The Mother-Suckling-Child Principle of the Gift in Indigenous North American Cuture

L’auteure se rappelle ses premiers contacts avec l’économie du don, la recherche des écrits de Geneviève Vaughan et sa première incursion dans les études matriarcales. Sa recherche a mis l’accent sur l’adéquation de l’allaitement et le don de soi, et les moeurs culturelles à la base des structures qui gèrent l’économie du don chez les autochtones de l’Amérique qui contrastent avec le paradigme en l’Europe, celui de « la loi du pouvoir ». Cet article considère plusieurs incidents historiques entre les Européens et les autochtones qui démontrent la différence fondamentale entre ces peuples et qui a résulté dans une exploitation soutenue du don autochtone et la trahison entre les alliances. L’auteure a conclu en affirmant que le symbolisme de la mère qui allaite est une évidence dans les cérémonies rituelles des autochtones

Managing Uncertainty During Organization Design Decision-Making Processes: The Moderating Effects of Different Types of Uncertainty

Uncertainty about one's job or work environment is a common and aversive experience that organizational members typically seek to reduce or manage. This study investigates whether different types of uncertainty - informational uncertainty (i.e., not having sufficient information to confidently form social judgments) and standing uncertainty (i.e., instability in one's perception of positive regard from relevant others) - are qualitatively distinct. The study also examines whether both types of uncertainty are heightened by ongoing organizational factors (i.e., organization role and tenure) as well as temporary factors (i.e., affiliation with a division undergoing redesign). Implementing fair processes and procedures may be an effective way for organizational leaders to help organizational members address their uncertainty. Uncertainty has been shown to moderate the "fair process effect," such that the positive effect of higher process fairness (i.e., procedural, informational, and interpersonal fairness) on organizational members' attitudes is stronger when uncertainty is higher. Specifically, people's uncertainty about their standing in an organization has been shown to moderate the "process-outcome interaction effect," such that the positive effect of the interaction between higher process fairness and lower outcome fairness on organizational members' attitudes is stronger when uncertainty is higher. This study investigates whether informational uncertainty, like standing uncertainty, moderates the fair process effect and the process-outcome interaction effect. Study hypotheses were tested through a longitudinal field research design that utilized web-based questionnaires involving responses from 500 students, faculty, and administrators of an urban university undergoing an organization redesign effort. Both ongoing and temporary organizational factors were found to significantly reduce rather than heighten uncertainty, which was the opposite of what was predicted. Higher informational and standing uncertainty were found to enhance the positive effect of process fairness on organizational members' attitudes as predicted. But lower informational and standing uncertainty were also found to enhance the positive effect of process fairness on organizational members' attitudes, which was the opposite of what was predicted. Lower informational uncertainty, but not standing uncertainty, was found to enhance the positive effect of higher process fairness and lower outcome favorability on organizational members' attitudes, which was the opposite of what was predicted

Using genetic and genomic approaches to understand haematopoietic cellular biology and dysregulation in disease

Genetic and genomic approaches have revolutionised the way we address disease aetiology, potential treatment and methods to understand fundamental biology. Many different approaches can be applied to attempt to resolve the mechanisms through which sequence variation disrupts downstream biological processes, which I discuss and apply in this thesis. Specifically, I use tractable haematopoietic cellular systems focusing mainly on neutrophils but also extending these analyses to monocytes and naïve CD4+ cells. First, I introduce the fundamental principles of human genetic variation and associated challenges in resolving functional mechanisms. I then discuss how immune functions are dysregulated in classical autoimmune diseases and emerging evidence for the role of these cells in complex disorders not previously considered immune-mediated. I then integrate molecular phenotypes from resting monocytes, neutrophils and CD4+ T cells with disease-risk loci. Molecular data have the advantage of enabling measurement in larger cohorts and have therefore been used in quantitative trait loci studies to identify variants influencing processes such as gene expression, histone modification or splicing. Using these data, I map molecular mechanisms acting at risk loci associated with a range of complex disorders. Following this, I highlight recent efforts in applying systematic genome-wide association approaches to cellular and functional traits, many of which can represent intermediate processes disrupted by complex disease. I then apply such approaches to novel neutrophil functional phenotypes to ascertain whether such population-based approaches can be used to gain insight into neutrophil biology. Finally, I discuss studies of haematological blood cell count traits and immunophenotyping and apply a targeted recall-by-genotype study to dissect the relationship between these traits, specifically neutrophil count and surface receptor expression. In summary, I demonstrate how describing biological mechanisms of genetic variants requires the integration of multiple and complementary datasets and offers insight into fundamental biology, disease risk and therapeutic utility.Funding supplied by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Wellcome Trus

P-67: Dose response antihypertensive efficacy of aliskiren (SPP 100), an orally active renin inhibitor

Aliskiren (SPP 100), an orally active renin inhibitor, has been shown to inhibit the production of angiotensin I and angiotensin II in healthy volunteers. In a pilot study, aliskiren decreased BP in hypertensive patients at daily doses of 75 and 150 mg. In this multi-centre, double-blind, active comparator trial, the dose-dependent effects of aliskiren were evaluated in 226 patients with mild to moderate hypertension. Parallel groups of randomized patients were assessed at the end of a washout period and again after a 4-week treatment period. Treatment consisted of single oral daily doses of aliskiren (37.5, 75, 150 or 300 mg) or of losartan 100 mg once daily. Daytime ambulatory systolic BP was defined as the primary variable of the study. As illustrated in the figure, a clear dose-response curve was observed for the decrease (mean +/- SEM) in daytime ambulatory systolic BP. The mean (SD) change at the end of the 4-week treatment period was -1.3 (9.5) mmHg, -5.5 (10.6) mmHg, -8.5 (10.4) mmHg, -10.5 (10.7) mmHg, and -11.1 (13.4) mmHg for 37.5, 75, 150, and 300 mg aliskiren and 100mg losartan, respectively. Statistically significant lowering occurred with 75, 150 and 300 mg of aliskiren. The daytime ambulatory systolic BP responses to aliskiren doses of 150 and 300 mg were not significantly different from that of 100 mg losartan. Similar results were shown for daytime ambulatory diastolic BP and for night-time ambulatory systolic and diastolic BP. Aliskiren was well tolerated - there was no increase in the number of adverse events with increasing doses of aliskiren, and the safety profile of aliskiren was similar to that of losartan. The results of this dose-ranging study confirm a dose-dependent reduction in BP with aliskiren in mild to moderate hypertension. Additional exploratory studies testing the efficacy and safety of this new renin inhibitor in patients with renal disease and congestive heart failure are currently underwa

Differences in Startle and Prepulse Inhibition in Contactin-associated Protein-like 2 Knock-out Rats are Associated with Sex-specific Alterations in Brainstem Neural Activity

The contactin-associated protein-like 2 (CNTNAP2) gene encodes for the CASPR2 protein, which plays an essential role in neurodevelopment. Mutations in CNTNAP2 are associated with neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia. Rats with a loss of function mutation in the Cntnap2 gene show increased acoustic startle response (ASR) and decreased prepulse inhibition (PPI). The neural basis of this altered auditory processing in Cntnap2 knock-out rats is currently unknown. Auditory brainstem recordings previously revealed no differences between the genotypes. The next step is to investigate brainstem structures outside of the primary auditory pathway that mediate ASR and PPI, which are the pontine reticular nucleus (PnC) and pedunculopontine tegmentum (PPTg), respectively. Multi-unit responses from the PnC and PPTg in vivo of the same rats revealed sex-specific effects of loss of CASPR2 expression on PnC activity, but no effects on PPTg activity. Female Cntnap

Black strings in AdS_5

We present non-extremal magnetic black string solutions in five-dimensional gauged supergravity. The conformal infinity is the product of time and S^1xS_h, where S_h denotes a compact Riemann surface of genus h. The construction is based on both analytical and numerical techniques. We compute the holographic stress tensor, the Euclidean action and the conserved charges of the solutions and show that the latter satisfy a Smarr-type formula. The phase structure is determined in the canonical ensemble, and it is shown that there is a first order phase transition from small to large black strings, which disappears above a certain critical magnetic charge that is obtained numerically. For another particular value of the magnetic charge, that corresponds to a twisting of the dual super Yang-Mills theory, the conformal anomalies coming from the background curvature and those arising from the coupling to external gauge fields exactly cancel. We also obtain supersymmetric solutions describing waves propagating on extremal BPS magnetic black strings, and show that they possess a Siklos-Virasoro reparametrization invariance.Comment: 40 pages, 7 figures, JHEP3. v2: minor corrections, 2 references added. v3: typos in holographic stress tensor corrected, 3 references adde

Health Vulnerability Model for Latinx Sexual and Gender Minorities: Typologies with Socioeconomic Stability, Health Care Access, and Social Characteristics Indicators

Vulnerability can undermine positive health outcomes and challenge healthcare services access. However, to date, vulnerable populations research has been limited by overly broad definitions, lack of clear indicators, and failure to explore subtypes of vulnerability. Informed by literature and theory, this analysis used a specific operationalization of health vulnerability to identify typologies among a sample of Latinx sexual and gender minorities. We analyzed baseline data from Latinx sexual and gender minorities (N = 186) recruited for a community-based HIV intervention. We performed latent class analysis to operationalize vulnerability using eight socioeconomic stability, health care access, and social characteristics indicators. We identified three typologies of vulnerability from our sample: Low Education and High Social Support (63.4% of sample), High Education and Year-round Employment (18.8%), and High Education and High Discrimination (17.7%). Using specific indicators produced more nuanced vulnerability typologies which, after further testing, can assist in informing tailored health promotion interventions

Rationale, design, and implementation protocol of an electronic health record integrated clinical prediction rule (iCPR) randomized trial in primary care

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Clinical prediction rules (CPRs) represent well-validated but underutilized evidence-based medicine tools at the point-of-care. To date, an inability to integrate these rules into an electronic health record (EHR) has been a major limitation and we are not aware of a study demonstrating the use of CPR's in an ambulatory EHR setting. The integrated clinical prediction rule (iCPR) trial integrates two CPR's in an EHR and assesses both the usability and the effect on evidence-based practice in the primary care setting.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A multi-disciplinary design team was assembled to develop a prototype iCPR for validated streptococcal pharyngitis and bacterial pneumonia CPRs. The iCPR tool was built as an active Clinical Decision Support (CDS) tool that can be triggered by user action during typical workflow. Using the EHR CDS toolkit, the iCPR risk score calculator was linked to tailored ordered sets, documentation, and patient instructions. The team subsequently conducted two levels of 'real world' usability testing with eight providers per group. Usability data were used to refine and create a production tool. Participating primary care providers (n = 149) were randomized and intervention providers were trained in the use of the new iCPR tool. Rates of iCPR tool triggering in the intervention and control (simulated) groups are monitored and subsequent use of the various components of the iCPR tool among intervention encounters is also tracked. The primary outcome is the difference in antibiotic prescribing rates (strep and pneumonia iCPR's encounters) and chest x-rays (pneumonia iCPR only) between intervention and control providers.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>Using iterative usability testing and development paired with provider training, the iCPR CDS tool leverages user-centered design principles to overcome pervasive underutilization of EBM and support evidence-based practice at the point-of-care. The ongoing trial will determine if this collaborative process will lead to higher rates of utilization and EBM guided use of antibiotics and chest x-ray's in primary care.</p> <p>Trial Registration</p> <p>ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier <a href="http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01386047">NCT01386047</a></p