding mechanisms by which cranberry polyphenols exert cancer inhibitory effects targeting EAC, with implications for potential use of cranberry constituents as cancer preventive agents

The topobiology of chemical elements in seabird feathers

The highly organized morphogenesis of bird feathers holds important phylo- and ontogenetic information on the evolution of birds, organogenesis, tissue regeneration, and the health status of individual animals. Altered topobiological patterns are regularly used as retrospective evidence for disturbed developmental trajectories due to the past exposure to environmental stressors. Using the most advanced high-resolution (5-70 μm) X-ray fluorescence microscopy (XFM), we describe in the feathers from three species of Procellariiformes hitherto unknown, depositions of elements (Zn, Ca, Br, Cu, Fe) that are independent of pigmentation or any underlying variation in density or polymer structure. In the case of Zn, the pattern across several species of Procellariiformes, but not other species, consisted of highly regular bands of Zn numbering 30-32, which may reflect the estimated number of days of active feather growth or the duration of the moult period. Thus, speculatively, the highly consistent Zn pattern might be the result of a so far unknown diurnal systemic regulation rather than local heterogeneity amongst the follicular stem cells