Perspectives on Adoption from Christian Adoptive Parents: A Qualitative Study

Although adoption has long been studied, the rising current evangelical trend of adopting has brought about a new series of questions, mostly pertaining to, “What is it like to be a Christian adoptive parent?” The research goals were to understand how faith motivates one’s decision to adopt and the assimilation of the adopted child into the family, to examine the parallels between theological adoption and human experience adoption, and to see if parents have a qualitatively different kind of bonding or affection for their biological and adoptive children. This qualitative research study was conducted through semi-structured interviews with practicing Christians who have both biological and adopted children. Several major themes emerged from these qualitative interviews, some of which pertain to: the theological or spiritual reasons for adoption, a more concrete understand of theological constructs, the importance of names, and “adoption legacy.

Global Protection and the Health Impact of Migration Interception

In the fourth article in a six-part PLoS Medicine series on Migration & Health, Zachary Steel and colleagues discuss the interception phase of migration and the specific health risks and policy needs associated with this phase

Customer emotions in service failure and recovery encounters

Emotions play a significant role in the workplace, and considerable attention has been given to the study of employee emotions. Customers also play a central function in organizations, but much less is known about customer emotions. This chapter reviews the growing literature on customer emotions in employee–customer interfaces with a focus on service failure and recovery encounters, where emotions are heightened. It highlights emerging themes and key findings, addresses the measurement, modeling, and management of customer emotions, and identifies future research streams. Attention is given to emotional contagion, relationships between affective and cognitive processes, customer anger, customer rage, and individual differences

Highlights From the Annual Meeting of the American Epilepsy Society 2022

With more than 6000 attendees between in-person and virtual offerings, the American Epilepsy Society Meeting 2022 in Nashville, felt as busy as in prepandemic times. An ever-growing number of physicians, scientists, and allied health professionals gathered to learn a variety of topics about epilepsy. The program was carefully tailored to meet the needs of professionals with different interests and career stages. This article summarizes the different symposia presented at the meeting. Basic science lectures addressed the primary elements of seizure generation and pathophysiology of epilepsy in different disease states. Scientists congregated to learn about anti-seizure medications, mechanisms of action, and new tools to treat epilepsy including surgery and neurostimulation. Some symposia were also dedicated to discuss epilepsy comorbidities and practical issues regarding epilepsy care. An increasing number of patient advocates discussing their stories were intertwined within scientific activities. Many smaller group sessions targeted more specific topics to encourage member participation, including Special Interest Groups, Investigator, and Skills Workshops. Special lectures included the renown Hoyer and Lombroso, an ILAE/IBE joint session, a spotlight on the impact of Dobbs v. Jackson on reproductive health in epilepsy, and a joint session with the NAEC on coding and reimbursement policies. The hot topics symposium was focused on traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic epilepsy. A balanced collaboration with the industry allowed presentations of the latest pharmaceutical and engineering advances in satellite symposia

Iron Behaving Badly: Inappropriate Iron Chelation as a Major Contributor to the Aetiology of Vascular and Other Progressive Inflammatory and Degenerative Diseases

The production of peroxide and superoxide is an inevitable consequence of aerobic metabolism, and while these particular "reactive oxygen species" (ROSs) can exhibit a number of biological effects, they are not of themselves excessively reactive and thus they are not especially damaging at physiological concentrations. However, their reactions with poorly liganded iron species can lead to the catalytic production of the very reactive and dangerous hydroxyl radical, which is exceptionally damaging, and a major cause of chronic inflammation. We review the considerable and wide-ranging evidence for the involvement of this combination of (su)peroxide and poorly liganded iron in a large number of physiological and indeed pathological processes and inflammatory disorders, especially those involving the progressive degradation of cellular and organismal performance. These diseases share a great many similarities and thus might be considered to have a common cause (i.e. iron-catalysed free radical and especially hydroxyl radical generation). The studies reviewed include those focused on a series of cardiovascular, metabolic and neurological diseases, where iron can be found at the sites of plaques and lesions, as well as studies showing the significance of iron to aging and longevity. The effective chelation of iron by natural or synthetic ligands is thus of major physiological (and potentially therapeutic) importance. As systems properties, we need to recognise that physiological observables have multiple molecular causes, and studying them in isolation leads to inconsistent patterns of apparent causality when it is the simultaneous combination of multiple factors that is responsible. This explains, for instance, the decidedly mixed effects of antioxidants that have been observed, etc...Comment: 159 pages, including 9 Figs and 2184 reference

New infant cranium from the African Miocene sheds light on ape evolution

The evolutionary history of extant hominoids (humans and apes) remains poorly understood. The African fossil record during the crucial time period, the Miocene epoch, largely comprises isolated jaws and teeth, and little is known about ape cranial evolution. Here we report on the, to our knowledge, most complete fossil ape cranium yet described, recovered from the 13 million-year-old Middle Miocene site of Napudet, Kenya. The infant specimen, KNM-NP 59050, is assigned to a new species of Nyanzapithecus on the basis of its unerupted permanent teeth, visualized by synchrotron imaging. Its ear canal has a fully ossified tubular ectotympanic, a derived feature linking the species with crown catarrhines. Although it resembles some hylobatids in aspects of its morphology and dental development, it possesses no definitive hylobatid synapomorphies. The combined evidence suggests that nyanzapithecines were stem hominoids close to the origin of extant apes, and that hylobatid-like facial features evolved multiple times during catarrhine evolution

SELF-FORGIVENESS AND SUICIDE RISK IN VETERANS: EXAMINING SERIAL LINKAGES OF SHAME AND INTERPERSONAL NEEDS

Veterans in America are at 22% increased risk for suicide compared to the general population, perhaps due to military experiences (e.g., killing another person) that contribute to maladaptive cognitive-emotional functioning, including feelings of self-blame. A lack of self-forgiveness may maintain feelings of shame, conceptualized as humiliation or distress following perception of having behaved wrongly, which may, further, deleteriously impact interpersonal functioning, increasing suicide risk. Shame may lead an individual to withdraw from others, resulting in thwarted belongingness (i.e., a perception of a lack of membership with a group), and may contribute to feeling like a burden (i.e., a perception of being taxing or restrictive to others), both of which are known predictors of suicide. The ability to forgive the self, however, may reduce feelings of shame and, in turn, improve interpersonal functioning and suicide risk; yet, this model has not been previously tested. At the bivariate level, we hypothesized that shame, perceived burdensomeness, thwarted belongingness, and suicide risk would all be positively related, and that they would all be inversely related to self-forgiveness. At the multivariate level, we tested two serial mediation models, hypothesizing that the relation between self-forgiveness and suicide risk would be mediated by shame (1st order) and perceived burdensomeness/thwarted belongingness (2nd order), such that lower levels of self-forgiveness would be associated with greater perceptions of shame and, in turn, to greater perceptions of burdensomeness and thwarted belongingness, and consequent greater suicide risk. Participants (N=551; Mean Age=50.4, SD=16.6) were recruited via online invitations distributed to veteran social media groups and were predominantly male (n=382, 69.3%) and White (n=469, 85.1%). Participants completed Fetzer’s Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness and Spirituality (BMMRS), the Differential Emotions Scale (DES-IV), the Interpersonal Needs Questionnaire (INQ), and the Suicide Behaviors Questionnaire – Revised (SBQR). Bivariate correlations and multivariate analyses were conducted via the SPSS PROCESS macro (Hayes, 2013), covarying age, race, and sex, and utilizing a 10,000 bootstrapping sample. All bivariate hypotheses were supported at the pβ=.102, p=.437) when shame and perceived burdensomeness were added to the model (β=.642, pβ=.048, p=.733) when shame and thwarted belongingness were added to the model (β=.630,