Monitoring regional crustal deformation with horizontal geodetic data

The National Ocean Survey is developing an automated system to derive parameters of horizontal crustal motion from existing geodetic data by the process of least squares estimation. The estimated parameter will describe crustal motion as a function of geographic position. The system will first be tested in the Imperial Valley region of southern California, using data from 8 individual field projects spanning four decades of time

Relationship between Preparedness Training and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Severity in Combat Veterans

In the past decade, the military has deployed approximately 1 million members into combat, and a factor that plagues the military veterans returning from combat is the prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A factor to examine is preparedness training before combat because the research has shown that postcombat resilience training has been effective in reducing symptoms of PTSD. Using the social cognitive theory, the purpose of this study was to determine whether self-reported preparedness training before deployments was related to lower severity of self-reported PTSD. Based on prior research, age and gender are other variables that this study examined. Participants were a sample population of veterans who completed a quantitative survey, which included demographics, the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Check List, and the Training and Deployment Preparation survey, Section H of the DRRI-2. Data collected from the survey were input into the SPSS program and analyzed using multiple linear regressions. Results reflected that preparedness training had an inverse correlation relationship to self-reported PTSD severity, age had a predictive relationship, and gender did not show a significant relationship. It appears that preparedness training for combat does help reduce self-reported severity of PTSD in veterans returning with PTSD symptoms. Providing preparedness training before combat may help in reducing this phenomenon. The results of the present study, developing procedures and therapeutic measures to help veterans in need can be generalized into the mainframe of social and behavioral change for all individuals dealing with PTSD, including first responders

How Medical Discourse Can Mobilize Clinical Diagnostics into a Political Condition: A Multimedia Archive of "Leprosy"

What happens when a person becomes ill? What is the effect of this process of becoming a patient? What effect, if any, does this have on the individual’s psyche? This thesis asks these questions to provide a window into the process we all go through when we become ill and enter the world of medicine. In order to explore the idea of whether or not the moment of diagnosis can cause mental violence to the patient the extreme historical case of Hansen’s disease is analyzed. Known to many by its more common term, “leprosy,” which will be referred to as Hansen’s monstrous metaphor, a multimedia archival analysis is conducted to deconstruct how “leprosy” came to be a monstrous metaphor and what the effect of this is on the patient. Through discursive analysis of historical legislation, fictional narratives, contemporary newspapers and physician reports, as well as analysis of patient narratives or the autopathography the construction of “leprosy” as a monstrous metaphor evoking a socially stigmatizing and dehumanizing condition is revealed. The first chapter, which focuses on the construction of “leprosy” as a metaphor, demonstrates that medical discourse has the potentiality to build a dehumanizing social condition around a clinical diagnostic. It is then, from this social condition, that political action and governance is justified. As a result, the diagnostic moment becomes laden with not only social implications but political ones as well. The impact of this on the individual is at the heart of what this thesis aims to uncover. The second chapter is then, devoted to analyzing two different autopathographies in an attempt to uncover what a diagnosis of a disease which has been constructed into such a socially and politically laden identity, has on the individual. This is meant not only in relation to their physical health and their social or political positionalities, but to their own individual understandings of their ‘self’ and how this impacts them at the register of the psyche.This analysis illuminates that the health narrative, or autopathography, should be considered a vital part of medical education in order to encourage holistic practices which focus on the patient as a person. These narratives, from the perspective of the patient, allow the patient’s voice to be heard in a field that so often silences it. These narratives can help close the gap between the patient and the practitioner who is often so focused on the disease, they forget the patient is not a subject, but a human. They forget that the disease is not only in a lab or an examination room, but a lived reality for a person. I analyze two autopathographies, Olivia: my life in exile in Kalaupapa by Olivia Robello Breitha (1988) and Miracle at Carville by Betty Martin (1950), written by patients who had the biological illness, Hansen’s disease. In this thesis a stark difference is drawn between Hansen’s disease and what, through Susan Sontag’s theory of “illness as metaphor,” this thesis will term as Hansen’s monstrous metaphor, “leprosy” (1978). Through analysis of both Betty’s and Olivia’s narratives it becomes clear that what they suffered from most is the monstrous metaphor “leprosy” which they have been forced to embody. In analyzing their narrations, the voices of Betty and Olivia expose diagnosis as a moment of a psychic rupture. Suddenly, they see their body through the dehumanizing and pathologizing discourse around “leprosy”. The internal reactions they describe can only be understood as alienation from one’s own body. I argue that diagnosis can be a moment of mental violence. This is not only as a result of the biological ailment, but any social condition which the diagnosis ascribes to the patient’s body as well. As a result, the social condition should also be considered part of that which the patient must contend. Annemarie Mol’s The Body Multiple (2002) argues that illness is multiple as it impacts the patient’s life in many different ways, is something different under the microscope in the lab and is yet something else to the nurse and to the doctor. Mol’s work is, therefore, a vital text which I incorporate into my own discussion of why health narratives, as they illuminate this multiplicity of illness, should be part of medical education since the practitioner should account for these multiplicities in caring for the patient. Additionally, by analyzing this historical extreme case of an illness that has sustained a social imaginary and evokes images of zombies and “lion faces” the potentiality, and therefore, the power of diagnosis over the individual is uncovered as one that has the ability to alienate the ‘self’ from its own body. Therefore, I argue the body is a space from which the ‘self’ can become “unhomed”. By incorporating Homi Bhabha’s notion of cultural “unhoming” the body becomes an unsafe space for the ‘self’ to exist (1994). Ultimately, what this analysis reveals is the moment of diagnosis as a crucial point where the gap between the patient and practitioner must be closed by a holistic approach. This includes accounting for the multiplicity of illness as it is in this fragile moment that the patient is vulnerable to mental violence

Identification of a Novel Antiapoptotic Functional Domain in Simian Virus 40 Large T Antigen.

The ability of DNA tumor virus proteins to trigger apoptosis in mammalian cells is well established. For example, transgenic expression of a simian virus 40 (SV40) T-antigen N-terminal fragment (N-termTag) is known to induce apoptosis in choroid plexus epithelial cells. SV40 T-antigen-induced apoptosis has generally been considered to be a p53-dependent event because cell death in the brain is greatly diminished in a p53-/- background strain and is abrogated by expression of wild-type (p53-binding) SV40 T antigen. We now show that while N-termTags triggered apoptosis in rat embryo fibroblasts cultured in low serum, expression of full-length T antigens unable to bind p53 [mut(p53-)Tags] protected against apoptosis without causing transformation. One domain essential for blocking apoptosis by T antigen was mapped to amino acids 525 to 541. This domain has \u3e60% homology with a domain of adenovirus type 5 E1B 19K required to prevent E1A-induced apoptosis. In the context of both wild-type T antigen and mut(p53-)Tags, mutation of two conserved amino acids in this region eliminated T antigen\u27s antiapoptotic activity in REF-52 cells. These data suggest that SV40 T antigen contains a novel functional domain involved in preventing apoptosis independently of inactivation of p53

The Product of the Saccharomyces Cerevisiae RSS1 Gene, Identified as a High-Copy Suppressor of the Rat7-1 Temperature-Sensitive Allele of the RAT7/NUP159 Nucleoporin, is Required for Efficient mRNA Export

RAT7/NUP159 was identified previously in a screen for genes whose products are important for nucleocytoplasmic export of poly(A)+ RNA and encodes an essential nucleoporin. We report here the identification of RSS1 (Rat Seven Suppressor) as a high-copy extragenic suppressor of the rat7-1 temperature-sensitive allele. Rss1p encodes a novel essential protein of 538 amino acids, which contains an extended predicted coiled-coil domain and is located both at nuclear pore complexes (NPCs) and in the cytoplasm. RSS1 is the first reported high-copy extragenic suppressor of a mutant nucleoporin. Overexpression of Rss1p partially suppresses the defects in nucleocytoplasmic export of poly(A)+ RNA, rRNA synthesis and processing, and nucleolar morphology seen in rat7-1 cells shifted to the nonpermissive temperature of 37 degrees C and, thus, restores these processes to levels adequate for growth at a rate approximately one-half that of wild-type cells. After a shift to 37 degrees C, the mutant Rat7-1p/Nup159-1p is lost from the nuclear rim of rat7-1 cells and NPCs, which are clustered together in these cells grown under permissive conditions become substantially less clustered. Overexpression of Rss1p did not result in retention of the mutant Rat7-1p/Nup159-1p in NPCs, but it did result in partial maintenance of the NPC-clustering phenotype seen in mutant cells. Depletion of Rss1p by placing the RSS1 open reading frame (ORF) under control of the GAL1 promoter led to cessation of growth and nuclear accumulation of poly(A)+ RNA without affecting nuclear protein import or nuclear pore complex distribution, suggesting that RSS1 is directly involved in mRNA export. Because both rat7-1 cells and cells depleted for Rss1p are defective in mRNA export, our data are consistent with both gene products playing essential roles in the process of mRNA export and suggest that Rss1p overexpression suppresses the growth defect of rat7-1 cells at 37 degrees C by acting to maintain mRNA export

C-terminal Truncations of the Yeast Nucleoporin Nup145p Produce a Rapid Temperature-conditional mRNA Export Defect and Alterations to Nuclear Structure.

A screen for temperature-sensitive mutants of Saccharomyces cerevisiae defective in nucleocytoplasmic trafficking of poly(A)+ RNA has identified an allele of the NUP145 gene, which encodes an essential nucleoporin. NUP145 was previously identified by using a genetic synthetic lethal screen (E. Fabre, W. C. Boelens, C. Wimmer, I. W. Mattaj, and E. C. Hurt, Cell 78:275-289, 1994) and by using a monoclonal antibody which recognizes the GLFG family of vertebrate and yeast nucleoporins (S. R. Wente and G. Blobel, J. Cell Biol. 125:955-969, 1994). Cells carrying the new allele, nup145-10, grew at 23 and 30 degrees C but were unable to grow at 37 degrees C. Many cells displayed a modest accumulation of poly(A)+ RNA under permissive growth conditions, and all cells showed dramatic and rapid nuclear accumulation of poly(A)+ RNA following a shift to 37 degrees C. The mutant allele contains a nonsense codon which truncates the 1,317-amino-acid protein to 698 amino acids. This prompted us to examine the role of the carboxyl half of Nup145p. Several additional alleles that encode C-terminally truncated proteins or proteins containing internal deletions of portions of the carboxyl half of Nup145p were constructed. Analysis of these mutants indicates that some sequences between amino acids 698 and 1095 are essential for RNA export and for growth at 37 degrees C. In these strains, nuclear accumulation of poly(A)+ RNA and fragmentation of the nucleolus occurred rapidly following a shift to 37 degrees C. Constitutive defects in nuclear pore complex distribution and nuclear structure were also seen in these strains. Although cells lacking Nup145p grew extremely slowly at 23 degrees C and did not grow at 30 degrees C, efficient growth at 23 or 30 degrees C occurred as long as cells produced either the amino 58% or the carboxyl 53% of Nup145p. Strains carrying alleles of NUP145 lacking up to 200 amino acids from the carboxy terminus were viable at 37 degrees C but displayed nucleolar fragmentation and some nuclear accumulation of poly(A)+ RNA following a shift to 37 degrees C. Surprisingly, these strains grew efficiently at 37 degrees C in spite of a reduction in the level of synthesis of rRNAs to approximately 25% of the wild-type level

Earthquakes: from chemical alteration to mechanical rupture

In the standard rebound theory of earthquakes, elastic deformation energy is progressively stored in the crust until a threshold is reached at which it is suddenly released in an earthquake. We review three important paradoxes, the strain paradox, the stress paradox and the heat flow paradox, that are difficult to account for in this picture, either individually or when taken together. Resolutions of these paradoxes usually call for additional assumptions on the nature of the rupture process (such as novel modes of deformations and ruptures) prior to and/or during an earthquake, on the nature of the fault and on the effect of trapped fluids within the crust at seismogenic depths. We review the evidence for the essential importance of water and its interaction with the modes of deformations. Water is usually seen to have mainly the mechanical effect of decreasing the normal lithostatic stress in the fault core on one hand and to weaken rock materials via hydrolytic weakening and stress corrosion on the other hand. We also review the evidences that water plays a major role in the alteration of minerals subjected to finite strains into other structures in out-of-equilibrium conditions. This suggests novel exciting routes to understand what is an earthquake, that requires to develop a truly multidisciplinary approach involving mineral chemistry, geology, rupture mechanics and statistical physics.Comment: 44 pages, 1 figures, submitted to Physics Report

A New Paradigm for Large Earthquakes in Stable Continental Plate Interiors

Large earthquakes within stable continental regions (SCR) show that significant amounts of elastic strain can be released on geological structures far from plate boundary faults, where the vast majority of the Earth's seismic activity takes place. SCR earthquakes show spatial and temporal patterns that differ from those at plate boundaries and occur in regions where tectonic loading rates are negligible. However, in the absence of a more appropriate model, they are traditionally viewed as analogous to their plate boundary counterparts, occuring when the accrual of tectonic stress localized at long-lived active faults reaches failure threshold. Here we argue that SCR earthquakes are better explained by transient perturbations of local stress or fault strength that release elastic energy from a pre-stressed lithosphere. As a result, SCR earthquakes can occur in regions with no previous seismicity and no surface evidence for strain accumulation. They need not repeat, since the tectonic loading rate is close to zero. Therefore, concepts of recurrence time or fault slip rate do not apply. As a consequence, seismic hazard in SCRs is likely more spatially distributed than indicated by paleoearthquakes, current seismicity, or geodetic strain rates