Soda and Tobacco Industry Corporate Social Responsibility Campaigns: How Do They Compare?

In an article that forms part of the PLoS Medicine series on Big Food, Andrew Cheyne and colleagues compare soda companies' corporate social responsibility (CSR) campaigns - which are designed to bolster the image and popularity of their products and to prevent regulation - with the tobacco industry's CSR campaigning

An Inventory of Trilobites from National Park Service Areas

Trilobites represent an extinct group of Paleozoic marine invertebrate fossils that have great scientific interest and public appeal. Trilobites exhibit wide taxonomic diversity and are contained within nine orders of the Class Trilobita. A wealth of scientific literature exists regarding trilobites, their morphology, biostratigraphy, indicators of paleoenvironments, behavior, and other research themes. An inventory of National Park Service areas reveals that fossilized remains of trilobites are documented from within at least 33 NPS units, including Death Valley National Park, Grand Canyon National Park, Yellowstone National Park, and Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve. More than 120 trilobite hototype specimens are known from National Park Service areas

An Inventory of Trilobites from National Park Service Areas

Trilobites represent an extinct group of Paleozoic marine invertebrate fossils that have great scientific interest and public appeal. Trilobites exhibit wide taxonomic diversity and are contained within nine orders of the Class Trilobita. A wealth of scientific literature exists regarding trilobites, their morphology, biostratigraphy, indicators of paleoenvironments, behavior, and other research themes. An inventory of National Park Service areas reveals that fossilized remains of trilobites are documented from within at least 33 NPS units, including Death Valley National Park, Grand Canyon National Park, Yellowstone National Park, and Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve. More than 120 trilobite hototype specimens are known from National Park Service areas

Impacts of a Peer-Group Intervention on HIV-Related Knowledge, Attitudes, and Personal Behaviors for Urban Hospital Workers in Malawi

We construct and solve a classical percolation model with a phase transition that we argue acts as a proxy for the quantum many-body localization transition. The classical model is defined on a graph in the Fock space of a disordered, interacting quantum spin chain, using a convenient choice of basis. Edges of the graph represent matrix elements of the spin Hamiltonian between pairs of basis states that are expected to hybridize strongly. At weak disorder, all nodes are connected, forming a single cluster. Many separate clusters appear above a critical disorder strength, each typically having a size that is exponentially large in the number of spins but a vanishing fraction of the Fock-space dimension. We formulate a transfer matrix approach that yields an exact value ν = 2 for the localization length exponent, and also use complete enumeration of clusters to study the transition numerically in finite-sized systems

A Preliminary Assessment of the Link Between Anxiety Sensitivity Cognitive Concerns and Suicidal Thoughts Through Dissociative Symptoms

Anxiety sensitivity (AS) and AS subfactors (physical, cognitive, and social) have been found to have robust associations with suicide risk. While the direct association between AS subfactors and suicide risk have been explored, little is known about how specific mechanisms, such as dissociation, might explain this relationship. This study aimed to run three analyses to examine the direct and indirect effects of suicidal thoughts and AS via dissociative symptoms. We predicted that dissociation would be a pathway through which AS physical concerns (ASPC) and AS cognitive concerns (ASCC) predicts suicidal ideation. Participants included 84 undergraduate students from a Southeastern University who were elevated on ASCC. Participants completed measures examining dissociative experiences, anxiety sensitivity, and current suicidal ideation. Results revealed that dissociation had a significant indirect effect with ASPC but not ASCC. The current preliminary study showed that ASCC had direct associations with suicide risk; however, those with lower levels of ASPC and dissociation may also be more likely to develop suicide risk. Future research should explore the possibility that the dissociation/ASPC and ASCC pathways are separate, but related, paths to suicidality

Peer Group Intervention for HIV Prevention among Health Workers in Chile

We tested the impacts of a professionally assisted peer group intervention on Chilean health workers' HIV-related knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors using a quasi-experimental design with a pretest and 3-month posttest. Two Santiago suburbs were randomly assigned to the intervention or delayed intervention control condition, and five community clinics per suburb participated. Interested workers at the intervention ( n = 262) and control ( n = 293) clinics participated and completed both evaluations. At posttest, intervention clinic workers had higher knowledge and more positive attitudes regarding HIV, condoms, stigmatization, and self-efficacy for prevention. They reported more partner discussion about safer sex, less unprotected sex, and more involvement in HIV prevention activities in the clinic and the community, but they did not report fewer sexual partners or more standard precautions behaviors. Because of these positive impacts, the program will become a regular continuing education unit that can be used to meet health worker licensing requirements

Relationship between change in in-vivo exposure distress and PTSD symptoms during exposure therapy for active duty soldiers

Objective: The current study sought to examine the relationship between changes in distress for items on in-vivo exposure hierarchies and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom change over the course of exposure therapy. Methods: Active duty army soldiers (N = 108) were recruited from a military base in the U.S. and were enrolled in a randomized clinical trial comparing Prolonged Exposure (PE), Virtual Reality Exposure (VRE), and a waitlist control for the treatment of PTSD stemming from deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan. PTSD diagnosis followed DSM-IV-TR criteria. Outcome measures were assessed via self-report and clinician interview. The relationships between in-vivo exposure distress, imaginal exposure distress, and PTSD symptoms, were examined in a factor of curves model for participants in the treatment conditions. Results: Analyses revealed that, when controlling for one another, changes in in-vivo exposure distress were significantly associated with changes in PTSD symptoms (beta = 0.75, 95% CI [0.60, 0.90]), while changes in imaginal exposure distress were not (beta = 0.03, 95% CI [-0.27, 0.33]). The model also revealed that after accounting for the shared variation in trajectories of change, symptom clusters did not have unique variation, meaning that symptom clusters did not change independently. Conclusion: Results suggest the possibility that in-vivo exposures are more closely tied to changes in overall PTSD symptoms than imaginal exposures during exposure therapy. Furture research should incorporate more frequent measurement of in-vivo exposure distress to better elucidate these relations over the course of treatment.U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command Military Operational Medicine Research Program [W81XWH-08-2-0015]12 month embargo; published online: 18 June 2019This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]