Preferential Myosin Heavy Chain Isoform B Expression May Contribute to the Faster Velocity of Contraction in Veins versus Arteries

Smooth muscle myosin heavy chains occur in 2 isoforms, SMA (slow) and SMB (fast). We hypothesized that the SMB isoform is predominant in the faster-contracting rat vena cava compared to thoracic aorta. We compared the time to half maximal contraction in response to a maximal concentration of endothelin-1 (ET-1; 100 nM), potassium chloride (KCl; 100 mM) and norepinephrine (NE; 10 µM). The time to half maximal contraction was shorter in the vena cava compared to aorta (aorta: ET-1 = 235.8 ± 13.8 s, KCl = 140.0 ± 33.3 s, NE = 19.8 ± 2.7 s; vena cava: ET-1 = 121.8 ± 15.6 s, KCl = 49.5 ± 6.7 s, NE = 9.0 ± 3.3 s). Reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction supported the greater expression of SMB in the vena cava compared to aorta. SMB was expressed to a greater extent than SMA in the vessel wall of the vena cava. Western analysis determined that expression of SMB, relative to total smooth muscle myosin heavy chains, was 12.5 ± 4.9-fold higher in the vena cava compared to aorta, while SMA was 4.9 ± 1.2-fold higher in the aorta than vena cava. Thus, the SMB isoform is the predominant form expressed in rat veins, providing one possible mechanism for the faster response of veins to vasoconstrictors

Schizophrenia and the progression of emotional expression in relation to others

Gaining an improved understanding of people diagnosed with schizophrenia has the potential to influence priorities for therapy. Psychosis is commonly understood through the perspective of the medical model. However, the experience of social context surrounding psychosis is not well understood. In this research project we used a phenomenological methodology with a longitudinal design to interview 7 participants across a 12-month period to understand the social experiences surrounding psychosis. Eleven themes were explicated and divided into two phases of the illness experience: (a) transition into emotional shutdown included the experiences of not being acknowledged, relational confusion, not being expressive, detachment, reliving the past, and having no sense of direction; and (b) recovery from emotional shutdown included the experiences of being acknowledged, expression, resolution, independence, and a sense of direction. The experiential themes provide clinicians with new insights to better assess vulnerability, and have the potential to inform goals for therapy

Psychopolitics: Peter Sedgwick’s legacy for mental health movements

This paper re-considers the relevance of Peter Sedgwick's Psychopolitics (1982) for a politics of mental health. Psychopolitics offered an indictment of ‘anti-psychiatry’ the failure of which, Sedgwick argued, lay in its deconstruction of the category of ‘mental illness’, a gesture that resulted in a politics of nihilism. ‘The radical who is only a radical nihilist’, Sedgwick observed, ‘is for all practical purposes the most adamant of conservatives’. Sedgwick argued, rather, that the concept of ‘mental illness’ could be a truly critical concept if it was deployed ‘to make demands upon the health service facilities of the society in which we live’. The paper contextualizes Psychopolitics within the ‘crisis tendencies’ of its time, surveying the shifting welfare landscape of the subsequent 25 years alongside Sedgwick's continuing relevance. It considers the dilemma that the discourse of ‘mental illness’ – Sedgwick's critical concept – has fallen out of favour with radical mental health movements yet remains paradigmatic within psychiatry itself. Finally, the paper endorses a contemporary perspective that, while necessarily updating Psychopolitics, remains nonetheless ‘Sedgwickian’

Open Mushrooms: Stickiness revisited

We investigate mushroom billiards, a class of dynamical systems with sharply divided phase space. For typical values of the control parameter of the system $\rho$, an infinite number of marginally unstable periodic orbits (MUPOs) exist making the system sticky in the sense that unstable orbits approach regular regions in phase space and thus exhibit regular behaviour for long periods of time. The problem of finding these MUPOs is expressed as the well known problem of finding optimal rational approximations of a real number, subject to some system-specific constraints. By introducing a generalized mushroom and using properties of continued fractions, we describe a zero measure set of control parameter values $\rho\in(0,1)$ for which all MUPOs are destroyed and therefore the system is less sticky. The open mushroom (billiard with a hole) is then considered in order to quantify the stickiness exhibited and exact leading order expressions for the algebraic decay of the survival probability function $P(t)$ are calculated for mushrooms with triangular and rectangular stems.Comment: 21 pages, 11 figures. Includes discussion of a three-dimensional mushroo

Medicalization of eating and feeding

A variety of developments over the past century have produced the conditions in which eating and feeding are transformed from practices embedded in social or cultural relations into explicit medical practices. The rise of medical science, expansion of the pharmaceutical and food industries, escalating concern over diet‐related diseases and conditions, and growing anxiety over infant and childhood development have contributed to a process of medicalization. Medicalization is a sociological concept that analyses the expansion of medical terminology, interventions, or practitioners into areas of the life that were previously considered outside the medical sphere. For instance, under‐eating has previously been defined using theological language, as an act of fasting demonstrating a saintly character. Such practices are now understood through medical terms of anorexia nervosa, malnutrition, or general diagnoses such as “eating disorders not otherwise specified.” Individuals engaged in under‐ or over‐eating practices are increasingly defined by medical concepts (anorexia nervosa and obesity) and treated in medical spaces (hospitals, clinics, or rehabilitation centres) through medical interventions (pharmaceuticals, surgery, psychotherapy, or dietary regimens). Likewise, infant feeding (breast or formula) is understood as a practice that requires monitoring and instruction from medical practitioners. Further, eating in general is progressively invested with medical significance. Foods and diets are touted as possessing a therapeutic or health enhancing capacity that indicates an individual’s or population’s present and future health. Due to the high regard for, and influence of, medical science in the West, medicalization studies primarily focus on Western contexts. Medicalization does have an impact on non‐Western societies and the developing world, however its influence emanates from Western biomedicine, industries, and policies. There is important work to be done in examining the process of medicalization in non‐Western contexts, however this article is limited to the Western context ( Hunt, 1999). To analyse the medicalization of eating and feeding it is important to first sketch the theoretical and historical background of medicalization as a sociological concept. The relationship between eating and medicine is extensive. In order to focus the discussion, three examples are used – under‐eating, over‐ eating and infant feeding. This background focuses the analysis of the forces driving the medicalization of eating and feeding. Finally, in elaborating the influences and consequences of the medicalization of eating and feeding, some of the central ethical implications are identified and discusse

Psychotherapy in historical perspective

This article will briefly explore some of the ways in which the past has been used as a means to talk about psychotherapy as a practice and as a profession, its impact on individuals and society, and the ethical debates at stake. It will show how, despite the multiple and competing claims about psychotherapy’s history and its meanings, historians themselves have, to a large degree, not attended to the intellectual and cultural development of many therapeutic approaches. This absence has the potential consequence of implying that therapies have emerged as value-free techniques, outside of a social, economic and political context. The relative neglect of psychotherapy, by contrast with the attention historians have paid to other professions, particularly psychiatry, has also underplayed its societal impact. This article will foreground some of the instances where psychotherapy has become an object of emerging historical interest, including the new research that forms the substance of this special issue of History of the Human Sciences

Lower and upper probabilities in the distributive lattice of subsystems

yesThe set of subsystems ∑ (m) of a finite quantum system ∑(n) (with variables in Ζ(n)) together with logical connectives, is a distributive lattice. With regard to this lattice, the ℓ(m | ρn) = Tr ((m) ρn ) (where (m) is the projector to ∑(m)) obeys a supermodularity inequality, and it is interpreted as a lower probability in the sense of the Dempster–Shafer theory, and not as a Kolmogorov probability. It is shown that the basic concepts of the Dempster–Shafer theory (lower and upper probabilities and the Dempster multivaluedness) are pertinent to the quantum formalism of finite systems

Mental disorder and social deviance

Social deviance refers to actions or behaviors that violate social norms. Since the declassification of homosexuality and development of DSM-III, one of the aims of a definition of mental disorder has been to make explicit the distinction between mental disorder and social deviance. It is well-recognized that psychiatric disorders frequently manifest as violations of social norms, and the validity of the distinction between disorder and deviance has been of great interest to philosophers of psychiatry. This article provides an overview of some of the major conceptual strategies that have been discussed as a means of discriminating between mental disorder and social deviance, and the extent to which these strategies can be said to be philosophically successful. Specifically, we review DSM's definition of mental disorder, notions of dysfunctions (commonsensical, clinical, naturalist), intrinsic and socially constituted distress, disability, 3E perspectives and functional norms, and ethical and political approaches to this question. Current philosophical strategies don’t offer a distinct dividing line between disorder and deviance, but they help illuminate the relevant considerations involved. It may be concluded that the distinction between disorder and deviance is not simply discovered but also negotiated between competing values