When wanting to change is not enough: automatic appetitive processes moderate the effects of a brief alcohol intervention in hazardous-drinking college students.

BACKGROUND: Research indicates that brief motivational interventions are efficacious treatments for hazardous drinking. Little is known, however, about the psychological processes that may moderate intervention success. Based on growing evidence that drinking behavior may be influenced by automatic (nonvolitional) mental processes, the current study examined whether automatic alcohol-approach associations moderated the effect of a brief motivational intervention. Specifically, we examined whether the efficacy of a single-session intervention designed to increase motivation to reduce alcohol consumption would be moderated by the strength of participants' automatic alcohol-approach associations. METHODS: Eighty-seven undergraduate hazardous drinkers participated for course credit. Participants completed an Implicit Association Test to measure automatic alcohol-approach associations, a baseline measure of readiness to change drinking behavior, and measures of alcohol involvement. Participants were then randomly assigned to either a brief (15-minute) motivational intervention or a control condition. Participants completed a measure of readiness to change drinking at the end of the first session and returned for a follow-up session six weeks later in which they reported on their drinking over the previous month. RESULTS: Compared with the control group, those in the intervention condition showed higher readiness to change drinking at the end of the baseline session but did not show decreased drinking quantity at follow-up. Automatic alcohol-approach associations moderated the effects of the intervention on change in drinking quantity. Among participants in the intervention group, those with weak automatic alcohol-approach associations showed greater reductions in the amount of alcohol consumed per occasion at follow-up compared with those with strong automatic alcohol-approach associations. Automatic appetitive associations with alcohol were not related with change in amount of alcohol consumed per occasion in control participants. Furthermore, among participants who showed higher readiness to change, those who exhibited weaker alcohol-approach associations showed greater reductions in drinking quantity compared with those who exhibited stronger alcohol-approach associations. CONCLUSIONS: The results support the idea that automatic mental processes may moderate the influence of brief motivational interventions on quantity of alcohol consumed per drinking occasion. The findings suggest that intervention efficacy may be improved by utilizing implicit measures to identify those who may be responsive to brief interventions and by developing intervention elements to address the influence of automatic processes on drinking behavior.Published versio

Presumable sources of "Mariage d’Ibrāhīm", "Mariage d’Isḥāq" and "Muḫāriq" stories

Ibrāhīm ibn al-Mahdī, famous musician, is a main character of a great number of aḫbar in medieval Arabic literature. One of them tells about his adventure as an uninvited guest, who enters merchant’s house attracted by a beautiful girl. Victor Chauvin entitled this story "Mariage d’Ibrāhīm" and similarly its version in which Isḥāq ibn Ibrāhīm al-Mawṣilī plays a key role - "Mariage d’Isḥaq". The story and its versions are widespread in a dozen or so works which were produced within over seven hundred years. The earliest account is preserved in Ibn cAbd Rabbihi’s Al-Iqd al-farīd. The aim of this research is to try to indicate the probable source aḫbār which inspired medieval Arabic transmitters and story-tellers to create the account

Yāqūt’s sources on the Slavs included in his "Mu'ğam al-Buldān"

Wybitny arabski uczony z XIII wieku Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī, skompilował swój znany słownik geograficzny– Mu'ğam al-Buldān – wykorzystując niezwykle obszerny korpus źródłowy, który umożliwił mu gruntowne opisanie ziem leżących zarówno w obrębie islamu jak i poza jego wpływem. Celem artykułu jest zidentyfikowanie źródeł autora, które wykorzystał omawiając kwestie dotyczące Słowian i tych ziem i ludów, które były przez arabskich geografów uważane za słowiańskie ze Słowiańszczyzną powiązane. Z jednej strony rzuci to światło na stan wiedzy na temat tych zagadnień w wśród mieszkańców kalifatu XIII wieku, z drugiej analiza źródeł i metod zastosowanych przez Yāqūta do stworzenia słownika pozwoli określić cel i rolę, jaką miał odgrywać wśród potencjalnych czytelników.The great 13th century scholar Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī, compiled his well-known geographical dictionary – Mu'ğam al-Buldān – using an incredibly vast corpus of sources that allowed him to describe the lands lying beyond the realm of Islam. The aim of this paper is to identify the sources he used to describe issues dealing with the Slavs or those peoples and areas thought by Arab writers to belong to or be connected with the Slavs. The results shed some light on the state of knowledge of this area among 13th century inhabitants of the caliphate. At the same time, the author’s analysis of the methods employed to compose the material on the Slavs that appears in the Dictionary helped determine the aim and the role of this work in the caliphate

Potential for Revenue Capture for Local Public Health: An Examination of Private Insurance Claims Data 2010-2014

In response to changes in the local public health system driven by budget cuts, funding requirements, and increased costs of providing clinical and preventive services, local health departments (LHDs) are increasingly billing third party payers to generate revenue. Survey and interview data from the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) indicate that 90% of LHDs bill third-party payers. Although systems are set up to bill public insurance such as Medicaid and Medicare, there is a paucity of information on billing commercial insurance. This study contributes to understanding the current billing landscape for local public health. A retrospective examination of private insurance data for a five-year period indicates a 123% increase in reimbursement to health departments and an 11% increase in out of pocket costs to clients. Regional variations show that clients in the Northeast paid more out of pocket compared to other U.S. regions. Additionally, reimbursements to health departments were higher in Medicaid expansion vs. non-expansion states

Monitoring the synthesis and composition analysis of microsilica encapsulated acetylacetonatocarbonyl triphenylphosphinerhodium catalyst by inductively coupled plasma (ICP) techniques

Journal ArticleAbstract-A novel technique to monitor the synthesis process of encapsulated acetylacetonatocarbonyl triphenylphosphinerhodium within a microsilica nanoshell has been studied using inductively coupled plasma (ICP) techniques. Nanospheres sized around 50-100 nm were obtained and ICP was used to quantify the exact composition of rhodium, phosphorous, and silicon with differing digestion solvents. In addition, ICP was used to detect rhodium and phosphorous in the nano core-shell catalysts as a quality control procedure. Index Terms-Encapsulation, inductively coupled plasma (ICP), nanotechnology, Rh catalyst, silica nanoshell

Landscape-seascape dynamics in the isthmus between Sørkapp Land and the rest of Spitsbergen : Will a new big Arctic island form?

Transformation of the glaciated isthmus between Sørkapp Land and the rest of Spitsbergen since 1900 is described. The landscape–seascape dynamics depends on the glacial recession determined by climate warming after the Little Ice Age (i.e., since the beginning of the twentieth century, and especially since the 1980s). The isthmus has been narrowed from 28 km in 1899–1900 to 6.2 km in 2013, and lowered by 60–200 m from 1936 to 2005. Two isthmus’ glaciers will have melted, given the current thermic conditions, by 2030–2035. It cannot be ruled out that Sørkapp Land will become an island after that period, because the altitude of the glaciers’ bedrock is close to the sea level. The disappearance of this huge ice mass, even without origin of a sound and island, will lead to a great transformation of the landscape and the ecosystem

Alcohol representations are socially situated: an investigation of beverage representations by using a property generation task

Previous research suggests that people's representations of alcoholic beverages play an important role in drinking behavior. However, relatively little is known about the contents of these representations. Here, we introduce the property generation task as a tool to explore these representations in detail. In a laboratory study (N = 110), and a bar field-study (N = 56), participants listed typical properties of alcoholic beverages, sugary beverages, and water. Each of these properties was then categorized using a previously developed, hierarchical coding scheme. For example, the property “sweet” was categorized as referring to “taste”, which falls under “sensory experience”, which falls under “consumption situation”. Afterwards, participants completed measures of drinking behavior and alcohol craving. Results showed that alcoholic beverages were strongly represented in terms of consumption situations, with 57% and 69% of properties relating to consumption in the laboratory and the bar study, respectively. Specifically, alcoholic beverages were more strongly represented in terms of the social context of consumption (e.g., “with friends”) than the other beverages. In addition, alcoholic beverages were strongly represented in terms of sensory experiences (e.g. “sweet”) and positive outcomes (e.g. “creates fun”), as were the sugary beverages and water. In Study 1, the extent to which alcoholic beverages were represented in terms of social context was positively associated with craving and regularly consuming alcohol. The property generation task provides a useful tool to access people's idiosyncratic representations of alcoholic beverages. This may further our understanding of drinking behavior, and help to tailor research and interventions to reduce drinking of alcoholic and other high-calorie beverages

Combined deletion of mouse dematin-headpiece and ß-adducin exerts a novel effect on the spectrin-actin junctions leading to erythrocyte fragility and hemolytic Anemia

Journal ArticleDematin and adducin are actin-binding proteins of the erythrocyte "junctional complex." Individually, they exert modest effects on erythrocyte shape and membrane stability, and their homologues are expressed widely in non-erythroid cells. Here we report generation and characterization of double knock-out mice lacking β-adducin and the headpiece domain of dematin. The combined mutations result in altered erythrocyte morphology, increased membrane instability, and severe hemolysis. Peripheral blood analysis shows evidence of severe hemolytic anemia with reduced number of erythrocytes/hematocrit/hemoglobin and an ~12-fold increase in the number of circulating reticulocytes. The presence of a variety of misshapen and fragmented erythrocytes correlates with increased osmotic fragility and reduced in vivo life span. Despite the apparently normal protein composition of the mutant erythrocyte membrane, the retention of the spectrin-actin complex in the membrane under low ionic strength conditions is significantly reduced by the double mutation. Atomic force microscopy reveals an increase in grain size and a decrease in filament number of the mutant membrane cytoskeleton, although the volume parameter is similar to wild type erythrocytes. Aggregated, disassembled, and irregular features are visualized in the mutant membrane, consistent with the presence of large protein aggregates. Importantly, purified dematin binds to the stripped inside-out vesicles in a saturable manner, and dematin-membrane binding is abolished upon pretreatment of membrane vesicles with trypsin. Together, these results reveal an essential role of dematin and adducin in the maintenance of erythrocyte shape and membrane stability, and they suggest that the dematin-membrane interaction could link the junctional complex to the plasma membrane in erythroid cells