The Relative Contributions of Experiential Avoidance and Distress Tolerance to OC Symptoms

Background: Obsessive beliefs account for substantial (but not all) obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptoms. Intolerance of internal experiences (IIE), which encompasses the constructs of experiential avoidance (EA) and distress tolerance (DT), refers to difficulty managing unwanted thoughts, emotions, and other internal states, and might add to current explanatory models. Although IIE appears to be conceptually relevant to obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptoms, scant research has examined this relationship empirically. Aim: The present study examined the relative contributions of EA and DT as predictors of OC symptom dimensions. Method: A nonclinical sample ( n = 496) completed self-report questionnaires measuring general distress, EA, DT and OC symptom dimensions. Results: All variables of interest were significantly (all p s ≤ .001) correlated with one another, such that higher general distress, higher EA, and lower DT were associated with greater OC symptom severity for all symptom dimensions; however, only EA independently predicted obsessional symptoms, but not other OC symptom dimensions. Conclusions: One's willingness to endure (i.e. EA), rather than their ability to tolerate (i.e. DT) unpleasant internal experiences best predicts obsessional symptoms (i.e. obsessing) above and beyond general distress. Potential implications for understanding, assessing, and treating OC symptoms are discussed

Anxiety sensitivity as a predictor of outcome in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: To address the fact that not all individuals who receive cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) exhibit complete symptom reduction, research has examined factors that predict outcome; however, no studies have examined anxiety sensitivity (AS) as a predictor of outcome of CBT for OCD. AS refers to the fear of anxious arousal that results from mistaken beliefs about the dangerousness of anxiety-related body sensations. It is important to understand whether AS influences OCD treatment outcome, considering that (a) some obsessions directly relate to AS, and (b) OCD patients with high AS may be reluctant to engage in anxiety-provoking components of CBT for OCD. METHODS: Patients (N = 187) with a primary diagnosis of OCD who received residential CBT for OCD participated in this study, which involved completing a self-report battery at pre- and post-treatment. RESULTS: Results supported study hypotheses, in that (a) baseline AS positively correlated with baseline OCD severity, and (b) greater baseline AS prospectively predicted higher posttreatment OCD symptom severity even after controlling for pretreatment OCD and depression severity. LIMITATIONS: The study was limited by its use of an older measure of AS, reliance on self-report measures, and nonstandardized treatment across participants. CONCLUSIONS: Findings highlight the importance of AS in the nature and treatment of OCD. Clinical implications and future directions are discussed

Using landscape history to predict biodiversity patterns in fragmented landscapes

Landscape ecology plays a vital role in understanding the impacts of land-use change on biodiversity, but it is not a predictive discipline, lacking theoretical models that quantitatively predict biodiversity patterns from first principles. Here, we draw heavily on ideas from phylogenetics to fill this gap, basing our approach on the insight that habitat fragments have a shared history. We develop a landscape ‘terrageny’, which represents the historical spatial separation of habitat fragments in the same way that a phylogeny represents evolutionary divergence among species. Combining a random sampling model with a terrageny generates numerical predictions about the expected proportion of species shared between any two fragments, the locations of locally endemic species, and the number of species that have been driven locally extinct. The model predicts that community similarity declines with terragenetic distance, and that local endemics are more likely to be found in terragenetically distinctive fragments than in large fragments. We derive equations to quantify the variance around predictions, and show that ignoring the spatial structure of fragmented landscapes leads to over-estimates of local extinction rates at the landscape scale. We argue that ignoring the shared history of habitat fragments limits our ability to understand biodiversity changes in human-modified landscape

Enhancing the ecological validity of the Beads Task as a behavioral measure of intolerance of uncertainty

To broaden the measurement of intolerance of uncertainty (IU) beyond self-report methods, recent research has examined the Beads Task as a behavioral measure of IU. In the present study, we enhanced this task to increase its ecological validity by maximizing decisional uncertainty and the importance of a correct response. Undergraduate participants (n=102) completed the Beads Task with instructions that they would complete the Cold Pressor Task (CPT) if they answered incorrectly. As hypothesized, baseline CPT endurance time and self-reported pain level were weakly associated with later Beads Task distress during the decision-making process. Furthermore, in vivo Beads Task distress was associated with self-report inhibitory IU, which measures avoidance and paralysis in the face of uncertainty, but not with prospective IU, perfectionism, or general psychological distress after making statistical adjustments for multiple comparisons. Comparisons to previous work using the Beads Task, clinical implications, and avenues for future research are discussed

Five Years of Experimental Warming Increases the Biodiversity and Productivity of Phytoplankton

Phytoplankton are key components of aquatic ecosystems, fixing CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and supporting secondary production, yet relatively little is known about how future global warming might alter their biodiversity and associated ecosystem functioning. Here, we explore how the structure, function, and biodiversity of a planktonic metacommunity was altered after five years of experimental warming. Our outdoor mesocosm experiment was open to natural dispersal from the regional species pool, allowing us to explore the effects of experimental warming in the context of metacommunity dynamics. Warming of 4°C led to a 67% increase in the species richness of the phytoplankton, more evenly-distributed abundance, and higher rates of gross primary productivity. Warming elevated productivity indirectly, by increasing the biodiversity and biomass of the local phytoplankton communities. Warming also systematically shifted the taxonomic and functional trait composition of the phytoplankton, favoring large, colonial, inedible phytoplankton taxa, suggesting stronger top-down control, mediated by zooplankton grazing played an important role. Overall, our findings suggest that temperature can modulate species coexistence, and through such mechanisms, global warming could, in some cases, increase the species richness and productivity of phytoplankton communities

Vaccination with hemagglutinin or neuraminidase DNA protects BALB/c mice against influenza virus infection in presence of maternal antibody

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Maternal antibody is the major form of protection against disease in early life; however, its presence interferes with active immunization of offspring. In order to overcome the immunosuppression caused by maternal antibody, several immune strategies were explored in this paper using mouse model and influenza vaccines.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The results showed that: i) when the offspring were immunized with the same vaccine as their mothers, whether inactivated or DNA vaccine, the presence of maternal antibody inhibited offspring immune response and the offspring could not be protected from a lethal influenza virus infection; ii) when the offspring, born to mothers immunized with inactivated vaccine, were immunized with NA DNA vaccine, the interference of maternal antibody were overcome and the offspring could survive a lethal virus challenge; iii) when the offspring were immunized with different DNA vaccine from that for their mothers, the interference of maternal antibody were also overcome. In addition, high-dose inactivated vaccine in maternal immunization caused partial inhibition in offspring when the offspring were immunized with HA DNA vaccine, while lower dose caused no significant immunosuppression.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>To avoid the interference of maternal antibody in influenza vaccination of offspring, mothers and their offspring shall not be immunized with the same vaccine. If mothers are immunized with inactivated vaccine, NA DNA vaccine for the offspring shall be effective; and if mothers are immunized with HA (NA) DNA, NA (HA) DNA for the offspring shall be effective.</p

A new variance ratio metric to detect the timescale of compensatory dynamics

Understanding the mechanisms governing ecological stability—why a property such as primary productivity is stable in some communities and variable in others—has long been a focus of ecology. Compensatory dynamics, in which anti-synchronous fluctuations between populations buffer against fluctuations at the community level, are a key theoretical mechanism of stability. Classically, compensatory dynamics have been quantified using a variance ratio approach that compares the ratio between community variance and aggregate population variance, such that a lower ratio indicates compensation and a higher ratio indicates synchrony among species fluctuations. However, population dynamics may be influenced by different drivers that operate on different timescales, and evidence from aquatic systems indicates that communities can be compensatory on some timescales and synchronous on others. The variance ratio and related metrics cannot reflect this timescale specificity, yet have remained popular, especially in terrestrial systems. Here, we develop a timescale-specific variance ratio approach that formally decomposes the classical variance ratio according to the timescales of distinct contributions. The approach is implemented in a new R package, called tsvr, that accompanies this paper. We apply our approach to a long-term, multisite grassland community dataset. Our approach demonstrates that the degree of compensation vs. synchrony in community dynamics can vary by timescale. Across sites, population variability was typically greater over longer compared to shorter timescales. At some sites, minimal timescale specificity in compensatory dynamics translated this pattern of population variability into a similar pattern of greater community variability on longer compared to shorter timescales. But at other sites, differentially stronger compensatory dynamics at longer compared to shorter timescales produced lower-than-expected community variability on longer timescales. Within every site, there were plots that exhibited shifts in the strength of compensation between timescales. Our results highlight that compensatory vs. synchronous dynamics are intrinsically timescale-dependent concepts, and our timescale-specific variance ratio provides a metric to quantify timescale specificity and relate it back to the classic variance ratio

Predicting consumer biomass, size-structure, production, catch potential, responses to fishing and associated uncertainties in the world's marine ecosystems

Existing estimates of fish and consumer biomass in the world’s oceans are disparate. This creates uncertainty about the roles of fish and other consumers in biogeochemical cycles and ecosystem processes, the extent of human and environmental impacts and fishery potential. We develop and use a size-based macroecological model to assess the effects of parameter uncertainty on predicted consumer biomass, production and distribution. Resulting uncertainty is large (e.g. median global biomass 4.9 billion tonnes for consumers weighing 1 g to 1000 kg; 50% uncertainty intervals of 2 to 10.4 billion tonnes; 90% uncertainty intervals of 0.3 to 26.1 billion tonnes) and driven primarily by uncertainty in trophic transfer efficiency and its relationship with predator-prey body mass ratios. Even the upper uncertainty intervals for global predictions of consumer biomass demonstrate the remarkable scarcity of marine consumers, with less than one part in 30 million by volume of the global oceans comprising tissue of macroscopic animals. Thus the apparently high densities of marine life seen in surface and coastal waters and frequently visited abundance hotspots will likely give many in society a false impression of the abundance of marine animals. Unexploited baseline biomass predictions from the simple macroecological model were used to calibrate a more complex size- and trait-based model to estimate fisheries yield and impacts. Yields are highly dependent on baseline biomass and fisheries selectivity. Predicted global sustainable fisheries yield increases ≈4 fold when smaller individuals (< 20 cm from species of maximum mass < 1kg) are targeted in all oceans, but the predicted yields would rarely be accessible in practice and this fishing strategy leads to the collapse of larger species if fishing mortality rates on different size classes cannot be decoupled. Our analyses show that models with minimal parameter demands that are based on a few established ecological principles can support equitable analysis and comparison of diverse ecosystems. The analyses provide insights into the effects of parameter uncertainty on global biomass and production estimates, which have yet to be achieved with complex models, and will therefore help to highlight priorities for future research and data collection. However, the focus on simple model structures and global processes means that non-phytoplankton primary production and several groups, structures and processes of ecological and conservation interest are not represented. Consequently, our simple models become increasingly less useful than more complex alternatives when addressing questions about food web structure and function, biodiversity, resilience and human impacts at smaller scales and for areas closer to coasts

Immunogenicity of a Monovalent 2009 Influenza A (H1N1) Vaccine Among Pregnant Women: Lowered Antibody Response by Prior Seasonal Vaccination

Background. Pregnant women are a high-risk group for influenza-associated complications and hospitalizations